Quote(https://photos.moderncities.com/Cities/Columbia-July-2019/i-3mXMkJg/0/aa55d354/L/20190713_104213-L.jpg)
Columbia, South Carolina once faced a problem many communities attempting downtown revitalization have had to overcome. That problem was overcoming the challenge of turning a 9-to-5 weekday environment into one that also is alive at nights and on weekends. Now, through the help of programming, Columbia's downtown has become place where retail stores, coffee shops and restaurants maintain consistent night and weekend operating hours.
Read More: https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/breathing-life-back-into-downtown-soda-city-market/
Post all the evidence you want - the truth is, this will never work for Jacksonville. FACT!
This could be done in Jax with almost no disruption to the current downtown weekend "activities".
Downtown is a wasteland on Saturday mornings. The city loses nothing by trying this with a 3 block stretch of Adams, Forsyth, Bay, Laura, Hogan, Julia..... you get the picture just take your pick.
Quote from: Adam White on July 31, 2019, 09:54:15 AM
Post all the evidence you want - the truth is, this will never work for Jacksonville. FACT!
It isn't working in Columbia either.
Coincidentally, I was curious about downtown Columbia so I detoured through there about 10 days ago. If Soda City Market is attracting people to downtown they aren't staying around long. Granted I was there on a Sunday afternoon and USC isn't in session but what I saw was very underwhelming. From my drive-thru observations, Columbia (like Jax), is missing the two main ingredients for revitalization - housing and hotels. Trying to revitalize without people is a fool's errand. Like Jax, a ready supply of homeless is also on stand-by, especially on the north end of Main St.
Being a capitol city (capitol is downtown) with a major national university located adjacent to downtown I expected a lot more. South Carolina is a beautiful state but the Capitol Building seemed dirty - very dirty. Someone with a power washer could make a fortune. Main Street has a lot of potential and did have a few good blocks of urban retail but their officer towers were not built with street interaction in mind at all. There are long portion of street-frontage with nothing but 10 to 20 stories of glass walls and parking garage entrances.
With Charleston and Greenville/Spartanburg at opposite end of I-26 it shouldn't be a mystery to figure out how to re-urbanize.
^It's working. You just weren't around to see the condition of Main Street ten to twenty years ago. I stayed in a Sheraton housed in an old highrise bank building during my most recent visit. It had a rooftop bar, a first floor bar housed in an old bank vault and a Starbucks in the basement. Adjacent to it was a highrise Marriott with street front retail, leased by a restaurant that was serving breakfast the Sunday morning I checked out. Overall, Main is still evolving but you can do things you can't do in DT Jax....like get a cup of coffee on a Saturday evening or find shops actually open outside of weekday office hours. Don't know if you got a chance to check out the Vista area a few blocks west of Main Street but that district is likely more to your liking (lots of new hotels, lofts, bars, etc.)...although there wouldn't be many people out on the street on a Sunday.
I can confirm Main Street in Downtown Columbia has made huge strides. I went to USC for undergrad about 11 years ago (through 2008) and worked in a law firm on Main street while in school. Besides a few restaurants (apart from the Whig they only served the lunch crowd) and retail stores it was a ghost town after 6pm on the weekdays, and there was no activity on the weekends. You would also never catch a student
I have been back a few times in recent years (the Sheraton you mentioned is my go to place to stay) for football games and was amazed that there were actually people on Main Street in the evenings and on weekends. I have also attended the street festival (had no idea it was called Soda City Market) on a Saturday morning and it is comparable to the riverside arts market (slightly smaller).
The housing is still limited on Main Street and even in the Vista. There is one student housing high rise on main street now and a few apartments
Quote from: thelakelander on July 31, 2019, 01:10:09 PM
^It's working. You just weren't around to see the condition of Main Street ten to twenty years ago. I stayed in a Sheraton housed in an old highrise bank building during my most recent visit. It had a rooftop bar, a first floor bar housed in an old bank vault and a Starbucks in the basement. Adjacent to it was a highrise Marriott with street front retail, leased by a restaurant that was serving breakfast the Sunday morning I checked out. Overall, Main is still evolving but you can do things you can't do in DT Jax....like get a cup of coffee on a Saturday evening or find shops actually open outside of weekday office hours. Don't know if you got a chance to check out the Vista area a few blocks west of Main Street but that district is likely more to your liking (lots of new hotels, lofts, bars, etc.)...although there wouldn't be many people out on the street on a Sunday.
I'll give it another try next time I am in the area. My wife and kids aren't the urbanist that I am so taking the short detour I did took some doing. That is one of the benefits of traveling alone sometimes.
For the record - I was joking. It was a reference to all the people who are happy to dismiss any evidence posted on this site in favour of their gut feelings or 'common sense' or whatever.