Southside Construction Update - Winter 2017
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Cities/Jacksonville/Development/SCU022017/i-nZRHsJC/0/XL/20170225_150736-XL.jpg)
A brief look at the status of various projects under construction in and around Jacksonville's Edge City, the Southside, during winter 2017.
Read More: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2017-feb-southside-construction-update-winter-2017
I'm really dissapointed in the Town Center plans... The blueprint looks just like any other strip mall. They could build something much better that fits better with the new apartments going in immediately next door. Are there no requirements for them to build garages? How long will we let them sprall unchecked?
What's going to happen with these glorified plazas when this boom is over?
Is the Best Buy moving across the street?
Quote from: jaxjaguar on February 28, 2017, 07:07:57 PM
I'm really dissapointed in the Town Center plans... The blueprint looks just like any other strip mall. They could build something much better that fits better with the new apartments going in immediately next door. Are there no requirements for them to build garages? How long will we let them sprall unchecked?
There are no requirements to build garages, although there is a garage under construction at one of them, to serve an apartment development.
Quote from: coredumped on February 28, 2017, 10:29:14 PM
What's going to happen with these glorified plazas when this boom is over?
My guess; see Regency Square.
Quote from: coredumped on February 28, 2017, 10:29:14 PM
What's going to happen with these glorified plazas when this boom is over?
Depends. The Town Center is definitely strategically located. With its close location to UNF and the business community there, I think it has some staying power. I don't think it will be Regency anytime in the near future.
Quote from: FlaBoy on March 01, 2017, 11:53:45 AM
Quote from: coredumped on February 28, 2017, 10:29:14 PM
What's going to happen with these glorified plazas when this boom is over?
Depends. The Town Center is definitely strategically located. With its close location to UNF and the business community there, I think it has some staying power. I don't think it will be Regency anytime in the near future.
Southside won't go the way of Regency for a few more decades. But it will happen, it always does.
If there is any sliver of hope about this country's over-abundance of retail it's this: There's a under construction in North Jersey for years. Called ironically "American Dream" it will be the largest indoor shopping facility in the U.S. once (or if) completed. It is apparently the only independent shopping mall currently under construction in North America.
Period.
Developers have seen how inefficient and unnecessary these climate-controlled behemoths can be and new ones are going the way of the dodo. We still have too much retail but these newer "lifestyle centers" are much more flexible to conversion to other uses if and when the demos and demands of the area changes as opposed to their indoor counterparts - with a lot less overall overhead, utility, and upkeep costs to boot. SJTC should do just fine for decades on account of this.
Also, I think commercial sprawl has been addressed because of the lower demand for brick and mortar places. If anyone remembers when the Avenues Mall was built in 1990, it was considered on the edge of Southside Jax with very little development south and east of it. I don't think it's happenstance the proposed Durbin Park on the other hand will have miles of existing residential development surrounding it.
Developers may be slow in getting the lessons of unchecked runaway haphazard development, but market forces can play a role in getting them to go about it in another smarter, more efficient, and better way. Or they choose to ignore the warnings...at their own peril.
Quote from: FlaBoy on March 01, 2017, 11:53:45 AM
Quote from: coredumped on February 28, 2017, 10:29:14 PM
What's going to happen with these glorified plazas when this boom is over?
Depends. The Town Center is definitely strategically located. With its close location to UNF and the business community there, I think it has some staying power. I don't think it will be Regency anytime in the near future.
Regency is strategically located by JU, and countless homes (remember, Arlington is one of the most densest areas in jax).
The biggest problem with Regency and the Arlington area is neglect. The old motels and apartments would be a start. Until there is redevelopment there and the low income housing is checked off, it will never be reborn.
Quote from: Tacachale on March 01, 2017, 11:55:52 AM
Quote from: FlaBoy on March 01, 2017, 11:53:45 AM
Quote from: coredumped on February 28, 2017, 10:29:14 PM
What's going to happen with these glorified plazas when this boom is over?
Depends. The Town Center is definitely strategically located. With its close location to UNF and the business community there, I think it has some staying power. I don't think it will be Regency anytime in the near future.
Southside won't go the way of Regency for a few more decades. But it will happen, it always does.
Not true. I don't think we truly know yet how these shopping areas will evolve. First, it depends on the socioeconomics of the area. The Town Center has more jobs around it than anywhere in the city including even DT I think (although I don't know the numbers exactly). That is a natural advantage that a place like Regency does not have as it was always a bedroom community with most workers commuting into DT when built.
To coredumped's point, JU is in Arlington but not nearly as close to Regency as UNF is to the town center. The student populations are not comparable either. JU is a small private school while UNF has nearly 17,000 students and will only grow from here. That is a strategic advantage that is hard to come by and is a reason people regret not putting UNF downtown. I would love to see more urban shopping options in the core or the Beaches, and maybe that will eventually be the downfall of the Town Center, but not for awhile.
Quote from: FlaBoy on March 01, 2017, 05:26:01 PM
Quote from: Tacachale on March 01, 2017, 11:55:52 AM
Quote from: FlaBoy on March 01, 2017, 11:53:45 AM
Quote from: coredumped on February 28, 2017, 10:29:14 PM
What's going to happen with these glorified plazas when this boom is over?
Depends. The Town Center is definitely strategically located. With its close location to UNF and the business community there, I think it has some staying power. I don't think it will be Regency anytime in the near future.
Southside won't go the way of Regency for a few more decades. But it will happen, it always does.
Not true. I don't think we truly know yet how these shopping areas will evolve. First, it depends on the socioeconomics of the area. The Town Center has more jobs around it than anywhere in the city including even DT I think (although I don't know the numbers exactly). That is a natural advantage that a place like Regency does not have as it was always a bedroom community with most workers commuting into DT when built.
To coredumped's point, JU is in Arlington but not nearly as close to Regency as UNF is to the town center. The student populations are not comparable either. JU is a small private school while UNF has nearly 17,000 students and will only grow from here. That is a strategic advantage that is hard to come by and is a reason people regret not putting UNF downtown. I would love to see more urban shopping options in the core or the Beaches, and maybe that will eventually be the downfall of the Town Center, but not for awhile.
You're taking a pretty short term view of the situation. The Southside office parks age, they'll face the same issues that the Arlington ones did in past decades. There will be new office parks elsewhere competing for workers, just as Southside took business away from Arlington and Baymeadows, and those took it away from Downtown. The same will happen with the residential buildings as they age, and with the Town Center itself as new malls open up in the exurbs. In a few decades, the whole cityscape will change and Southside will face the same problems that hit Arlingon by the 80s and 90s. However, you're right about being close to UNF, that will always be a natural advantage for the Town Center.
A university isn't a guarantee of a nice area around it. In fact, many colleges happen to be in bad neighborhoods.
SJTC is there to stay and will only grow, in next ten to 15 years. Just from my observation/prediction having lived in that area from when SJTC sprung up more than 10 years ago. The traffic issues needs to get fixed, and its growth depends on that, with it more outlets in and out. But it probably will not "die" or suffer the same fate as Regency in the near future.
^Give it 20 years or so. Many thought the same about Regency after its expansion in the early 1980s (it was roughly around the same age as SJTC back then).
Quote from: Tacachale on March 01, 2017, 06:10:14 PM
Quote from: FlaBoy on March 01, 2017, 05:26:01 PM
Quote from: Tacachale on March 01, 2017, 11:55:52 AM
Quote from: FlaBoy on March 01, 2017, 11:53:45 AM
Quote from: coredumped on February 28, 2017, 10:29:14 PM
What's going to happen with these glorified plazas when this boom is over?
Depends. The Town Center is definitely strategically located. With its close location to UNF and the business community there, I think it has some staying power. I don't think it will be Regency anytime in the near future.
Southside won't go the way of Regency for a few more decades. But it will happen, it always does.
Not true. I don't think we truly know yet how these shopping areas will evolve. First, it depends on the socioeconomics of the area. The Town Center has more jobs around it than anywhere in the city including even DT I think (although I don't know the numbers exactly). That is a natural advantage that a place like Regency does not have as it was always a bedroom community with most workers commuting into DT when built.
To coredumped's point, JU is in Arlington but not nearly as close to Regency as UNF is to the town center. The student populations are not comparable either. JU is a small private school while UNF has nearly 17,000 students and will only grow from here. That is a strategic advantage that is hard to come by and is a reason people regret not putting UNF downtown. I would love to see more urban shopping options in the core or the Beaches, and maybe that will eventually be the downfall of the Town Center, but not for awhile.
You're taking a pretty short term view of the situation. The Southside office parks age, they'll face the same issues that the Arlington ones did in past decades. There will be new office parks elsewhere competing for workers, just as Southside took business away from Arlington and Baymeadows, and those took it away from Downtown. The same will happen with the residential buildings as they age, and with the Town Center itself as new malls open up in the exurbs. In a few decades, the whole cityscape will change and Southside will face the same problems that hit Arlingon by the 80s and 90s. However, you're right about being close to UNF, that will always be a natural advantage for the Town Center.
I mean, if Florida Blue or Merrill Lynch/BOA, that would hurt the Town Center and the whole city. There are so many employees in those office parks that are owned by their entities alone. In many ways, the Town Center/Southside Area has become what Westshore is to Tampa. Westshore Plaza has had its ups and downs but has stayed one of the premier shopping areas in Tampa for 50 years due to the job center it is in (that is even with International Plaza opening around 2000). Both shopping areas have remained successful. And sure, Wiregrass opened in New Tampa/Wesley Chapel and Citrus opened up the way, but Westshore and International shopping has remained successful due to its location.
We will see though. Maybe everyone moves shop down to SJC and Durbin Park but I doubt it.
Westshore Plaza and International Plaza both pull from a regional population much larger than Westshore can support by itself. They are pretty centralized, serving both Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties. While Westshore has survived since the the opening of International Plaza, Tampa Bay Center, Clearwater Mall, Pinellas Square Mall and Eastlake Square Mall have all bit the dust since 2000.
St. Johns Town Center will be fine until a newer comparable regional center opens its doors. If that happens and the regional population isn't large enough to adequately support both centers, one will suffer or have to change its tenant mix/niche and it won't matter if an office park or college campus is next door or not (ex. University Mall being next to USF hasn't stopped its decline as newer centers in the region have opened).
Quote from: thelakelander on March 02, 2017, 09:08:20 AM
Westshore Plaza and International Plaza both pull from a regional population much larger than Westshore can support by itself. They are pretty centralized, serving both Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties. While Westshore has survived since the the opening of International Plaza, Tampa Bay Center, Clearwater Mall, Pinellas Square Mall and Eastlake Square Mall have all bit the dust since 2000.
St. Johns Town Center will be fine until a newer comparable regional center opens its doors. If that happens and the regional population isn't large enough to adequately support both centers, one will suffer or have to change its tenant mix/niche and it won't matter if an office park or college campus is next door or not (ex. University Mall being next to USF hasn't stopped its decline as newer centers in the region have opened).
Agreed. But do you think a Town Center/Southside has become the Westshore of Jacksonville? Especially with Florida Blue and Merrill Lynch's massive campuses there and its central location between the Urban Core and the Beaches specifically? That combined with UNF is a great base...The problem with University mall in Tampa is the socioeconomics are weak in North Tampa. The one weakness of the Town Center could be the number of apartment buildings in the area that will get old and potentially run down. That may be the shift, especially if the Urban Core were to explode and Durban Park were to have a wealthier base in SJC. A combination of some big time shopping returning to DT/Riverside/San Marco and another newer/nice shopping experience with a close/large base of high socioeconomic shoppers could certainly do it.
Quote from: FlaBoy on March 02, 2017, 03:20:45 PM
Quote from: thelakelander on March 02, 2017, 09:08:20 AM
Westshore Plaza and International Plaza both pull from a regional population much larger than Westshore can support by itself. They are pretty centralized, serving both Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties. While Westshore has survived since the the opening of International Plaza, Tampa Bay Center, Clearwater Mall, Pinellas Square Mall and Eastlake Square Mall have all bit the dust since 2000.
St. Johns Town Center will be fine until a newer comparable regional center opens its doors. If that happens and the regional population isn't large enough to adequately support both centers, one will suffer or have to change its tenant mix/niche and it won't matter if an office park or college campus is next door or not (ex. University Mall being next to USF hasn't stopped its decline as newer centers in the region have opened).
Agreed. But do you think a Town Center/Southside has become the Westshore of Jacksonville? Especially with Florida Blue and Merrill Lynch's massive campuses there and its central location between the Urban Core and the Beaches specifically? That combined with UNF is a great base...The problem with University mall in Tampa is the socioeconomics are weak in North Tampa. The one weakness of the Town Center could be the number of apartment buildings in the area that will get old and potentially run down. That may be the shift, especially if the Urban Core were to explode and Durban Park were to have a wealthier base in SJC. A combination of some big time shopping returning to DT/Riverside/San Marco and another newer/nice shopping experience with a close/large base of high socioeconomic shoppers could certainly do it.
The buildings of the area will get old and rundown (even more so than some older neighborhoods due to chintzy modern construction), the needs of businesses will change, the population will get older. The demographics will change. And importantly, developers will build shiny new stuff elsewhere, and the mall itself will face the fact that people's tastes in shopping centers will continue to change. To compete with newcomers and the inevitabilities of decline, the mall will need to stay up to date, and that's going to be hard with its poor, piecemeal planning.
Southside isn't less vulnerable than any other area, regardless of the businesses located there or UNF. Downtown has thousands of workers, but shopping left there long ago anyway. Arlington is also located between Downtown and the Beaches and was once an employment center (though not to the extent of the newer Southside), and it has declined. But SJTC doesn't have much to worry about right now. It will take a while.
Quote from: FlaBoy on March 02, 2017, 03:20:45 PM
Quote from: thelakelander on March 02, 2017, 09:08:20 AM
Westshore Plaza and International Plaza both pull from a regional population much larger than Westshore can support by itself. They are pretty centralized, serving both Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties. While Westshore has survived since the the opening of International Plaza, Tampa Bay Center, Clearwater Mall, Pinellas Square Mall and Eastlake Square Mall have all bit the dust since 2000.
St. Johns Town Center will be fine until a newer comparable regional center opens its doors. If that happens and the regional population isn't large enough to adequately support both centers, one will suffer or have to change its tenant mix/niche and it won't matter if an office park or college campus is next door or not (ex. University Mall being next to USF hasn't stopped its decline as newer centers in the region have opened).
Agreed. But do you think a Town Center/Southside has become the Westshore of Jacksonville? Especially with Florida Blue and Merrill Lynch's massive campuses there and its central location between the Urban Core and the Beaches specifically? That combined with UNF is a great base...
"Westshore" in what way? Westshore is centrally located between two counties that combine for more than 2 million people. The regional malls there are pulling from a regional population base, not the business district they are located in. Where's our Pinellas?
QuoteThe problem with University mall in Tampa is the socioeconomics are weak in North Tampa.
University Mall was fine until the openings of Citrus Park (1999) and Wiregrass (2008). The recent opening of Tampa Premium Outlets in Pasco probably doesn't help either.
Quote from: Tacachale on March 02, 2017, 03:49:29 PM
Quote from: FlaBoy on March 02, 2017, 03:20:45 PM
Quote from: thelakelander on March 02, 2017, 09:08:20 AM
Westshore Plaza and International Plaza both pull from a regional population much larger than Westshore can support by itself. They are pretty centralized, serving both Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties. While Westshore has survived since the the opening of International Plaza, Tampa Bay Center, Clearwater Mall, Pinellas Square Mall and Eastlake Square Mall have all bit the dust since 2000.
St. Johns Town Center will be fine until a newer comparable regional center opens its doors. If that happens and the regional population isn't large enough to adequately support both centers, one will suffer or have to change its tenant mix/niche and it won't matter if an office park or college campus is next door or not (ex. University Mall being next to USF hasn't stopped its decline as newer centers in the region have opened).
Agreed. But do you think a Town Center/Southside has become the Westshore of Jacksonville? Especially with Florida Blue and Merrill Lynch's massive campuses there and its central location between the Urban Core and the Beaches specifically? That combined with UNF is a great base...The problem with University mall in Tampa is the socioeconomics are weak in North Tampa. The one weakness of the Town Center could be the number of apartment buildings in the area that will get old and potentially run down. That may be the shift, especially if the Urban Core were to explode and Durban Park were to have a wealthier base in SJC. A combination of some big time shopping returning to DT/Riverside/San Marco and another newer/nice shopping experience with a close/large base of high socioeconomic shoppers could certainly do it.
The buildings of the area will get old and rundown (even more so than some older neighborhoods due to chintzy modern construction), the needs of businesses will change, the population will get older. The demographics will change. And importantly, developers will build shiny new stuff elsewhere, and the mall itself will face the fact that people's tastes in shopping centers will continue to change. To compete with newcomers and the inevitabilities of decline, the mall will need to stay up to date, and that's going to be hard with its poor, piecemeal planning.
Southside isn't less vulnerable than any other area, regardless of the businesses located there or UNF. Downtown has thousands of workers, but shopping left there long ago anyway. Arlington is also located between Downtown and the Beaches and was once an employment center (though not to the extent of the newer Southside), and it has declined. But SJTC doesn't have much to worry about right now. It will take a while.
Agreed. In all honesty, online shopping may be the biggest threat in the end to all of this.
I do think there may be more potential down the line, if things did go bad, to redevelop these outdoor malls with more mixed uses. That is in comparison to the huge spaces of indoor malls that have been difficult to do anything with.
Regency, for example, has well over a million square feet of indoor space. That is literally convention center size but it is hard to come up with too many different uses.
You know, I can remember the exact day I last set foot in Regency. It was March 7, 2012, almost exactly 5 years ago. I remember because it was the day after the Episcopal School shooting; my brother, who went there, was pretty shaken up. My wife and I had just moved to Ponte Vedra from San Marco and we had errands to run, so we dragged him along on to get him out of the house. One of our stops was to the Regency GameStop where I had preordered Mass Effect 3 (which had also come out the day before, as I recall). Oddly, that was by far the most convenient GameStop to San Marco (and still is), and I placed the preorder before we decided to move to Ponte Vedra. The mall was mostly closed and kind of spooky even at that time; I can only imagine what it looks like now.
Looking at the list of stuff being built at the town center is, to me at least, really underwhelming. I guess it's just not my kind of stuff. The one thing I was kind of excited about, Piada, I heard is no longer planning to build.
There is something going up near SJTC that is about 10 stories tall. I see it as I'm driving down JTB. Does anyone know what it is?
It's a parking garage.
^ thanks. Couldn't tell if it was the start of one of the hotels.
I say to see our future, look at some other more populous (assuming historic population trends, today's large city populations will become the population of tomorrow's mid-size cities such as Jax) and/or more mature/advanced cities.
I look, for example, at the beltway suburbs of D.C. As build-out ate up all develop-able land in the beltway 'burbs over the last 50 years, and traffic problems grew to the point where travel times became a factor for significant numbers in choosing to live "closer in," closer to employment/shopping and/or closer to mass transit hubs, or all of the above, I have observed increased density of development, as evidenced by more high rise construction, popping up around major traffic nodes. Based on this, I would envision a future round of (re)development in Jax being high rise construction appearing, first, at major interstate/expressway interchanges, and then spreading to other arterial/major intersections. These nodes will become the new front lines of development vs. the massive sprawls down two to four lane roads of today. This may be 50 years down the road, but I see it as inevitable. Density increases are surely the future. The 3 to 5 story apartments, retail and office buildings of today's suburbs will yield to the 10 to 40+ story buildings of tomorrow, no longer confined to just the original urban/downtown core. Retail will be in multilevel structures and/or at the bases of the office/residential high rises. Parking garages will become commonplace. And, mass transit will become an enabling infrastructure, also inevitable, despite Jax's extensive efforts to postpone dealing with it. Effectively, we will have downtown Jax ringed with "mini-downtowns."
I would guess certain interchanges with I-95 (e.g. JTB, Baymeadows, U.S. 1) and the southeast quadrant of I-295 (JTB, Baymeadows, U.S. 1) will be the starting points due to the ease of redeveloping existing heavy commercial and multi-family properties (vs.suburban-style housing) dominating those areas currently.
I may not be around to see it but the pattern is well established elsewhere and I don't see Jax being immune to it.