Peyton to focus on downtown

[thelakelander]

Peyton to focus much of final months on economic development, downtown

By Matt Galnor

In what he describes as one of his last major speeches, Mayor John Peyton will lay out a road map of his final 18 months in office to a collection of business and civic leaders Wednesday  afternoon.


Peyton’s focus will be on emphasizing Jacksonville’s strengths and positioning the city to recover faster than its peers once the economy turns around.


“There are things we can to help Jacksonville to be more vibrant, more competitive and recover faster than the cities we compare ourselves to,” Peyton said Tuesday in an interview with the Times-Union.


The mayor, whose final term expires in June 2011, will discuss his plans in three broad groupings: continuing to push job growth; improving residents’ quality of life; and breathing life into a dormant downtown.


Individual projects include helping create a daytime resource center for the city’s homeless, developing a solid public-private partnership to speed development of Cecil Commerce Center and building consensus for a riverfront convention center.


About 200 leaders were invited to the speech at Snyder Memorial Church downtown, spokeswoman Misty Skipper said. The guest list is larger but similar to the one Peyton convened last summer when he announced controversial plans to raise the property tax rate.


Peyton said this address won’t launch a speaking tour similar to his “Fix It Now” campaign but rather detail what he’s trying to accomplish.


Peyton says he’s found “the more we engage the community, the more effective we are.”
Mike Hightower, a close Peyton ally who ran the mayor’s two campaigns, said the only way to help ensure that projects and ideas last into another administration is to build community consensus behind them.


“He’s sort of laying the groundwork for when we come out of these financial challenges,” Hightower said.


Some of the highlights of Peyton’s speech will include:


• Building on the city’s longstanding partnership with the military and channeling lobbying efforts toward returning a carrier to Mayport Naval Station.


• Inking a deal with a Texas firm that will put money into getting Cecil sites ready for development and tap its relationships with industry leaders to bring businesses to the former Navy base.


• Beginning discussions about building a convention center on land that’s now home to the Duval County Courthouse. The property is next to the Hyatt, Jacksonville’s largest hotel, and would become available once the new courthouse is built.


Discussions should begin, so there’s support behind one site and plan once financing is worked out in years to come.


“We don’t have the money to do it, clearly, but we have time to build consensus,” Peyton said.


Work will start this month on $2.7 million in improvements to Laura Street, with a goal of creating a vibrant, walkable corridor downtown. But that work won’t create the jump-start needed if nothing’s done with the vacant buildings lining the street, most notably the historic Barnett Bank building and Laura Street Trio.


Peyton said Tuesday he’ll be “chief salesman” on those buildings, looking for buyers to match up with those signature buildings.


The city is likely facing another multimillion-dollar budget shortfall, and the mayor’s speech comes just months after the City Council approved a 9 percent property tax increase.
But Peyton said the city must continue to improve and not get bogged down by an anti-government crowd that is against most capital projects.


“Let’s not allow this economy to let that segment call the shots,” Peyton said.

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-01-19/story/peyton_to_focus_much_of_final_months_on_economic_development_downtown

[Noone]

This is the opportunity for the hot dog cart instead of being on the Main St. bridge  it needs to be  operated out of a container on the 680' Public Pier next to Berkman.

Does anyone remember Fred Kent? He was the keynote speaker at the Jacksonville Beaches Business Convention Visitors Bureau when they made the name change to Visit Jacksonville. The main thrust of his speech to create activity and vibrancy was to have 10 things to do. So imagine 10 containers on the pier. The anchor container should be a blue CROWLEY container. Blueprint for Prosperity for everyone who participates. 10 different businesses.

Yesterday after Finance I met with Councilman Gaffney Dist.7 this is in his district and he is receptive to this immediate creation of jobs. A hot dog container should be a given and we can only ask Mayor Peyton if he would support this.

On Friday I met with a representative with Suddath and they are on board with not only donating one container but all 10 if necessary. That is stepping up to the plate.  Also met with Nancy Rubin from Jaxport and they can also participate in some role.

Should this be a focus of Downtown? I'd say yes.

[JeffreyS]

Peyton has started to say the right things. Let's get the convention center "shovel ready" so if Hyatt or another developer wants in we just say go.

[Dog Walker]

The Suddath family and company have been stepping up to plate for three generations, always quietly and effectively.  Really good folk.

[fsujax]

Finally he is now talking about relocating the Convention Center to the riverfront. This to me is the most interesting part of the story.

[fsu813]

Thank God!

[Adam Hollingsworth]

Agree that putting a stake in the ground on convention center begins to focus the conversation and the movement toward a new site.  Two pieces in today's speech that were not in T-U story, but are equally exciting are (1) the Mayor's focus on growing our biomedical presence...a great job engine for Jacksonville and Springfield (Shands/UF) and (2) an effort to create low-cost housing in small, vacant downtown buildings for use by artists and others looking to reduce their housing spend.  This may be a short-term way to get more people living downtown.  Mayor is pulling from his sister's experience in NYC's SoHo and Chelsea.

[mtraininjax]

As Art Shad so elequently stated regarding downtown, SPEND, SPEND, SPEND!!!!!

[comncense]

It never ceases to amaze me with all the negative comments this story received on the Jacksonville.com site. It's depressing that we are in the minority of people that would like to see Downtown flourish.

[CS Foltz]

mtraininjax...........I agree! Having some sort of plan would be nice and I hate the shotgun approach to anything! It seems somewhat strange to me that this is taking place now...........after all how long has Johnny had to do something with downtown and the surrounding area? All of a sudden.......here we go? What about all of the money that this is going to take? It's amazing to me, the City is in the hole financially, but we magically have money available now?

[rjp2008]

Why not build the convention center on the shipyards property? Make it a very cool looking, sail-inspired, jutting into the river, with surrounding retail, entertainment and office.

He mentioned the current courthouse position - if you're going to attract people, blow up the parking lost and build the thing right on the river there, or put in a park, right next to that housing development on the water.

[JeffreyS]

^ Because the Hyatt connects to the old courthouse site and you can walk to the landing.

[kells904]

I was on jacksonville.com a lot in the last few months, but that changed when I stumbled upon MJ. I know all about the angry torch-carrying lynchmob of commenters they have, and that one guy with the Dr. Phil picture hates more stuff than Grouchy Smurf.

I'm very new to the concept of caring enough about downtown that I want to start getting involved.  As such, I'm somewhat behind in what all is going on down there, and I know very little about Mayor Peyton except that it seems like the people are on a whole, VERY disappointed in him, and that BRT stuff scares the crap out of me.  So, while I remain HOPEFUL that he's finally seen the light, I maintain a somewhat untrusting attitude.  For some reason, I don't trust politicians.  Weird....

But a bigger convention center, near the Hyatt and the Landing makes perfect sense, which in turn ups its competitive bad-assity, and therefore brings in more convention-goers. 

[Wacca Pilatka]

Its mostly that the times union commenters are generally a group of retired jackasses who think that the country officially went to hell in 1968 and recently discovered that the internet cant walk away from the family reunion table with excuses about needing to get back home for pressing appointments.

Its really a small group of commenters, maybe about 200.  And they are mostly mean.  On any issue.

The comments really catch fire whenever someone manages to kill any member of any minority.

If you think the comments are depressing regarding downtown, then you should catch them on those days.

Applies to their self-loathing bile toward the hometown football team too...

[Wacca Pilatka]

Since it hasn't been brought up yet, I'm also very encouraged at the comments on the Trio and the Barnett even if the mayor is a bit late to the party on that issue.  Seeing the Trio buildings decay every time I come to town has always made me wistfully recall when Matt Carlucci said their restoration would be his #1 priority if he were to take office.