Downtown Jacksonville Becoming Vacant

[sheclown]

So, there is a downtown parking overlay already in effect downtown?

This may be a dumb question, but why are there parking meters downtown?  

[vicupstate]

While I'm glad Rayonier is staying DT, to be honest the Southbank is a 'middle ground' between DT and the suburbs.  It is largely a urban suburban office park. Albeit, it has the potential to morph into a more urban environment.

[Wacca Pilatka]

and parking.  there are private shuttle busses and adjacent parking.  Plus, because there are not parking nazis driving away all other customers, there are actually great places for lunch on the southbank.

Bob Carle, the Parking Commissioner inadvertently became the most important man in the downtown.  In order to preserve his department, we sacrificed the taxes and energy of more than a hundred businesses and thousands of employees over the past five years.

Way to go Bob!

Most of his predecessors would have lightened up on the enforcement or gave better customer training to the goobs on the street.

Well the Parking Commission sure showed them!

Is anything to reverse this trend in play?  And is Adecco actually moving out?  I thought it was likely to happen at the end of the Modis lease in 2011 but not definite.

[JeffreyS]

Good list Stephen.

[sheclown]

great ideas, simple, easy to implement.

[Wacca Pilatka]

Sorry I was unclear--what I meant was, has the city taken any positive steps toward implementing those ideas?  (Besides the limited trial run of smart meters and the two-way segment of Bay?)

[thelakelander]

^No, not anything fast enough to keep companies from leaving in the short term. 

[fieldafm]

4.  Stop closing off all the streets on Game Days.

Only thing I don't agree with.  John Q Gameday Public has adamently voiced their opinions against this.  John Q loves the easy access into/out of the stadium district. 

[DeadGirlsDontDance]

Actually, I don't think they're WALKING anywhere, or they'd have a better grasp of the transportation problems in this city.

[fieldafm]

I truly can see your point.  I decided to only tailgate at two games this year, specifically to take advantage of 'tailgating' at the Landing before and after the games so I could take either the Hooters boat or the River Taxi to the game.  It actually saved me quite a bit of money over the normal $40 parking, plus bringing food to grill and beer to drink.  Having a post-game pizza and Bold City brew while watching 4pm games in the AC at Chicago Pizza was cheaper and more fun than my normal game day experience... but, imo the Landing and other businesses need to do a better job giving an incentive to come downtown after the game.  Most gameday patrons have spent 6 hours already in and around the stadium and have also thrown down some good coin.  There's not too much incentive to stay downtown after already spending 6 hours and what can easily be a hundred bucks or more at the game.

Hooters does a free boat ride back/forth if you spend at least $10 pre-game... and London Bridge has a shuttle service(also a $10 minimum I believe).  But, that's really it.  Why else would you want to stay downtown after the game?  I ask that honestly.  I only stay downtown after a game b/c I want to stay DOWNTOWN.  I could easily choose to go home, or go to a busier sports bar/grille elsewhere that have specials tailored to football patrons.

[sheclown]

^good point

[tufsu1]

The one thing that will help turn Downtown is commuter rail....connect the burbs to Downtown!!!!

exactly....the Skyway only works once you're already downtown....commuter rail will be extremeley important with the I-95 reconstruction

[DeadGirlsDontDance]

Lunch meter? WTF? This parking meter placement just struck me as a bit odd. This was taken at the corner of Forsyth and Ocean.

[thelakelander]

The one thing that will help turn Downtown is commuter rail....connect the burbs to Downtown!!!!

exactly....the Skyway only works once you're already downtown....commuter rail will be extremeley important with the I-95 reconstruction

^No thanks.  We'll just plant some more flowers on the sidewalks, people will marvel at their beauty and not notice the extra parking bill they're forced to pay for being located in a dead downtown environment.

[trigger]

In the 1980's, William Whyte did a study of corporations leaving NYC downtown for suburban locations. He concluded the principal determinants of corporations abandoning downtown were lower taxes and where CEO's homes were located; not lower rent/free parking as claimed by the businesses. Once you looked at costs holistically, for example, increased traffic miles driven for all commuting employees (only high-salaried employees lived near the new location and there were costs for those employees who decided to move closer to the new location), short lunchtime trips previously accomplished by walking/public transit, severance costs for employees dependent on public transit who couldn't make the move, increased energy costs (suburban park energy costs are more per employee than downtown locations), and so on, the cost of the suburban location was equal to or greater than the downtown location in the short term and much greater over the long term as long as local taxes on downtown businesses weren't exorbitant. This study was 30 years ago and this country and its businesses are still plagued by the kind of tunnel vision that leads to these decisions where someone 'solves' one problem (rent/parking), they are rewarded (promotion, increased salary, etc) and they depart that company before the costs/problems associated with the move really emerge or they stay & BS a bad decision (but the rent is $2/sq lower)... all because everyone thought short-term and didn't do the necessary due diligence of what such a move really meant for the company and its employees. Whyte was also able to demonstrate that such businesses had a harder time retaining employees compared to those in downtown locations, which led to all sorts of additional costs (higher turnover, more training costs, expansion of administrative and human resources costs, advertising, etc.), which causes its own problems because HR departments are cancerous leeches on business, always draining more and more money and never making any profit for the business. Of course, Jacksonville's urban/density pattern is different from NYC but the lessons are still applicable.

However, it is just not businesses that suffer from this tunnel vision. Our entire society is affected by it, as evidenced by the arguments and counter-arguments in this thread (more public transit but JAX density can't financially support it, 'magical' free parking at the wave of a hand by government, impose local city taxes, see above) which are driven by a kind of echo-chamber tunnel vision which is knee-deep in political agendas. For example, Milt Hays wrote an article about Richard Florida's book on MetroJacksonville.com, which apparently fails to understand the underlying assumptions of Florida's vision is an extreme extrapolation of good, old-fashioned origin & destination traffic modeling fallacies (where A WHOLE LOT MORE of the same is masquerading as change). It is profoundly depressing that we, as a country, have trapped ourselves in this box and so many are so clueless that they are (loudly) participating in an echo chamber debate where no one is offering real solutions but... what was it Martin Sheen said in Apocalypse Now, "we cut 'em in half with a machine gun and give 'em a Band-Aid", that's the level of this debate. I encourage you ALL to escape the box you're trapped in before it's too late (actually it probably already is, going to take decades to clean up this Baby Boomer, post-WWII mess... if ever).

We need a new humanism for our buildings, neighborhoods and cities, designed for use by people (not cars), where the emphasis is on long-term prosperity for most rather than short-term gain for the few. I apologize, this thread has generated a lots of thoughts in my head and I'm not sure I presented them in the most coherent fashion.