(https://photos.moderncities.com/Cities/West-Palm-Beach-March-2019/i-HT5z2dC/0/0257b137/L/20190328_201445-L.jpg)
QuoteEvery great downtown is home to a great street. That great street is a place where pedestrians can find a large variety of retailers, restaurants, cafes and entertainment options open during weekday nights and on weekends. In West Palm Beach, that great street is Clematis Street.
Full article: https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/boom-times-in-downtown-west-palm-beach/
I hate seeing threads like this; just being honest. Makes me wonder what in the world is wrong with Jacksonville's leaders; oh, that's right, I know what's wrong already. They hate earning their paycheck so they do nothing.
Thanks for the link. Another helpful example of bench marking realistic possibilities. Any insights on integration of this attractive Clematis Street with residential areas?
What do you mean by integration? The upper floors of many of the buildings along Clematis are residential. Further south in Miami-Dade, the urban fabric is very similar to LA's. There, you'll find long linear strips of commercial on corridors slicing through urban neighborhoods like Little Haiti, Little Havana, Brownsville, Wynwood and Overtown. Is this along the lines of what you're asking?
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Cities/Miami/Miami-October-2018/i-WBCf2Wh/0/04a9f164/L/DSCF5150-L.jpg)
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Cities/Miami/Miami-October-2018/i-VsTMKpQ/0/5faeb0c9/L/DSCF5156-L.jpg)
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Cities/Miami/Miami-October-2018/i-8Bw5XjW/0/b72c13ac/L/20181025_175615-L.jpg)
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Cities/Miami/Miami-October-2018/i-HZgpqpn/0/8cb339f7/L/20181025_175727-L.jpg)
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Quote from: Pastor Eric Wester on April 01, 2019, 08:41:20 PM
Thanks for the link. Another helpful example of bench marking realistic possibilities. Any insights on integration of this attractive Clematis Street with residential areas?
Downtown WPB has so much housing it is staggering. My son attends Palm Beach Atlantic Unviersity which is located downtown so I go down there several times a year. In addition to Clematis St they also have City Place which is like the Town Center but actually in the town center. Every building has apartment/condos with the exception of a few office buildings.
In addition to being very walkable they have an extensive bike share system, 2 free downtown circulator bus routes, and train stations for Virgin Trains, Tri Rail, and AmTrak.
Most of that has come since the mid 90s. Back in the 80s, as a kid, we'd take Amtrak from Central Florida to my dad's job in Hialeah ocassionally. DT WPB was pretty dead then. DT Jax was way more lively. If you like DT WPB, you'll love Fort Lauderdale and Miami. WPB is sleepy in comparison to those two.
^With that said, it can be pretty frustrating if you've been living in Florida for a few decades and been around to experience the full fall of the downtown department store era and rebirth of these areas in various cities across the state. Ultimately, there's nothing special about WPB. Unfortunately, Jax may be the exception to the rule. But instead of simply following the rule, maximizing and building upon our true assets, we tend make excuses for our struggles, spend tons of money on risky gimmicks that don't pan out and self promote by spinning our shortcomings as successes. We're tend to talk about cranes and ferris wheels when it things are so sleepy that one will struggle to find a single storefront open for a cup of coffee on a Sunday.
Quote from: thelakelander on April 02, 2019, 08:02:12 AM
Most of that has come since the mid 90s. Back in the 80s, as a kid, we'd take Amtrak from Central Florida to my dad's job in Hialeah ocassionally. DT WPB was pretty dead then. DT Jax was way more lively. If you like DT WPB, you'll love Fort Lauderdale and Miami. WPB is sleepy in comparison to those two.
I took my son to downtown Miami a few weeks ago and was blown away. It is on a whole plain than Jacksonville. However, while I do like to visit cities like that I much prefer to live in more modest cities like Chattanooga, Savannah, Greenville, Oklahoma City, Omaha, or even Lincoln, NB. All of which have great walkable urbanism geared towards families with a healthy dose of tourism.
If you like the smaller places, next time you're down there, try Downtown Delray Beach and Downtown Hollywood. Both very impressive and generally overlooked due to the popularity of the larger South Florida cities and suburbs.
Delray puts Jax to shame too. Atlantic Ave is like our Atlantic Blvd Beaches Town Center area, but three times the size and in the heart of downtown. It has a mix of local restaurants and retailers as well as Urban Outfitters, Mellow Mushroom, Sunglass Hut, Starbucks, etc... Additionally, there is residential sprinkled throughout the area as well as a number of hotels.
Maybe this is where Jax gets their barbell idea from? The west end of the Atlantic commercial area has a public art museum, parks, tennis courts, library, and a courthouse and a mile east is the ocean. I would say that the opposite happened and the commercial built out until it hit a dead end on either side, but Jax gets things backward so who knows.
Quote from: thelakelander on April 02, 2019, 09:26:06 AM
If you like the smaller places, next time you're down there, try Downtown Delray Beach and Downtown Hollywood. Both very impressive and generally overlooked due to the popularity of the larger South Florida cities and suburbs.
Thanks for the tip. Ft Lauderdale is next on our list but I'll add the other two in. We are headed to Tennessee in a few weeks and making a lunch stop in Greenville, SC. I can't wait.
Both Greenville and Asheville (between Greenville and Tennessee) will either make you sick or energize you to change how we tackle revitalization regarding DT Jax. Greenville is a great example of what can happen when you focus efforts on stimulating the heart of a single corridor and the synergy that engulfs the surrounding areas when that corridor becomes seen as a regional destination.
Greenville - Main Street Before
(https://photos.moderncities.com/Other/Historic-Downtown-Greenville/i-WskwFgq/0/L/Main%20Street%20-%20Greenville%20Before-L.jpg)
Greenville - Main Street After
(https://photos.moderncities.com/Cities/Greenville-South-Carolina-2016/i-HgS5Q46/0/L/DSCF8325-L.jpg)
Full Before and After Article: https://www.moderncities.com/article/2016-mar-greenvilles-amazing-transformation
I was in Fort Lauderdale for a few days last week. Cranes are all over that skyline and Las Olas is still Las Olas. It already has a Brightline station and now Brightline is discussing adding additional stops at FLL and Miami's cruise port terminal. I thought I had already made an article but I can't find it. Anyway, here's a few pictures taken during a rooftop meeting in DT FTL back in October 2018:
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Cities/Fort-Lauderdale-October-2018/i-T4dLF3c/0/fc93411a/L/DSCF5269-L.jpg)
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Cities/Fort-Lauderdale-October-2018/i-XkXJdkc/0/f9169005/L/DSCF5273-L.jpg)
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Cities/Fort-Lauderdale-October-2018/i-rSP9bZw/0/e888c42f/L/DSCF5275-L.jpg)
(https://photos.smugmug.com/Cities/Fort-Lauderdale-October-2018/i-ZsPZbdM/0/bb8619d5/L/DSCF5319-L.jpg)
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I'm going to try and squeeze Asheville in on our return trip. I've already seen enough to let Jax discourage me. I'm spending this week near downtown Naperville, IL. It is like the Town Center but in an actual downtown.
Wow!!! I lived in FTL from 1995 to 2004 and it was popping back then; well it looks like now downtown FTL is exploding, to say the least. WTF? Wow! I see the cranes. For a city with a population about 20,000 under 200,000, FTL truly has it going on, as they say. When I moved there in late 1995, downtown was sleepy, but still had more going on than Jax, and was light years ahead of Jax. I stayed and a friend of mine left, I was around 39/40 back then with juices still flowing, and middle age itch bugging the hell out of me. Maybe only 3 or 4 mid tall's downtown back then, little to no residential towers, and now I see this explosion. It all started to really stir back in 2001 and has been going crazy since except when the recession hit for about 4 years in 2008, and then it took off again. I'll have to go down there and see for myself. Thanks Lake for the super nifty pics.
Not everyone is impressed!
Quotepatphish
If vacant store fronts due to outrageous rents, occasional stabbings, a homeless population that the city refuses to address and vape shops are your thing, Clematis is your spot. It is walk-able and the design is great, but the businesses struggle to stay open. But it's basically a bar district, not especially family friendly.
https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/boom-times-in-downtown-west-palm-beach/