http://jacksonville.com/business/2011-01-27/story/jacksonville-historical-society-asking-city-250000-buy-buildings
I for one think this is a marvelous idea. If you are unfamiliar with the location, the two buildings are directly behind the Arena near the JEA cooling plant to nowhere. I remember when I was younger, I used to assist my father with maintenance on that lawn, and in the St Lukes building, reverred Jacksoville US Rep Charles Bennet had offices in that building and used to invite me in, with grass clippings and dirt smeared on my face and all, and showed me all the cool pictures on his walls with past US preseidents. I am happy for this as it will give the Jacksonville historical society a nice large location to exapnd into.
I sent them a couple of donations specifically toward this. I wish I had $250,000 lying around. The expansion and centralization of archives is much needed.
Yeah, other than JEA's own building that uses it for airconditioning, has JEA signed up even a single customer for that $100mm chilled-water-plant stroke of genius?
Doesn't that plant supply chilled water for the Arena and the Stadium?
also the Main Library and at some point the new Courthouse
The plant by the Arena supplies the arena and the Baseball Park. I've not heard about Everbank Stadium. The stadium pre-dates the chiller plant, so it may not, but it may have been converted at some point.
The new courthouse and the library are supplied by a different chiller plant in or near LaVilla.
This is a great idea. The usage for the Florida Theatre is a plus also. I have noticed as of late that Jacksonville is tapping in to arts and trying to expose our history. This is VERY good.
Ok, well let me rephrase this since the point got lost in my poor word choices the last time.
This chiller system was heinously expensive and was sold to us taxpayers when it was built as being positioning JEA to make a profit on providing air conditioning etc. for the private sector buildings. For the longest time there was nobody using it, and after awhile COJ decided to connect a bunch of city-owned buildings to it. Might as well, right?
But my point was, given the promises on how that would be self-supporting and profitable for the taxpayers, does that thing have even a single paying customer? I'm not talking about a handful of city-owned buildings that COJ connected up to it just because they could, this thing was sold as a private-sector cash-cow, does it have a private customer?
The public facilities were designed from the beginning to be supplied by the chiller plants. If they had not been, more equipment/space would have been required to provide air-conditioning on-site. By using the chiller plant that construction expense was spared. It was not an after-thought.
I do not know how many private sector users there are, but considering the lack of private construction DT generally in the last few years, it probably isn't much. Retro-fitting is usually not the scenario for hooking up to the chiller plant. New construction is the primary scenario for using it.
I believe that Sleiman was going to use the chiller plant for his re-built Jax Landing, but since that fell by the wayside for other reasons, that obviously didn't occur.
Kuhn was planning to use it before his empire imploded but that seems like centuries ago now.
Hmm, well maybe when the market turns around, there will be customers for it then. Sounds like private people were actually interested in using it, but it didn't happen when the projects fell through for other reasons. But I didn't realize there had been any interest in it at all from people like Sleiman and Kuhn, so that's actually some great news to me.
Didn't Amsterdam Sky get caught tapping into it as well??
Lake, wasn't the Capital City group looking at using the chilled water line for their rooftop bar at the Barnett Building?
Its a very attractive option when private investors begin looking downtown, but there is zero construction dowtown so until there is there won't be any new customers anytime soon.
I was told they were not because they would have to pay to install the lines, from the nearest connection, down Laura Street.
Was that line not extended down Laura since they've been ripping up the street?
Nope.
Quote from: fieldafm on January 27, 2011, 04:52:45 PM
Was that line not extended down Laura since they've been ripping up the street?
That would have been the prudent thing to do but it leaves room for ripping the street up again. New contract - Ka Ching!
Who do you talk to at JEA about the feasability of using the plant?
I don't understand. JEA has the money(look at their latest balance sheet) and a streetscape project like that won't occur for at least a few more decades.
Does one agency ever talk to another in this city?