How come the "Elements of Urbanism" "Downtown Revitalization" etc. series (such as this one: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2013-aug-downtown-revitalization-birmingham ) only have Bay street as downtown nightlife?
Why is the Landing excluded from this list? The landing has quite a few watering holes, and 2 night clubs, it seems that it should be included.
Just my $0.02
Originally, I believe I was trying to identify genuine urban street districts of entertainment and not shopping centers. However, I do get your point.
Yeah, it seems like there's more to it than just Bay street (and even the Landing). Adams St has as much nightspots as Bay street:
http://www.downtownjacksonville.org/locations/lc-10-downtown-jacksonville-nightlife.aspx
^that's a great point. And they're easily accessible to Bay Street as well.
Is there any block of Adams with more than one bar located on it? I try to keep those comparisons as accurate as possible. I'm probably not going to identify something so spread out as a district. I consider something like Ybor or Raleigh's Glenwood South as districts because bars are concentrated for a few blocks as opposed to one establishment per block. Perhaps, I'll call the area, the Elbow, in general?
According to that map I linked:
Adams st has 3 ;Volstead, Da Real Ting and Zodiac are all next to each other.
Bay street has 3; Marks, TSI, and Dive.
The landing has 4; Mavericks, Chicago, rush street, hooters and fionn maccools.
I think all 3 could appropriately be included in the "Elements" series.
Now looking at that list, could you imagine if all those places were together on Bay or something?
I used to work above Zodiac. Da Real Ting is at the end of the block with several storefronts between them and Volstead isn't open yet. From my viewpoint, I've actually struggled internally calling Bay Street a district but in years past, it's been about the best DT Jax could do and the vision at the time was for it to morph into one. However, in recent years, those places have been joined with a few places around Ocean, up to Adams, so a pattern is forming (although severed because of the surface lots and garages).
The problem I'm running up against is if I'm lowering the comparable standards to three bars per block, literally half the downtowns I visit would be 100% entertainment districts. For example, take Ybor (although it's a mile outside of DT Tampa). There, you've got at least 8 straight blocks of bars and restaurants and each block has more than 3 establishments per block. If I hop over to Orlando and start looking at Orange Avenue, near Wall Street, you get similar nightlife density. If I go to DT Detroit, there's easily 20+ places on two blocks of streets with a casino behind them in Greektown. Most decent sized cities (outside of Jax) have something like this and 2 or 3 bars/block scattered throughout their downtowns.
There has to be some type of cut off, or it becomes all of a downtown Cleveland or Indianapolis is an entertainment district....which is ultimately not true.
Visually, I'm looking for a certain level of density of complementing uses. For example, here's a few images of the Greektown strip in Detroit. You need more than 3 places spread out over +300 linear feet to be somewhat comparable to strips like this.
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/photos/594999989_fdozA-M.jpg)
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/photos/594999702_5hFnZ-M.jpg)
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/photos/594974069_LUzAE-M.jpg)
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/photos/594973813_CxDaj-M.jpg)
We obviously aren't here yet but the Landing and the Elbow are about as close as it's going to get anytime soon.
Quote from: coredumped on August 13, 2013, 10:22:31 AM
According to that map I linked:
Adams st has 3 ;Volstead, Da Real Ting and Zodiac are all next to each other.
Bay street has 3; Marks, TSI, and Dive.
The landing has 4; Mavericks, Chicago, rush street, hooters and fionn maccools.
I think all 3 could appropriately be included in the "Elements" series.
Now looking at that list, could you imagine if all those places were together on Bay or something?
FYI....Volstead doesn't open until next month...and Bay St. has Marks, TSI, Northstar, and Underbelly (Dive Bar is no more to my knolwedge)
Ennis, I think the elbow, not just Bay Street, is our version of a nightlife district. Underbelly and Northstar are next to each other, and 1904 (and formerly Lit) is right around the corner. The other places are all within a block or two of that. It's just not all on one street.
Yeah, I think that's what I'm going to go with.....The Elbow.
And the landing? ;-)