A Vision For Jacksonville's Southside

[CS Foltz]

jandar...............nothing has been done to the southside in the last 14/15 years that I know of! Talk is cheap and don't see much happening now either! Supposedly the Bay Meadows corridor is ITS'd (Intelligent Traffic System) .......try going down it at any rush hour............controlled by whom or what? No change from 10 years ago that I can see and this cost us what?

[tufsu1]

jandar...............nothing has been done to the southside in the last 14/15 years that I know of!

Does your "nothing" include

1. completion of SR 9A
2. opening of SJTC
3. further development at Tinseltown
4. growth at UNF
5. widening of JTB

Shall we keep going?

[halimeade]

The biggest problem for Mandarin is the suburban sprawl in Julington Creek creating traffic and various other nightmares... and that area is in St. Johns County, not Duval. Somehow I am pessimistic about the two counties getting together to do anything about it. Sigh.

[CS Foltz]

Well tufsu.............(a)9A is just another developers acess along with truck traffic (b)glad to hear the doors are still open, world is a better place with another MALL (still no mass trasit to and from to speak of(c) Try getting to Tinsel Town at rush hour (outstanding planning from FDOT)(d)Glad to hear Mr Delaney is so good at his job. For what he gets paid he should be.........got nothing to do with the students and bettering them, just make that money happen!(d) JTB.....yep great job.........still not through and it cost what? Could have started a rail system for the money involved! so.............yeah.....please do continue!

[Captain Zissou]

So CS, you're saying..

 

"nothing (to support sustainable development and smart growth) has been done to the southside in the last 14/15 years that I know of(because my knowledge is very limited)!"

(a) 9a isn't the best solution, but it is good to relieve traffic off 95, Phillips and Southside Blvd.
(b) SJTC is a regional mall that has brought new retailers to Jax that previously did not serve our market.
(c) Tinsel Town at rush hour? Is that because you just ate at Denny's for the early bird special and don't want to miss matinee prices? Or are you just generalizing for the overall area?
(d) Growth at a University is not a bad thing...? A larger university with more resources definitely improves the experiences and education of the students. Schools, like everything else, have economies of scale.
(e*)Widening JTB is still doing something.

I'm not a southside advocate by any means, but the Southside has enabled Jax to land huge corporations, retailers, residents, and opportunities that might have otherwise passed up Jax entirely.  This is a result of poor planning and leadership for failing to incorporate these assets into the core, but at least they're here. 

Tapestry Park has set a new benchmark for what faux urban development can look like, and they can't build SJTC out much more without adding density, so maybe the Southside will turn a corner.

[jandar]

jandar...............nothing has been done to the southside in the last 14/15 years that I know of! Talk is cheap and don't see much happening now either! Supposedly the Bay Meadows corridor is ITS'd (Intelligent Traffic System) .......try going down it at any rush hour............controlled by whom or what? No change from 10 years ago that I can see and this cost us what?

Tax Breaks/incentives for companies for Downtown/Northside/Westside are all but forgotten about by this current administration.
Yes, the Southside is where the bulk of the people live in Jax, but 80% of jobs should not be isolated to one location.  
Southpoint is a ghost town in the evenings, yet because they continue to build businesses there, they have to expand belfort/jtb/i95 onramp.
Tinseltown is 1/4 its size after work hours. Yet you see daytime traffic there.

This is how Northside/Westside are forgotten about. Its the same as when you build a community in Clay or St Johns, you still have to commute to the southside for any work outside of retail and industrial.

[Joe]

Zissou - Indeed, Tapestry park is a great New Urbanist sort of development. I hope other developers take notice of how nice it is - it's a good illustration of how much can go into a site that would normally be reserved for a single office building.

As for CS Foltz - I'm not really sure where you are heading with your argument. At this point, everything north of the Dee Dot Ranch is going to be developed anyway. It's far more sustainable to develop the rest of the Soutside than acreage out in Clay, St Johns or Nassau (or Flagler or Baker). Plenty is going on in the Southside, and if the city ever fixes its zoning code, some of the newer development might even turn out OK.

[Joe]

I'd also be very interested in discussing the vision's recommendation for Beach Blvd. Particularly the light rail they included. It's an attractive and exciting idea to build rail on the existing road. By avoiding additional ROW acquisition, the city could build rail at a more reasonable cost.

I guess I'm just skeptical/cynical that this idea is politically feasible. Off the top of my head, I can think of the following concerns:

- Getting FDOT on board with reducing the capacity of an arterial road they control
- Getting FDOT on board with high density urban zoning along an arterial they control
- Getting public support for the two items above.
- Budgetary concerns: if recent rail projects are any indication, a 17ish mile route along Beach Blvd would cost around 1 billion dollars. That's billion with a "B." Even if Jax were responsible and cut costs like a private developer, I'm assuming it would still be at least 500 million without breaking a sweat. (This is where I'm hoping someone with more transportation planning experience might set me straight.) I just can't imagine the Jax public swallowing the cost.
- Regardless, how would you fund it? A TIF district along Beach? TIF combined with federal funds? You certainly couldn't use a sales tax or property tax increase. That would be DOA.
- Is it practical to have light rail in the right-hand lane of such a major road? The trains would either need to share the ROW with traffic, or at least have cars cross the ROW to turn right. Are there example of other American systems which successfully use this configuration. (Obviously, Houston has some severe problems with sharing the roads with cars, but that's for the opposite left-hand orientation).

[BridgeTroll]

I'd also be very interested in discussing the vision's recommendation for Beach Blvd. Particularly the light rail they included. It's an attractive and exciting idea to build rail on the existing road. By avoiding additional ROW acquisition, the city could build rail at a more reasonable cost.

Why limit it to Beach?  Look at the medians on Beach, Atlantic, JTB, Phillips Hwy... Crape myrtles, palm trees, and weeds could be replaced with Light rail... No ROW required...

[CS Foltz]

Captain..........let me take it from the top (a)takes 25 min's instead of 10 to make it to the I10 split, 9A helps out alot (wait till we get BRT Lanes going......who knows how much additional time)take into account rush hours (b)SJTC.....whopee.....lots of service jobs going on there, high dollar no less(wait till Wal-Mart sets up shop on one of those big empty lots that are for sale next week (c) Don't eat at Denny's anymore than I would eat at a Waffle House. Hate crowds therefore movies are out or at least not often, wife has allergy's not smart(d) Delaney earns his 300K salary, tuition's keeps going up so where is the benefit for the students? Bigger class's, more academia?(e)round file current management at JTA, reduce concrete and go to rail........but what do I know, me and all you taxpayers out there just get to pay for it! Great job JTA!

[CS Foltz]

Joe..........let me remind you that, we the taxpayers, get to pay for the roads that permit developers to develope! They don't build their own roads......they get FDOT to build it for them............or they get FDOT to build them a road and charge a Toll to use it like Cecil Field Commerce Parkway or whatever it is called! Zoning won't help since it is only one way enforced just like Code Enforcement. I disagree with just plain development for the sake of development such as "Nocatee"......suburb where streets are named after trees cut down! Only thing going on that I know of is at some point Bay Meadows is supposed to be enhanced and those plans are not finalized............Southside Blvd is included but only as far as JTB......whopee!

[tufsu1]

CS...come on, you have to be smarter than this!

[reednavy]

They need to be meeting with the Davis family and make a large development plan for their land, and not letting it go to waste. Well, too late for the Nocatee section.

[Joe]

^ reednavy - I was wondering about this as well. The consultants seem to assume that the Davis family is going to keep Dee Dot mostly undeveloped. They briefly reference a "SMA" area that sounds like a conservation easement program. That's a really cool plan (and probably exactly what I would suggest if I were the one writing a "vision" plan) but it definitely leaves you scratching your head about implementation.

I hope someone has actually bothered to get the Davis family's opinion on all this. Especially with the potential changes to the Florida Comp Plan laws - the landowner is going to be able to do whatever is in the future landuse element of the comp plan (which is probably low-density residential) and it won't matter a damn what the city thinks.

I guess it's no big deal either way. I'm just a guy on a message board. But I would definitely be interested in knowing what the single largest landowner in the metro area actually intends!!

[reednavy]

I thought St. Joe owned the most in the JAX metro area?