Seven Decisions That Killed Downtown
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During the late 20th century, changes in the nation's business policies and practices dramatically impacted our central business districts. Some, like Charlotte and Houston, came out as winners. Others like New Orleans and Jacksonville were dealt blows they're still working hard to overcome today. Ever wonder why Downtown Jacksonville has too much office space on its hands? Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with local leadership or the popularity of our rapidly growing suburbs.
Read More: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2015-aug-seven-decisions-that-killed-downtown
Three words; Woe is me.
Jacksonville has probably been hurt by consolidation in the insurance and banking industry as much or more than any city. Too bad some of those companies were not the acquirer instead of the one acquired. Nothing to do in the wake of that but find new tenants and hopefully grow some new companies that will fill the old space and become the new pillars of business.
For decades Charlotte was the big winner in this aforementioned banking consolidation, but now there are legitimate fears that BofA will move it's HQ functions to NYC. Of course Wells is HQ'd in SF instead of Charlotte, although the Wells presence is still quite substantial.
Quote from: I-10east on August 18, 2015, 07:32:49 AM
Three words; Woe is me.
No woe. Just an understanding on how we've arrived to where we are today. To accurately plan for your future, you have to understand the past.
Quote from: vicupstate on August 18, 2015, 08:52:29 AM
Jacksonville has probably been hurt by consolidation in the insurance and banking industry as much or more than any city. Too bad some of those companies were not the acquirer instead of the one acquired. Nothing to do in the wake of that but find new tenants and hopefully grow some new companies that will fill the old space and become the new pillars of business.
Pretty much. However, as a community, we'll probably need to accept that we'll need to subsidize quite a few more EverBank-like deals to fill up available office space.
Excellent piece. The impact of these corporate consolidations (or in the case of Charter, failures) on downtown's overall vitality is all too often overlooked. I often think about how different downtown Jacksonville and Charlotte respectively would be had Barnett aggressively pursued interstate acquisitions in the early 1980s, as Guy Botts seemingly envisioned but Charlie Rice seemingly did not.
Great to see some historic photos I had never seen before too.
AHL certainly was quick to bail on downtown after committing to its new tower. I remember seeing a parking and travel cost justification for this, but it still seems bizarre to give up and go in to a new building project after only five years.
A few random shots from previous MJ articles of buildings once occupied or built by companies highlighted in this article:
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/photos/875177110_iAjMs-L.jpg)
Barnett Bank's headquarters(left) and Atlantic National Bank's Annex (middle) were built back in the 1920s.
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Neighborhoods/Downtowns-Historic-Buildings/i-bgrtTvH/0/L/vertical-4-L.jpg)
When First Baptist no longer needed its Sunday School building (left) during the Great Depression, Gulf Life acquired it to use as their home office. As the company grew, they built additional offices behind it (see below).
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An older image but it captures Gulf Life's headquarters prior to building what is now Riverplace Tower. When they moved, First Baptist purchased their old offices.
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/History/Florida-Life-Building/i-r3P4FfQ/0/L/FLB-2-L.jpg)
The offices of the Florida National Bank, prior to the 1960s completion of the Ed Ball Building.
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Neighborhoods/Downtowns-Historic-Buildings/i-WWsBnHX/0/L/P1350385-L.jpg)
This image captures the old headquarters of Atlantic National Bank (121 Forsyth), Barnett Bank (Jacksonville Bank Building), and the Florida National Bank (Laura Trio).
Excellent article. Very enlightening!
While people may bemoan the corporate incentive packages the city doles out to encourage companies to relocate to Jax, this is very telling for what that could mean for downtown. Companies invest in their hometown, so the more companies that call Jax their hometown the better. We're still filling existing building stock, but at some point a relocation may require the construction of new office space.
QuoteAHL certainly was quick to bail on downtown after committing to its new tower. I remember seeing a parking and travel cost justification for this, but it still seems bizarre to give up and go in to a new building project after only five years.
I always thought it was odd too. Considering the new location was not at all in a primary office market, I wondered if the proximity to the CEO's golf course was the prime motivator.
To be honest, if the price to redevelop the Shipyards is going to run taxpayers upwards of $50 million in public cash, DT would be better off with it sitting vacant or being turned back over to heavy/maritime-oriented industry (assuming it pays taxes on waterfront property). That cash would be put to better use bribing a few more growing local companies like EverBank to move their corporate offices to downtown. As they expand, they'll be more likely to make civic minded investments in the city than someplace coming to town to operate a regional call center.
Quote from: thelakelander on August 18, 2015, 10:24:03 AM
To be honest, if the price to redevelop the Shipyards is going to run taxpayers upwards of $50 million in public cash, DT would be better off with it sitting vacant or being turned back over to heavy/maritime-oriented industry (assuming it pays taxes on waterfront property). That cash would be put to better use bribing a few more growing local companies like EverBank to move their corporate offices to downtown. As they expand, they'll be more likely to make civic minded investments in the city than someplace coming to town to operate a regional call center.
With $10k per employee seemingly being the going rate for incentive packages, that translates to 5,000 more employees downtown. At that point, we may see someone willing to develop the shipyards due to increased demand and rising rent prices. They may even be willing to do it without incentives because at that point the market would be ready for it.
^I wouldn't bet on that, especially since the city will be on the hook for the cleanup before anyone would buy it.
Quote from: vicupstate on August 18, 2015, 08:52:29 AMJacksonville has probably been hurt by consolidation in the insurance and banking industry as much or more than any city.
Certainly; Birmingham is another city that comes to mind.
Yes, Birmingham took a big hit. New Orleans also suffered from consolidation in the oil industry.
Anyone know the occupancy on the 1951 Atlantic Bank building adjacent to 121 Atlantic Place on Forsyth?
Isn't that the building for which the old post office tower was torn down?
Corporations tend to support the community where their headquarters are located. Jacksonville has lost many corpoprate headquarters due to mergers and acquisitions. Our economic development should be focused not only on more jobs, but on headquarters of corporations in the Fortune 500, or better still on the Fortune 100.
Quote from: thelakelander on August 18, 2015, 10:24:03 AM
To be honest, if the price to redevelop the Shipyards is going to run taxpayers upwards of $50 million in public cash, DT would be better off with it sitting vacant or being turned back over to heavy/maritime-oriented industry (assuming it pays taxes on waterfront property). That cash would be put to better use bribing a few more growing local companies like EverBank to move their corporate offices to downtown. As they expand, they'll be more likely to make civic minded investments in the city than someplace coming to town to operate a regional call center.
EverBank had more to do with their previous landlord blowing the renewal negotiations than with Mayor/Council/JEDC/Cornerstone etc....
Also most of the tax incentives offered can only be applied to sales taxes, so that renders them useless for many companies.
Quote from: Wacca Pilatka on August 18, 2015, 11:54:50 AM
Anyone know the occupancy on the 1951 Atlantic Bank building adjacent to 121 Atlantic Place on Forsyth?
Isn't that the building for which the old post office tower was torn down?
Right now, JTA is leasing around 33k square feet in that building. I believe the lease is for five years. This is the site of the old post office. However, it was torn down about ten years before Atlantic Bank expanded. Furchgott's old store, which takes up the north half of the old post office site, was built in 1941.
Quote from: Sentient on August 18, 2015, 12:04:10 PM
Also most of the tax incentives offered can only be applied to sales taxes, so that renders them useless for many companies.
In 2013, Hertz decided to relocate their corporate office and 700 jobs from New Jersey to Southwest Florida. A big influence of the move was Lee County giving them $19 million in economic stimulus funds.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/05/07/hertz-headquarters-relocate-lee-county/2140561/
Back in 1995, the City of Lakeland got Publix to move its corporate IT department from their corporate complex west of town, to an abandoned former downtown JCPenney store.
The nugget in luring them was a deal from the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority to lease the structure to Publix for $1 a year, with the option to buy the 120,000 square foot building, anytime for $10.
Publix moved 500 workers into the space.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=19950221&id=v5wsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Hv0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6537,41602&hl=en
Publix has continued to grow. Earlier this year, the chain leased 3 floors of space in an adjacent downtown building to accommodate its much larger 2015 group of IT workers.
http://www.theledger.com/article/20150107/news/150109489
The city and LDDA did the exact same thing with a closed Burdines across the street, with another company, Watkins Motor Lines. Watkins, took the deal and moved 400 corporate employees into that building.
Quote(http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=LL&Date=20060523&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=605230329&Ref=AR&imageVersion=Main&MaxW=445&border=0)
The company employs about 850 people in Lakeland and 10,000 nationwide.
Watkins Motor Lines has an extensive history in Lakeland. The company, founded in 1932 by William B. Watkins III in Metcalf, Ga., survived the Great Depression and moved to Lakeland in 1966. The company's headquarters is located on West Griffin Road, and Watkins also has an administrative center downtown on East Lemon Street, in the former Burdines department store.
When Watkins expanded downtown in August 1995, the influx of about 400 employees helped revitalize the area and attracted new businesses, said Anne Furr, executive director of the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority (LDDA).
"The smaller businesses were smart enough to see that if you have people downtown, they're going to want to eat, they're going to want to shop," Furr said.
Watkins acquired the downtown property in a 20-year lease with the LDDA at a cost of $1 per year. Burdines had donated the building to the LDDA in exchange for tax credits, and Watkins spent about $4.5 million converting the facility.
http://www.theledger.com/article/20150107/news/150109489
Overnight, they transformed a dead zone of their downtown into an active one. Watkins was eventually acquired by FedEx in 2006 but their offices are still in the building.
In 2001, attracted to change in atmosphere, another local company, MidFlorida Credit Union, acquired the 10-story Marble Arcade (similar to the Greenleaf & Crosby Building) for their offices. Today, the street tying them together is lined with restaurants, bars and retail.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=20010703&id=LbtNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hP0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=5988,2379739&hl=en
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Learning-From/Lakeland-July-2010/i-RF6tpCr/0/L/P1370420-L.jpg)
Btw, the LDDA also did some other things. They included two-waying all of downtown's streets (including the one shown above), streetscaping all of the streets, extensive public landscaping and upgrading all the public parks. Today, it's hard to believe that Kentucky Avenue (shown above) used to look like Adams Street back in the mid-to-late 1990s.(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Learning-From/Lakeland-July-2010/i-6q4ZwZc/0/L/P1370422-L.jpg)
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Learning-From/Lakeland-July-2010/i-tjkNDgz/0/L/P1370317-L.jpg)
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Learning-From/Lakeland-July-2010/i-mckqqKf/0/L/P1370309-L.jpg)
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Learning-From/Lakeland-July-2010/i-4jxzP2D/0/L/P1370307-L.jpg)
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Learning-From/Lakeland-July-2010/i-4chsTKF/0/L/P1370297-L.jpg)
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Quote from: thelakelander on August 18, 2015, 12:56:04 PM
Quote from: Wacca Pilatka on August 18, 2015, 11:54:50 AM
Anyone know the occupancy on the 1951 Atlantic Bank building adjacent to 121 Atlantic Place on Forsyth?
Isn't that the building for which the old post office tower was torn down?
Right now, JTA is leasing around 33k square feet in that building. I believe the lease is for five years. This is the site of the old post office. However, it was torn down about ten years before Atlantic Bank expanded. Furchgott's old store, which takes up the north half of the old post office site, was built in 1941.
Thanks!
Certainly sad to see the impacts these mergers had on Jacksonville, but nice to see some local homegrown companies rising to fill the gaps..i.e. Everbank.
Quote from: fsujax on August 18, 2015, 03:22:07 PM
Certainly sad to see the impacts these mergers had on Jacksonville, but nice to see some local homegrown companies rising to fill the gaps..i.e. Everbank.
Little known fact is that EverBank used to be Alliance Mortgage, and before that it was Charter Mortgage. So in a way, Charter finally made good on that promise to share space with Bellsouth, since EverBank now has 9 floors of the old Bellsouth tower....
^Nice!
^The title may be a little dramatic because downtown isn't actually dead but the skyline pretty much is. A chunk of the jobs from these 7 major companies (for example, all of Gulf Life, Independent Life, etc.) relocated to other cities such as Charlotte, Nashville, Houston, etc. Some others, like AHL, relocated to other parts of town. In the case of First Union taking out both ANB and FNB, nearly 600 duplicate downtown jobs were eliminated before Wachovia took the remaining 2,000 out of the Ed Ball Building and downtown in the early 2000s. Those that remained became regional offices for companies that have not made the same type of civic investments in the core that the companies the purchased, once did.
The result is a Northbank skyline that hasn't seen an office tower built since Barnett left town. The drought we're in now is the longest in the city's history. The same can't be said of the towns where the jobs moved too.
It's hard to see how Jax could have kept Charter from going up in smoke during the oil glut of the 1980s or the insurance industry from falling apart during the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. By the same token, it's hard to imagine us doing anything local that would have stopped the Charlotte banks from offering enough cash for our banks, so they could expand into the Florida market.
Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2015, 02:05:05 PM
lol. some of them just moved to the southside, where the landscape is friendlier to business and customers.
Yes. This was mentioned in the article and response I just made.
Quote from: thelakelander on August 19, 2015, 01:58:54 PM
^The title may be a little dramatic because downtown isn't actually dead but the skyline pretty much is. A chunk of the jobs from these 7 major companies (for example, all of Gulf Life, Independent Life, etc.) relocated to other cities such as Charlotte, Nashville, Houston, etc. Some others, like AHL, relocated to other parts of town. In the case of First Union taking out both ANB and FNB, nearly 600 duplicate downtown jobs were eliminated before Wachovia took the remaining 2,000 out of the Ed Ball Building and downtown in the early 2000s. Those that remained became regional offices for companies that have not made the same type of civic investments in the core that the companies purchased, once did.
Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2015, 02:05:05 PM
If the city had invested in small businesses, gotten out of the way on dormant realestate that strangled district growth, encouraged alt space residency and stopped demolishing all of the buildings (like most of the other cities) there would have been a life worth keeping the HQs in.
We'd have a better looking downtown today but that would not have stopped the 1980s oil glut, First Union, American General and Nations Bank from taking out most of the companies that built the skyline we have today.
Quote from: thelakelander on August 19, 2015, 02:12:34 PM
Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2015, 02:05:05 PM
If the city had invested in small businesses, gotten out of the way on dormant realestate that strangled district growth, encouraged alt space residency and stopped demolishing all of the buildings (like most of the other cities) there would have been a life worth keeping the HQs in.
We'd have a better looking downtown today but that would not have stopped the 1980s oil glut, First Union, American General and Nations Bank from taking out most of the companies that built the skyline we have today.
I get the sense that after First Union acquired Atlantic and Florida National, the "First Union of Florida" division acted rather autonomously of First Union in NC and made some fairly significant community investments. It even played the local HQ card when Barnett was acquired with its "Keep Florida green" advertising campaign, and was heavily involved in promoting Jacksonville's bid in the 1993 NFL expansion campaign. Not until the Wachovia merger did you have a relative disengagement from downtown and from commitment to Jacksonville, or so I thought.
The oil glut and Andrew were beyond the control of Jacksonville companies, but the real missed opportunity for downtown that still annoys me is Barnett's strategic shift when Charlie Rice replaced Guy Botts as CEO. Botts envisioned acquiring banks in other states and building Barnett into a Jacksonville-based national powerhouse, while Rice pursued a "Florida fortress" strategy that made Barnett dominant within the state and successful with investors, but vulnerable to takeover by the banks that had the vision to expand into multistate empires. By the time the need to expand out of state through acquisitions became clear, Barnett moved too cautiously and missed major opportunities (MBank in Texas, First American in DC/MD/VA), then settled for an expensive and disastrous purchase of Atlanta banks that it only held onto for a few years.
Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2015, 02:18:28 PM
This happened in every city that overbuilt in the 1980s.
We weren't "overbuilt" until we lost the companies using the spaces they had developed for themselves.
QuoteThey simply leased out floors to other companies (the same thing that they are doing now actually) This wasn't a new strategy to fill a corporate HQ btw. You could have built ten more towers to accommodate the information based businesses and call centers that dominated the new economy. But the DDA simply didn't want or understand the needs of those new industries. We didn't even have a usable T1 connection downtown except for Southern Bell and the City Hall when I moved next door in 1999.
Yes, we were not the only city to suffer from mergers. Such a point was never expressed in the article. In fact, the article provides no solution to the situation. It only highlights how much of the skyline was developed and how we ended up with a glut of empty office space in a relatively short period of time. Any strategy talk on how to fill that space would be a good follow up article itself. ;)
QuoteThe truth is that the city was too busy giving away 35 million dollars for "The Shipyards" to downtown messiahs like Ed Burr and similarly nonsensical projects (in retrospect) instead of investing in hi tech infrastructure that would have let it survive as a contender past the 1990s. the southside did not make this mistake (and there weren't any blue ribbon panels operating on the ethos of the 1960s standing around blocking them from investing.
^This is literally every city in the country.
Quote from: Wacca Pilatka on August 19, 2015, 02:25:21 PM
I get the sense that after First Union acquired Atlantic and Florida National, the "First Union of Florida" division acted rather autonomously of First Union in NC and made some fairly significant community investments. It even played the local HQ card when Barnett was acquired with its "Keep Florida green" advertising campaign, and was heavily involved in promoting Jacksonville's bid in the 1993 NFL expansion campaign. Not until the Wachovia merger did you have a relative disengagement from downtown and from commitment to Jacksonville, or so I thought.
Any idea to reason behind the disengagement? Didn't First Union actually acquire Wachovia?
^ My non-expert perception was that even though First Union acquired Wachovia, after this happened the company shifted from being one in which regional offices had substantial autonomy to one in which all decisions and charitable activities emanated from and benefited greater Charlotte.
Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2015, 02:45:44 PM
We were overbuilt. Its the reason that the Barnett was called Charlie's Dunce Cap. There wasn't enough interest to fill the building and many assumed it was going to be a financial disaster.
Yes, I can see being overbuilt by the time the Barnett Center was completed. A good number of companies had already been acquired, disappeared or were on the verge of leaving DT altogether by then.
Quote from: thelakelander on August 19, 2015, 02:51:09 PM
Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2015, 02:45:44 PM
We were overbuilt. Its the reason that the Barnett was called Charlie's Dunce Cap. There wasn't enough interest to fill the building and many assumed it was going to be a financial disaster.
Yes, I can see being overbuilt by the time the Barnett Center was completed. A good number of companies had already been acquired, disappeared or were on the verge of leaving DT altogether by then.
My recollection is that even though Barnett occupied something like 14 floors of the building, Barnett Center was not more than 60-65% occupied in the first few years after its opening. And it actually had to be disclosed as a troubled asset on Barnett's financial statements due to the bank's partial ownership of the building.
QuoteDidn't First Union actually acquire Wachovia?
First Union bought Wachovia, yet assumed Wachovia's name/brand.
Another "what might have been" thought on 1980s overbuilding and Stephen's point about the lack of investment in communications infrastructure downtown...
How different might both of these conditions have been had the Hazouri administration not delayed a commitment to a Skyway extension and the construction of Renaissance Place was greenlighted?
That is, if several more office towers had come online right before the recession and the series of Jacksonville-detrimental mergers and acquisitions hit, would that have incentivized the city to come up with better strategies to address an even more embarrassing vacancy rate?
Of course this opens up a penumbra of what-might-have-beens related to the cost and the TOD impact of an extended Skyway. Or whether Wilma Southeast would have backed out of building Renaissance Place anyway, given that the writing was probably already on the wall for overbuilding (the Barnett vacancy situation Stephen referenced above, the fact that the AHL building and the Enterprise Center were scaled back from their original plans).
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Other/Misc2/i-HPK9RHz/0/XL/IMG_20150816_163617-XL.jpg)
I'm familiar with the 1980s Jacksonville Plaza (pictured above) proposal for the block where the courthouse garage now stands. What was Renaissance Place?
^ Renaissance Place was a 1987 plan for that general area, covered at length in James Crooks' book about post-consolidation Jacksonville. If I recall correctly, it was intended to include four office towers, a hotel, and a performing arts center and was billed as the Rockefeller Center of Jacksonville and a city within a city. The developer was Wilma Southeast, an Atlanta subsidiary of a large Dutch company. The new Hazouri administration seemingly hyped the project as part of the overall goal of a 24/7 downtown area, in synergy with the then-brand new Omni and Landing and some proposals for housing.
Wilma's conditions for the project included construction of a Skyway extension to the stadium complex, with a stop at Renaissance Place. However, the legislation authorizing Federal funding for the Skyway would not necessarily cover this extension and the city faced the risk of having to fund it without Federal or state support. After two years of delayed negotiations, the Hazouri administration essentially settled on a promise that amounted to a soft maybe - the extension would be funded provided a certain level of Federal funding were obtained. By then it was 1989, the softening of the office market was evident, and Wilma backed out.
I'm not sure whether this predated the Jacksonville Plaza you cited or whether they were differently scaled iterations of the same plan. This is the first I've heard of Jacksonville Plaza, so I'd be thrilled to know more.
My family moved here in the middle of '86 so that my father could work at Baptist downtown. At the time, I'm sure it looked like a real turnaround was happening and the city was on the brink of real growth. The article above sounds very similar to something that could have been written in 2006-2007. 29 years later and very little has changed in the landscape.
Did the St. Johns Center referenced in the article ever happen, and if so, what is that? I can't think of what that would be as a 1988 project - it's not the Barnett Center or AHL/Jacksonville Center, the Florida National building was already complete as was the building that now houses SteinMart, the Alltel complex that's now Fidelity didn't come along until a few years later...
Quote from: Captain Zissou on August 19, 2015, 04:42:18 PM
My family moved here in the middle of '86 so that my father could work at Baptist downtown. At the time, I'm sure it looked like a real turnaround was happening and the city was on the brink of real growth. The article above sounds very similar to something that could have been written in 2006-2007. 29 years later and very little has changed in the landscape.
I think most people just saw it as continuing decline, which had been happening since the 50s. That's definitely how my parents describe it. Even as the corporate presence grew (or at least held its own with the suburbs), retail and restaurants continued to die. Downtown, that is; the city as a whole has continued to grow.
Quote from: thelakelander on August 19, 2015, 02:40:17 PM
Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2015, 02:18:28 PM
This happened in every city that overbuilt in the 1980s.
We weren't "overbuilt" until we lost the companies using the spaces they had developed for themselves.
QuoteThey simply leased out floors to other companies (the same thing that they are doing now actually) This wasn't a new strategy to fill a corporate HQ btw. You could have built ten more towers to accommodate the information based businesses and call centers that dominated the new economy. But the DDA simply didn't want or understand the needs of those new industries. We didn't even have a usable T1 connection downtown except for Southern Bell and the City Hall when I moved next door in 1999.
Yes, we were not the only city to suffer from mergers. Such a point was never expressed in the article. In fact, the article provides no solution to the situation. It only highlights how much of the skyline was developed and how we ended up with a glut of empty office space in a relatively short period of time. Any strategy talk on how to fill that space would be a good follow up article itself. ;)
QuoteThe truth is that the city was too busy giving away 35 million dollars for "The Shipyards" to downtown messiahs like Ed Burr and similarly nonsensical projects (in retrospect) instead of investing in hi tech infrastructure that would have let it survive as a contender past the 1990s. the southside did not make this mistake (and there weren't any blue ribbon panels operating on the ethos of the 1960s standing around blocking them from investing.
^This is literally every city in the country.
I think the article makes a good case for its thesis. The office infrastructure in Downtown Jacksonville was largely built by formerly significant companies that have mostly been bought out or relocated. I think you could go one further and say that the fact that all those purpose-built towers are already there made it more difficult for companies that wanted their own buildings designed their way. You'd either have to move into an older building designed for a different purpose, or risk build a new building in a market already oversaturated with vacant office space. I think that's one reason so many companies (St. Joe, Everbank HQ, FIS, Haskell) built on Riverside Ave in Brooklyn in the 90s and 00s. If you wanted your own building near downtown, that was pretty much the safest option.
Quote from: vicupstate on August 18, 2015, 08:52:29 AM
Jacksonville has probably been hurt by consolidation in the insurance and banking industry as much or more than any city. Too bad some of those companies were not the acquirer instead of the one acquired. Nothing to do in the wake of that but find new tenants and hopefully grow some new companies that will fill the old space and become the new pillars of business.
For decades Charlotte was the big winner in this aforementioned banking consolidation, but now there are legitimate fears that BofA will move it's HQ functions to NYC. Of course Wells is HQ'd in SF instead of Charlotte, although the Wells presence is still quite substantial.
My 2 cents.
Bank of America has a HQ in Charlotte in name only. The decisions and base of authority is clearly in NYC. It shifted to NYC right after Ken Lewis was forced to resign. And even if he didn't, his heir apparent at one time, John Thain from Merrill Lynch had no intentions to move south. The current CEO, Brian Moynahan lives in Boston (he came from Fleet Boston) and commutes to NYC 3-4 days a week.
I laugh when the Charlotte Biz Journal keeps asking Moynahan how much time he spends in Charlotte as the CEO. He has an office in Hearst, (barely). He spends his time at BOAT (Bank of America Tower) in NYC.
As far as Jacksonville goes, lets face it, the Barnett's could have gone on for a great many years without having been bought out. It was well known that Nations Bank overpaid to get Barnett's Florida market share. So if you were a Barnett board member at the time, do you go for the big bucks of the Nations buyout, or do you bide your time and make the acquisitions yourself? With Nations overpaying for any bank that could breathe, they clearly panicked, went for the gold and cashed out.
Barnett had something that Nations could never acquire, a quality reputation. It was a major blunder by Barnett to sell and a reflection of the short term culture the US embraced. Atlanta based SunTrust resisted Chase and BAC by doing a stock poison pill using their largest depositor (Coca Cola Inc.) Hence they are still independent and have no interest in a merger with a NYC based bank. Barnett could have easily pulled off the same arrangement had they tried.
This evaporation of power is no stranger to other cities. The relaxed banking laws has had a huge impact on what used to be the 2nd largest banking city in the US, Chicago. JPMC has consolidated its footprint into NYC and Columbus, Ohio. Fortunately, Chicago has had a rise in replacements similar to EverBank. Lets hope that they don't forget how to build a franchise instead of falling for the first shiny nickel to come down the road.
Quote from: Wacca Pilatka on August 19, 2015, 04:14:42 PMI'm not sure whether this predated the Jacksonville Plaza you cited or whether they were differently scaled iterations of the same plan. This is the first I've heard of Jacksonville Plaza, so I'd be thrilled to know more.
Jacksonville Plaza was a different proposed project. It was supposed to be built on the block bounded by Forsyth, Pearl, Clay and Adams Streets. Chase Properties of Birmingham was a part of the development team and it seemed like a go, when Mayor Godbold announced it in 1980. However, they were expecting to get a $3 million Urban Development Action Grant from the feds for building in an area deemed by HUD as a "pocket of poverty". I guess the grant money never materialized.
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Other/Misc2/i-HPK9RHz/0/XL/IMG_20150816_163617-XL.jpg)
Anyway, the development was supposed to be twin towers. One tower was going to be a $17.5 million, 300-room Howard Johnson hotel....their first urban hotel of the 1980s. The other steel and glass tower was supposed to be a 500,000-square-foot office building. In addition, the development would have had an 800 space parking garage.
IMO there was no way in the blazing hell the Jax was gonna keep those seven defunct companies, no matter what. The ball was already in motion, and there was nothing anyone in Jax could do to stop those companies defunct statuses or acquisitions.
Stuff like that went on all over the country (Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, Southeast Banking Corp from MIA, Woolworth etc); Those are just specks of sand from a sea of examples. Jax (and many other cities) is the beneficiary of acquisitions also (CSX, FNF and others). I don't agree with this 'something could've been done to stop what was already in motion, savings the defunct Jax HQ companies' logic.
^^^Explain...eh nevermind...
The article pretty much states in the opening paragraph that the events that led to these companies being erased from the skyline were beyond Jacksonville's control.
^^^I think that those 'decisions' made were very commonplace in the US; Nothing outta the ordinary during those eras in US business history.
Quote from: I-10east on August 19, 2015, 11:04:05 PM
^^^I think that those 'decisions' made were very commonplace in the US; Nothing outta the ordinary during those eras in US business history.
I believe everyone pretty much agrees that there was nothing Jacksonville could do to keep Hurricane Andrew from ripping apart Miami and sending Independent Life down the tubes or the 1980s oil glut from sending Charter spiraling into bankruptcy.
QuoteThe Charter Company was founded in 1949 by Raymond Knight Mason. Initially, in the mortgage, banking and development industries, it expanded into the gas and oil industry in the late 60s and early 70s, acquiring gas stations, tanker contracts and a refinery in Texas. When the Arab Oil Embargo struck in 1973, Charter cashed in, becoming a Fortune 500 company and the apple of Wall Street's eye.
Charter also purchased the du Pont Trust's interest in Florida National Bank (see page on the rise and fall of FNB), when Congress forced du Pont to divest itself of FNB. Charter's downtown headquarters were located in the Universal-Marion Building. Located at 21 West Church Street, the modern 19-story tower was the tallest building in the Northbank when it was completed in 1963.
By 1981, Charter's sales totalled $5 billion and the time had come for the company to put its mark on Jacksonville's skyline. Charter teamed up with Southern Bell, proposing a 30-story skyscraper that would house both of the company's offices. With nearly 1 million square feet of leasable office space, the Charter/Southern Bell Tower would be Jacksonville's largest. Now, known as EverBank Center, a notable feature of the 447-foot tower is that each floor has 16 corner offices.
Unfortunately, Charter's fall from grace would be quick. On July 29, 1982, four of the company's senior executives died in a helicopter crash in Ireland. At the same time, Charter took a beating when a serious surplus of crude oil led to a major oil glut in the 1980s. Hemorrhaging revenue, Charter backed out of plans to locate offices in the Charter/Southern Bell Tower, which was completed in 1983.
Less than a year later, downtown's lone Fortune 500 company laid off 200 of its downtown Jacksonville workforce, filing for protection under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy law on April 20, 1984. By 1985, Charter's downtown workforce was down to 350. By the time it emerged from bankruptcy protection in 1987, the majority of its 180 subsidiaries had already been sold off. What was left of the company was then relocated to Cincinnati, OH.
I would like to fill in some blanks here and correct what I believe is at least one "overstatement" re: Charter based on my personal experience with the company.
Based on the Florida National Bank article on Wikipedia, Charter's stake in FNB is described as follows:
QuoteCongress forced the du Pont Trust to divest itself of banking interests when they withdrew the trust's 15-year exemption from the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956. The trust sold 34.7% ownership in Florida National Banks to Charter Company in 1971 for $42M, leaving the du Pont Trust with 24.9%, below the legal definition of a bank holding company. The CEO of Charter was Raymond Mason, a protégé of Ed Ball. Additionally, Ed Ball personally owned 6.4% of FNB and was executor of his sister's estate, which owned 4.5% of FNB.
On July 9, 1973, the Federal Reserve Board issued a preliminary determination that the du Pont Trust had retained enough stock that would allow the trust to continue to exert some control over the bank. Ball was forced to sell the trust's remaining shares and resign as chairman of FNB. However, the du Pont Trust owned a significant block of Charter stock, and the close personal relationship between Mason and Ball still allowed some indirect control.
From what I know, Charter was fully divested of FNB and FNB of Charter well before the late 1970's. Charter did own Jacksonville National Bank and Charter Mortgage Company. Those two companies were spun off to Jack Uibile and a management team that created a holding company, Alliance. Ultimately, they sold Alliance for stock to Florida National Bank, and Alliance management pretty much took control of FNB. Under an agreement with Charter, they were then required to change the name of Charter Mortgage, which became Alliance Mortgage. Ultimately this company was sold by FNB to Owens Illinois when it was in vogue for manufacturing companies to get into financial services. After several years, OI realized mortgage banking wasn't for them and they sold AMC back to a management group. As noted in another post, this ultimately became the core of what is now Everbank. Meanwhile, FNB was required to spin out JNB, and, as I recall, sold it to another Florida bank, Ellis Banking. Ellis eventually was acquired by NCNB, which became Nationsbank, then B of A. FNB ultimately was itself acquired, as noted, by First Union, making, I believe, Jack Uible the largest personal shareholder in First Union at the time.
What Raymond Mason and Charter also did with Ed Ball was to swap an interest in Charter to St. Joe Paper Company in return for Charter getting an interest in St. Joe. This "swap" was ultimately undone after a few years.
I don't recall Charter seriously planning to move into the Southern Bell/Bellsouth Building. As I recall, Charter had assembled this entire block, including the old Mayflower Hotel. As such, it served as a developer/owner of the building as Southern Bell did not wish to own it due to regulatory peculiarities. Unfortunately, while the building was under construction, interest rates approached 20% and Charter's cash flow fortunes started to decline. The workout was Charter selling the unfinished building to Southern Bell (or a designated interest of theirs) to complete on their own.
Charter did "plan" at its peak to develop another city block they owned, the Sears store block (now home to the Omni and the older First Union/Wells Fargo tower plus garage & surface lot). Charter proposed building a 70 story headquarters there but, obviously, that never happened. Maybe MJ could check this out as another building that "never was" :)
FYI, prior to the Universal Marion building, Charter once occupied the Greenleaf Building and before that, was in IBM's Southbank building (now the Suddath Building).
^Great insight on Charter. I'll edit the line about Charter acquiring du Pont's ownership in FNB to Charter acquiring the majority of du Pont's ownership in FNB. Also thanks for going into detail about Charter's involvement with the Southern Bell building. My source was an old 1980s FTU article on the building's development that was stashed in a verticle file about Charter in the library's special collections department. The paper mentioned Charter as the tower's developer but also stated that it planned to split office space with Southern Bell. Oh, and a 70-story building a block away? Now that certainly would have made its mark on the city's skyline!
Lake, Charter may have floated the idea of space in So. Bell or it may have just been street rumors or something in between. I am pretty confident it never really went anywhere beyond that.
You should find some T-U articles on the 70 story proposition. Check around 1979 to 1980 as that was near the top of Charter's ascendancy.
I assume you are also aware that Barnett wanted to build its tower originally on the river bank where the T-U center sits. They were going to tie it in with a new performing arts center as I recall. But there was an outcry over turning public riverfront over to private interests at the time and Barnett backed down from the public pressure. There should be lots of T-U articles on that too.
Thanks for all your reporting.
Lake, thanks for all the details on Jacksonville Plaza! I was thinking you meant the old courthouse lot, not the current one.
Quote from: jaxlongtimer on August 19, 2015, 11:56:51 PM
I assume you are also aware that Barnett wanted to build its tower originally on the river bank where the T-U center sits. They were going to tie it in with a new performing arts center as I recall. But there was an outcry over turning public riverfront over to private interests at the time and Barnett backed down from the public pressure. There should be lots of T-U articles on that too.
Correct - the plan was for a 33-story HQ and performing arts center directly on the riverfront, with the former Civic Auditorium being torn down. If I recall correctly, this was also going to be tied to a waterfront aquarium and arts museum that Rouse had proposed as proximate developments to the Landing.
The outcry was not only over turning over public riverfront but that Barnett was doing a like-kind exchange land swap to obtain the Auditorium site in exchange for its parking lot (where the Barnett Center ultimately was built). Perceived as an unfair exchange to Barnett's benefit.
he plan was for a 33-story HQ and performing arts center directly on the riverfront, with the former Civic Auditorium being torn down. If I recall correctly, this was also going to be tied to a waterfront aquarium and arts museum that Rouse had proposed as proximate developments to the Landing.
Where are all this going to go? The tower, the Performing Arts Center and the Aquarium were waterfront on just the parcel the T-U Art Center is on today?
^ I'm not entirely clear on where everything was going to go other than that the tower was waterfront and the other developments were contiguous to it and the Landing in some way. Although I should clarify this plan died in 1986, so the Landing was not complete yet.
QuoteMayor Tommy Hazouri put together a huge package of incentives to lure the National Football League franchise
This was another issue at the time. In typical Jacksonville fashion, The Powers That Be thought luring an NFL team was the silver bullet that would catapult the city into the big time. Consequently much time, money and effort that could have been more productively spent on other things was poured into landing a football team.
Yada yada...
I love how people are so offended by the idea of taxes and "big government" but have no problem with wasting everyone's tax dollars in order to finance their favorite sports team. It's a joke.
It would be pretty easy to isolate 7 other major reasons for downtown's stumble.
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Transit/Light-Rail-and-Streetcar/Interurbans/i-K7FgMT6/0/L/LAX-METRORAIL-CAR-L.jpg)
Kinkisharyo International, Los Angeles Metro Rail Car, assembly plant CANCELED.
1. @1932/36 'Bustitution' (Term for a rail replacement bus service include bustitution; a portmanteau of the words "bus" and "substitution") in our case; "trashing 60 miles of electric railway, much of it on private/exclusive right-of-way, for 'modern diesel buses."
2. @1974, Closing Jacksonville Terminal and ill-advised conversion into a too-small-for-our-needs convention center.
3. @1985/2002, building an ill-advised and disconnected 'people mover' as opposed to a tried and true technology.
4. @ 1950's to date: Building surface level freeways that dice up neighborhoods into isolated pockets
5. @1930/50: conversion of vast swaths of on street parking to metered spaces which discouraged retail and street level activity
6. @1920/2000: Closure of passenger, mail and express terminals along the waterfront virtually giving this business to South Florida
7. Throughout: Failure to present a united and powerful argument and rewards that would have focused on keeping BK, Hornes, National Airlines, Amtrak and a host of other companies in town/downtown.
EXAMPLES:
A. We presented a plan for commuter bus service using comfortable over-the-road coaches. At the same time Silver Eagle Motor Coach was restarting production of their iconic buses and was looking for both a customer and a home, speaking to the COJ, JTA and CofC it was learned that a 6-coach order would have been incentive enough to open their plant in Jacksonville... CHIRP!
B. Two companies, Industrial Rail Services (remanufactured RDC/DMU type self propelled rail cars) and Kinkisharyo International (modern streetcars, trams and Light-Rail-Vehicles), could both be easily swayed to building their plants here, if the city/JTA/FDOT would consider purchase of their products... CHIRP!
Quote from: Ocklawaha on August 20, 2015, 12:21:01 PM
It would be pretty easy to isolate 7 other major reasons for downtown's stumble.
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Transit/Light-Rail-and-Streetcar/Interurbans/i-K7FgMT6/0/L/LAX-METRORAIL-CAR-L.jpg)
Kinkisharyo International, Los Angeles Metro Rail Car, assembly plant CANCELED.
1. @1932/36 'Bustitution' (Term for a rail replacement bus service include bustitution; a portmanteau of the words "bus" and "substitution") in our case; "trashing 60 miles of electric railway, much of it on private/exclusive right-of-way, for 'modern diesel buses."
2. @1974, Closing Jacksonville Terminal and ill-advised conversion into a too-small-for-our-needs convention center.
3. @1985/2002, building an ill-advised and disconnected 'people mover' as opposed to a tried and true technology.
4. @ 1950's to date: Building surface level freeways that dice up neighborhoods into isolated pockets
5. @1930/50: conversion of vast swaths of on street parking to metered spaces which discouraged retail and street level activity
6. @1920/2000: Closure of passenger, mail and express terminals along the waterfront virtually giving this business to South Florida
7. Throughout: Failure to present a united and powerful argument and rewards that would have focused on keeping BK, Hornes, National Airlines, Amtrak and a host of other companies in town/downtown.
EXAMPLES:
A. We presented a plan for commuter bus service using comfortable over-the-road coaches. At the same time Silver Eagle Motor Coach was restarting production of their iconic buses and was looking for both a customer and a home, speaking to the COJ, JTA and CofC it was learned that a 6-coach order would have been incentive enough to open their plant in Jacksonville... CHIRP!
B. Two companies, Industrial Rail Services (remanufactured RDC/DMU type self propelled rail cars) and Kinkisharyo International (modern streetcars, trams and Light-Rail-Vehicles), could both be easily swayed to building their plants here, if the city/JTA/FDOT would consider purchase of their products... CHIRP!
Kinki Sharyo made those cars in Glendale CA.
One thing to note in the "could have been" department, is how much the loss of locally controlled banks led to a starvation of financing for projects to kick off.
Good history on the transition from Alliance to EverBank. I was always curious how EverBank started here.
I do agree with Stephen, demolishing the old properties so quickly suffocated the SMB lease market and forced them all out of the core.
Here is some interesting additional info from a December 11, 1986 article in the Miami News about Barnett Bank's plans to build a 42 story tower (which I recall is the number of stories in the tower they actually did build) on the Civic Auditorium site being frustrated by a lawsuit from, of all possibilities, Charter Northside, no doubt a subsidiary of Charter that probably didn't want a Barnett tower obstructing a potential riverfront view from a future development on the Sears block owned by Charter:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_e4lAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K_MFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3345%2C3091235 (https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_e4lAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K_MFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3345%2C3091235)
QuoteIt would be pretty easy to isolate 7 other major reasons for downtown's stumble.
I knew we could get a monorail debate going if we just kept the thread alive long enough.
I left this note out of the article. Downtown's largest private sector employers in 1985:
Downtown's Largest Private Employers in 1985
3,763 - Southern Bell
3,438 - Blue Cross Blue Shield
3,401 - Seaboard Coastline Railroad
3,273 - Prudential
2,644 - Barnett Bank
2,500 - Jacksonville Shipyards, Inc.
1,952 - Florida National Bank
1,780 - Baptist Medical Center
1,384 - Atlantic National Bank
1,310 - Independent Life
Source: Jax Biz Journal 1986 Book of Lists
Quote from: thelakelander on August 21, 2015, 07:02:48 AM
I left this note out of the article. Downtown's largest private sector employers in 1985:
Downtown's Largest Private Employers in 1985
3,763 - Southern Bell
3,438 - Blue Cross Blue Shield
3,401 - Seaboard Coastline Railroad
3,273 - Prudential
2,644 - Barnett Bank
2,500 - Jacksonville Shipyards, Inc.
1,952 - Florida National Bank
1,780 - Baptist Medical Center
1,384 - Atlantic National Bank
1,310 - Independent Life
Source: Jax Biz Journal 1986 Book of Lists
To expand, Downtown Vision's latest State of Downtown Report included the following numbers on regional employment:
3,600 - CSX **
2,400 - Black Knight Financial Services **
2,239 - Everbank **
1,000 - Stein Mart **
700 - Interline Brands
500 - Fidelity National Financial **
450 - Suddath Relocation Systems
420 - Haskell
400 - Fidelity National Information Services **
Note the ** represents that not all of these jobs are located in downtown as these employers also have seconday offices outside of the urban core. This isn't an apples to apples comparison as the DVI report doesn't list downtown-specific jobs. For instance, Prudential is not included on the list (which was supplied from the Chamber) as Prudential isn't headquarted in Jax and the DVI/Chamber list focused on regional HQs. Still, it's clear to see that there are certainly far less people downtown from 8-5 then there were 30 years ago.
When you start to compare those numbers, you'll really appreciate why having 1,000 employees move downtown from Citizens Insurance and having 120 jobs being created downtown from Macquarie Group is such a big deal... particularly to the small businesses (daytime restaurants, service-related retail, etc... and nightime restaurants, bars, etc) that rely on the foot traffic created from this daytime population of workers.
Quote from: fieldafm on August 21, 2015, 08:16:59 AM
Quote from: thelakelander on August 21, 2015, 07:02:48 AM
I left this note out of the article. Downtown's largest private sector employers in 1985:
Downtown's Largest Private Employers in 1985
3,763 - Southern Bell
3,438 - Blue Cross Blue Shield
3,401 - Seaboard Coastline Railroad
3,273 - Prudential
2,644 - Barnett Bank
2,500 - Jacksonville Shipyards, Inc.
1,952 - Florida National Bank
1,780 - Baptist Medical Center
1,384 - Atlantic National Bank
1,310 - Independent Life
Source: Jax Biz Journal 1986 Book of Lists
To expand, Downtown Vision's latest State of Downtown Report included the following numbers on regional employment:
3,600 - CSX **
2,400 - Black Knight Financial Services **
2,239 - Everbank **
1,000 - Stein Mart **
700 - Interline Brands
500 - Fidelity National Financial **
450 - Suddath Relocation Systems
420 - Haskell
400 - Fidelity National Information Services **
Note the ** represents that not all of these jobs are located in downtown as these employers also have seconday offices outside of the urban core. This isn't an apples to apples comparison as the DVI report doesn't list downtown-specific jobs. For instance, Prudential is not included on the list (which was supplied from the Chamber) as Prudential isn't headquarted in Jax and the DVI/Chamber list focused on regional HQs. Still, it's clear to see that there are certainly far less people downtown from 8-5 then there were 30 years ago.
When you start to compare those numbers, you'll really appreciate why having 1,000 employees move downtown from Citizens Insurance and having 120 jobs being created downtown from Macquarie Group is such a big deal... particularly to the small businesses (daytime restaurants, service-related retail, etc... and nightime restaurants, bars, etc) that rely on the foot traffic created from this daytime population of workers.
And plus, several of those are in Brooklyn, not the historical city core. That wasn't the case 30 years ago.
The 1985 list would be a lot larger but I cut the limit off at 1,000 employees. There were several Northbank and Southbank companies like Gulf Life that employed in the 800 to 500 range.
The employer list looks suspect to me in terms of completeness.
Blue Cross (Florida Blue today) is listed in the older list but not the new one even though they are in the same spot today on Riverside Avenue. Where is Aetna, Prudential and Baptist Medical Center (the last two on the old list but not the new)? If the second, fourth and eighth largest employers in 1985 can be overlooked, how many others might there be. Also, wouldn't downtown include government employers (City, State, Federal, FSCJ, etc.), JEA, JTA, School Board and non-profits (DuPont center, museums, etc.)? How about the cumulative effect of all the professional firms (lawyers, CPA's, insurance agencies, etc.)? Where are the Hyatt and Omni and all the Southbank hotels? The Times Union? Federal Reserve Bank? Do the Jaguars count :) ? If 400 employees is the current threshold, I would think some of these would make the list today, if not in yesteryear.
I sure hope City leaders aren't making decisions on this data. I won't argue their hasn't been a change in downtown but this is not a proper picture of that change. I also think the Southbank is far more enriched today than than in 1985 and should really be a different story from the Northbank in many respects. When M.D. Anderson builds, the Southbank will go to another level again. Expect more hotels and restaurants to follow that facility (see Mayo's impact).
I only pulled 1986 numbers for private sector businesses for this particular article. I ended up not using them in the story because I could not find an apples to apples 2015 comparison. The 1986 list also included public sector numbers.
Quote from: jaxlongtimer on August 21, 2015, 11:44:47 AM
The employer list looks suspect to me in terms of completeness.
Blue Cross (Florida Blue today) is listed in the older list but not the new one even though they are in the same spot today on Riverside Avenue. Where is Aetna, Prudential and Baptist Medical Center (the last two on the old list but not the new)? If the second, fourth and eighth largest employers in 1985 can be overlooked, how many others might there be. Also, wouldn't downtown include government employers (City, State, Federal, FSCJ, etc.), JEA, JTA, School Board and non-profits (DuPont center, museums, etc.)? How about the cumulative effect of all the professional firms (lawyers, CPA's, insurance agencies, etc.)? Where are the Hyatt and Omni and all the Southbank hotels? The Times Union? Federal Reserve Bank? Do the Jaguars count :) ? If 400 employees is the current threshold, I would think some of these would make the list today, if not in yesteryear.
I sure hope City leaders aren't making decisions on this data. I won't argue their hasn't been a change in downtown but this is not a proper picture of that change. I also think the Southbank is far more enriched today than than in 1985 and should really be a different story from the Northbank in many respects. When M.D. Anderson builds, the Southbank will go to another level again. Expect more hotels and restaurants to follow that facility (see Mayo's impact).
It's not an apples to apples comparison as both lists looked at different metrics. But, any way you slice it... there are far less workers downtown now then there were then.
FYI, Florida Blue is on the Southside (with around 6k employees on a sprawling campus that I am currently staring at from my office window)... the Blue Cross Building in Brooklyn is full of either Fidelity employees, or employees of First Coast Service Options (a business unit Blue sold many years ago). Places like the Federal Reserve and the Times Union buildings are also mostly empty compared to years past.
That said, maybe I shouldn't have used the list as its comparing a bag of green apples with a bag of red apples mixed with tangerines (and that's totally fair for you to point out)... but you can still draw pretty accurate conclusions based on the incomplete/not totally 100% compatible lists.
Will MD Anderson's numbers be included in the Southbank? The proposed site is on the other side of I-95.
I bet many people crossing over the train tracks on the Northbank Riverwalk to Riverside have no idea that they left downtown. I have no problem with including Riverside businesses with 'downtowns'; It's very petty at that point. A viaduct that crosses a couple of railroad tracks isn't a new continent.
Quote from: I-10east on August 21, 2015, 02:47:43 PM
I bet many people crossing over the train tracks on the Northbank Riverwalk to Riverside have no idea that they left downtown. I have no problem with including Riverside businesses with 'downtowns'; It's very petty at that point. A viaduct that crosses a couple of railroad tracks isn't a new continent.
Well, no...but I think the point here is how much employment in the Northbank core has declined over the years and how these statistics obscure that fact.
The DVI report shows 49,000 employees downtown, but that's a broader definition than in the 1980s when the Godbold administration touted the 50,000-60,000 people who worked downtown (meaning just on the Northbank).
Quote from: I-10east on August 21, 2015, 02:47:43 PM
I bet many people crossing over the train tracks on the Northbank Riverwalk to Riverside have no idea that they left downtown. I have no problem with including Riverside businesses with 'downtowns'; It's very petty at that point. A viaduct that crosses a couple of railroad tracks isn't a new continent.
I think it's pretty similar to how Brickell and Downtown Miami are.