A Lesson for the Outer Beltway dreamers

[thelakelander]

In this case, the Developers wanted to route the road AWAY from their project.

Rivertown but definitely not the larger Silverleaf.  My old firm did some marketing renderings for them back in 2006.  The Outer Beltway is supposed to go right through the middle of their development.

http://www.silverleafplantation.com/location.php

[reednavy]

What a waste of land and resources.

[stjr]

Excellent article Lake!  Thanks for posting it.  It should have been a MJ featured headline article.

9B is bad, the Outer Beltway is an urban sprawl disaster.  Clay and St. Johns leaders are out to destroy the little sanity left in their counties.  Don't they realize not only will this make their counties innocuous little blips surrounding Jax, but this road will just lead to mostly more rooftops, not jobs, and feed all those people into Duval for the jobs Clay and St. Johns want.

Clay and St. Johns are forever destined to be sprawling suburbs.  Want to be unique?  Develop ecotourism around your remaining natural assets.  Forget industrial and office jobs and thousands of acres of boring tract housing that will one day be the slum of the future and work on preserving your natural lands.

A few favored people will get rich while all the other sleep-at-the-wheel suckers (I mean residents) will get taken to the cleaners and pay now and forever for the consequences.  You couldn't pay me to move to either county knowing the train wreck coming down the ROADS (Outer Beltway and 9B).  

[CS Foltz]

Nice picture of that F8F....allways did think that was one of the best designs for a round engine airplane ever made, Darryl Greenamyer (I think I spelt it correctly)had world prop driven speed record at one time in a modified Bearcat but I divert, Outer Beltway is a road to developer Paradise or the bank however you view it! I am not against controlled or planned expansion but somehow we seem to have lost a vision, if there ever was one somewhere and the next generations after ours will be the proud recipient of what we do today.............somehow I think they will be the ones losing out on what Florida itself has to offer!

[tufsu1]

Now I understand CS....

You have determined that Greenville, SC is a depressed area that has little to no hope of changing due to a lack of vision....anyone that has been there in the last decade would likely disagree...whcih calls into serious question your observations/viewpoints regarding the future of Jacksonville.

[Ocklawaha]

Now I understand CS....

You have determined that Greenville, SC is a depressed area that has little to no hope of changing due to a lack of vision....anyone that has been there in the last decade would likely disagree...which calls into serious question your observations/viewpoints regarding the future of Jacksonville.

Wow tusfu1, you keep being so nice in your posts and you might catch up to me! ROFLMFAO!
Seriously, since when is a misidenity of a place you don't live, grounds to silence your opinion of your current home? I can tell all of you about Jacksonville, California, cool main street, beautiful mountains, great hiking on the old Hetch Hetchy Railroad, hippie invasion, etc... But you'd have to wear scuba gear to see the town site today!

OCKLAWAHA

[north miami]

The outer beltway emerged on the earliest local goverment planning act county government planning maps as early as the early 1970's in Clay county.Reinhold Corp./Jack Myers key players-pivotal events include the Trust For Public Lands 1800 acre Brannon/Chaffee option blowing up,Clay County Brannon/Chaffee Sector Plans,Jacksonville's Gennesis/Brian Wheeler (both Clay County and Myers as client),Lake Asbury Secror Plan "1" & "2"....#"1" curiously deemed non authorized by state DCA at the tail end of months long proceedings,including "time out" when spiorited citizens called the county and 'consultant" on the entrenched Ravines Conservation area routing-per the 70's map.
Also see Reinhold's attempts at swaping lands for the Ravines in order to acommodtae the earlier route.

Of course the beltway would not serve existing traffic- the project drivers are key land owners-the intent would be to generate more development and traffic.

Here is a lesson for all of you anti beltway dreamers who have truly been "asleep":
YOU MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR LEGALLY BINDING "NO BUILD" OPTION A FEW YEARS AND PUBLIC MEETINGS AGO.

And I doubt the MJ drive by forum can really contribute any effective outcome.
Besides-I don't know or trust all who drive through here.

[thelakelander]

MJ can't do anything about the Outer Beltway.  However, the economy can.  Where are the people ready to lose their shirts, just like the investors in Greenville?

[north miami]

When pressed on Beltway matters by irate citizens Clay County officials are quick to comment to the effect that nothing will happen for twenty five years.
The same lame approach is taken with thr 'no investors'/bad economy outlook.

Massive effort and legal vesting of future development related to the beltway has 'quietly' emerged.

[thelakelander]

No doubt.  However, if the state isn't going to pay for it, someone from the private sector has to pony up the billion to construct the thing.  Then they have to pray that development happens fast enough so they can make their money back on tolls.  That's a huge risk to take when staying on regular highways can take a significant amount of traffic to the same location in less time without tolls.  I think this is the underlying reason why it doesn't exist today.  If the risk were not that great, it would be under construction already.

[stjr]

Question:  If the Outer Beltway fails to get built now, how long does the concept hang around before it is gone forever?  The state doesn't already own the right of way, does it?  It's just a line on the page right now, correct?  If a land owner in its path chooses to build on his land a housing development, etc. that makes eminent domain impractical, does the road's feasibility begin to dissipate?

Bottom line, what would it take to kill the Outer Beltway for good at this point?

[Charles Hunter]

But, don't the developers along the path want the beltway?  Why would they do something to thwart it?

[CS Foltz]

Mr Charles, I would bet the developers do want it......they just don't want to pay for it! It would play hell with their bottoms lines! I mean why would they spend their money when they can get Federal,State and local funds to do it for them. I mean this is similar to DR Horton and his grandiose plans for the Old Bay Meadows Golf Course! His plan was to build 1200 High Dollar Duplex's and 1800 Apartments. His traffic flow expert stood in front of the Council and made a statement regarding the increase in peak traffic flow......that number was 900 and change. Project was also to use "Concurrency" to enhance Bay Meadows traffic, at both ends north side of I95 and south of Southside Blvd. Plan was flawed and the Mayor did the only thing that I have ever agreed with and that was veto the proposal. It took 8000 plus people to band together to halt that one and just proved to me beyond doubt...........a developer will spend whatever for land but then depend on other sources to fund their vision......the easy part is buying the land, its everything else that can get expensive! Nocatee was the same way.......who built the new High Rise Bridge? It was not the developer......he had a finger in the roads maybe but that was inclusive in being able to build the development back then.....wouldn't happen now!

[north miami]

Brannon/Chaffee has been a focus and 'driver' of the beltway- the promotions of  "alleviation" have been erroneous at worse,over stated at best.But it worked perfectly!!
B/C was promoted as a 'much needed' ,'alternative' to SR 21/Blanding Blvd....after all,Clay County only had two major arterial roadways.
In the early 70's Clay county floated proposals for an "alternative" to Blanding Blvd. that may have in fact proven truly alternative- a new roadway parallel,close to and west of Blanding.Problem was the "Little Black Creek" wetland belts would have created engineering and cost issue,compounded by the emergence of new wetland protection laws.
With the emergence of Gulfstream Land Development/Argyle,the Brannon/Chaffee route to the west,along a chunk of upland was selected.For a time (Clay County Planner Dick Post,Pajcic era Duval delegation) there was concern and consideration for the wide swath of wetland belts.regional recharge.All recent efforts at development have come with the seal of "Growth Management" and wetland belt 'protection'/"mitigation" approval- we have built a new city in the heart of regional ground water recharge and if given the opportunity,Clay officials would push for more.
B/C was never conceived as an alternative to Blanding.It's role as "alleviation" over promoted,declining contribution-As repoted in the FTU,Calvin Burney/Jax MPO stated 30,000 vehicles would use the proposed new roadway "as soon as it opens"-the fact is 30,000 ADT (average daily traffic) was a modeled number....further in the future-as a result of new development spurred by the roadway.Of course the FTU never retracted the erroneous image.(I do like to think that I had a hand in getting Burney removed from his MPO post.Cheap 'victory')

Recall Mayor Delaney,at the height of the Preservation Jacksonville and love fest with enviros,exclaimed 'we can't build our way out of congestion'. The mayor's role in key elements of Beltway permitting,which extended all the way to a federal agency which would soon provide the Delaney administration with a public works director-for a short time- is also telling.For later.After all, the interest shown on the MJ format is exactly,perfectly too late.

The quiet transformation of counties that have made their mark in selling against big bad 'ol Duval county and Duval's myopic boosterism is fascinating.

[tufsu1]

Bottom line, what would it take to kill the Outer Beltway for good at this point? [/b]

I'm not sure the project will ever be truly killed...I mean, people in D.C. occasionally bring up the idea of I-95 being extended thjrough the district

Tthis is the power that lines on a map have long-term...people say "we must built it"...which is why it is so important that commuter rail and other transit lines are being drawn up now.