It is Time to Dissolve or Restructure DVI

[JeffreyS]

DVI is hosting a gathering wednesday  to discussissuea of concern to downtown stakeholders including cleanliness, safety and parking. The meeting will be held in multi-purpose room 1 at the main street library's conference center. For more info, call 634-0303 ext. 221

[JeffreyS]

Tried to link this to the calender but I think Stephen would have to do it because he started the post.

[thelakelander]

Jeff, I dont think that DVI appreciates 'non' stakeholders at these meetings.

Could that be why the meeting is being held at 1pm?  I don't own a retail business or restaurant, but it would seem that this would be a time, I'd most likely be at my establishment trying to pay my bills off the lunch crowd.

The merchants need to band together and form their own association and then take a unified fight to DVI and the city, ASAP.

[JeffreyS]

How depressing.

[Jerry Moran]

Cut and Paste from the DVI Meeting Reminder Email:

Downtown Operations Meeting
Date: January 9, 2008
Time: 9:00 a.m.
Location: Main Library
Room: Multi-purpose Room 1
Topic: To discuss issues of concern to Downtown stakeholders, including cleanliness, safety and parking

[thelakelander]

You know this past year Downtown was absolutely dull at Christmas, not one decoration was installed by the City. It seems to me that this is something DVI should have stepped in and taken care of. I mean if you want people to come Downtown to shop, dine, etc. at least make it look festive during the Christmas season for crying out loud.

I really didn't notice this until I took that roadtrip last month.  Every downtown I went through (and I went through a lot of them) had Christmas decorations and a tree in their public square.  Also, it seemed that cities both large and small tended to do a 100% better job in marketing their core areas.  Just about any tourism brochure promoting the cities attractions mainly catered around their downtowns.  I know the excuse would be that we are spread out, but we're no more spread out than most major metropolitan areas when you look at the actual census statistics.  To me this really drove home the point that downtown revitalization is not really as big of a priority locally as it should be.

[gatorback]

City Manager!  City Manager.  This is what the city manager got done for Austin Tx.  1) the light up Zelkner Park.  Each year thousands and thousands of lights go into the park where Austin City Limits takes place.  The walk is between Dec. 15 and Dec 25. They pull the plug after that.  Then there was the New Years Eve parade and the ball drop.  I think Jacksonville did Fireworks, but I agree with you guys, doesn't look like the city did much except those fireworks for New Years.  I'm sure that brought in a lot of people...who wrote the check for that? 

[thelakelander]

Where's Don Redman?  I haven't heard anything with downtown and his name in the same sentence since he got elected.

[gatorback]

Sounds like nobody is focusing on a vision for downtown Jacksonville.  Sorry waste your time with such an obvious statement.  You need to get somebody's whose job is to unit all the areas in a common vision for downtown.  That's what Austin has, that's what Savannah, Ventura, apparently every city in the nation except Jacksonville?  Maybe that's why the taxes are so low in Jacksonville to the determent of any growth; nobody is promoting a better connection between land use and transportation, and protecting the environment.  Gezz, that's a vision. 

[thelakelander]

A vision would be nice.  If one were in place, we would easily get more done quicker with less public investment.

[thelakelander]

Delaney was light years ahead of Peyton's administration.  They had a vision, but did not spend as much time on coordinating the products of that vision to create critical mass and synergy with the existing built environment. 

For example, take a look at the Library and Courthouse projects.  The Library should have been built on one of the surface parking lots on Main as opposed to ripping down the loft district and the Rhodes Building.  With the new library next door, the Rhodes Building would have been viable for a loft conversion and the loft district businesses would have still been in place.  The courthouse could have easily been designed without tearing down a perfectly fine Southern Bell building.  If it was originally designed to go vertical, we would not be looking at an six block moonscape today.

Imagine if the ballpark would have been built in LaVilla or a portion of the Brooklyn Park site, instead of where it sits today.  You would have a park with a view of the skyline in the background located in areas with existing buildings that could have became spots for restaurants and sports bars.

So, there was definately vision, it just lacked the vision of placement.  This means although we have seen significant investment in the core, it hasn't paid off by attracting the amount of supporting development it could have.  This is the main thing that has separated our core from peer cities like Indianapolis, Charlotte and San Deigo.

[thelakelander]

I believe that in a general sense, retail does follow rooftops.  However, the "rooftops" were there and we tore them down and continue to tear them down.  Those rooftops are the little old 80 year old brick buildings that once had residences above street retail.  Its these little structures, not The Shipyards, that make it feasible for urban pioneers to populate the area.  The big time developers and the chains come once the vibe has been created. 

Its a simple successful process that has been repeated hundreds of thousands of times across the country.  Yet for some reason, there seems to be a belief here that we can skip that process and truck in the Landmars and Cameron Kuhns of the development industry to save the day. 

[thelakelander]

True.  I don't know what the deal with that is.  Other than the abassador program, its hard not to image downtown being any different without them.

I take that back.  If they were not in existance, their corner office space would probably be a functional storefront.

[Charles Hunter]

How secure is DVI funding in the next round of city budget cuts?  Would it be one of the first to go?

[spidey]

If the tax cuts are passed,  I would expect DVI to be goners. If they survive, it would probably have to be as some sort of public-private partnership.  Given that it services downtown, I wouldn't be surprised to see it absorbed into the JEDC somehow.

Of course, I could be totally wrong.