The Beginning of the End for Regency and Arlington.

[thelakelander]

I've got an idea:

Why don't we just bulldoze the damn thing and plant trees there?

There is much more than enough housing and area in Jacksonville for all the residents we have.  Heck, we could probably take every vagrant in the city and give them their own house!  (we certainly could give them an unfurnished condo by the river. . . guess that was a bad investment, huh?)

The only way to fix the Jacksonville disease of using up neighborhoods like WalMarts and moving on is to raze the neighborhood to the dirt and plant over it.  Brentwood, Arlington and most of Oceanway and Mandarin seem like good starting points.

Waiting for the flames,
Michael

And by "thing" I mean approximately all of Arlington east of Jacksonville University. 

Its being tried and its failing.  See this thread:

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,2016.0.html

[gmpalmer]

Dude.  Apples and oranges.  We have, what 10, 15 times their population?  And an economic base that is pretty much solid.  We're not some weird boomtown in the midwest built on a swamp. 

[thelakelander]

Apples to apples in terms that the idea of completely ripping out a neighborhood the size of Arlington (its still a pretty densely populated suburban area) and replanting it with trees won't go anywhere.

A plan in Youngstown aims to move residents out of the city's most deserted areas. The hitch: Home owners won't budge - even for $50,000.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (CNNMoney.com) -- When the city of Youngstown, Ohio, proposed incentives to move people out of declining neighborhoods, it sounded like a good idea - in theory.

The city hoped to lure holdouts living on nearly empty blocks and relocate them to more lively areas, as part of its plan to remake itself in the wake of the steel industry's departure and the foreclosure crisis. It's already cleared some lots for things like playgrounds.

Now Youngstown wants to close entire streets and bulldoze abandoned properties so it can shut down city services like street lighting, police patrols and garbage pick-ups that it can no longer afford to maintain.

To do this on a large scale, the city needs to get about 100 residents to relocate. Each is eligible for $50,000 in incentives - plenty, in this town, to buy a new home and move. The hitch: Youngstowners don't seem to want to leave their homes, no matter how blighted or abandoned the neighborhood may be.

"I'm East Side born and East Side bred and when I die, I'll be East Side dead," said Rufus Hudson, a director of work force development at Youngstown State University. "We love our side of town. The same people who watched me grow are watching my children grow."

http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/15/real_estate/Youngstown_plan_roadblock/index.htm?postversion=2008042411

[gmpalmer]

You're implying I care about giving them a choice.

Eminent domain them away.

[thelakelander]

Eminent domain them away.

Eminent domain would bankrupt the city.  JaxPort is finding out right now, its not as easy as it sounds.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/050608/bus_275704265.shtml

Besides, all of Arlington isn't in decline.  Compared to some areas of town, its doing well.

[gmpalmer]

Stephen -- we wouldn't get rid of Ft. Caroline, it's already good and woody.

Lakelander -- before we eminent domain, we readjust all the market values to 1/10 of their current standing because of blight and violence.  If we're going to use our tools like hammers then why be shy about it?

The problem is that there is no solution.  The poor will always need a place to live and, unfortunately, areas where poor people live tend towards 1) public violence and 2) the absence of investment.  As a Northsider, I can be delighted that folks are moving out of my part of town and into Arlington but that doesn't solve Arlington's problems.  Perhaps the only real answer to the problem is radical de-centralization -- make Duval County back into 10 or 20 cities.

But I am a big fan of bulldozing.

[gmpalmer]

Poor doesn't equal blight in rural areas.

It tends to equal blight in urban areas.

It's pretty simple, really.  Blight and public violence happen when there is no sense of self-sufficiency or hope among a lot of people smooshed together.  See Rome 150BC to 500AD.  In rural areas there aren't enough folks to tip the hat towards violence.  Also, the job losses in rural areas are marginally less soul-damaging because there has been, since at least the Civil War, a sense that one can "move to the city" for betterment -- i.e. if you're already in the city and the jobs disappear, where are you going to go?  And because economic well-being in a city is totally dependent upon development and investment (wheras in rural areas there is theoretically agrarianism to fall back on), when these things collapse one loses all sense of 1) hope 2) faith in society and 3) faith in the government.  When that happens, public violence follows.

Btw -- what I mean by "public violence" is the use of violence outside of the home or place of work (muggings, drive-bys, carjackings, stranger rape, etc.) -- the stuff that "makes the news"  The private violence of white collar areas is often just as bad but since it tends to not be reported (for a lot of reasons) it doesn't have the same effect on the psyche.

[RiversideGator]

More "depression lust"?

[Ethylene]

What's with the planters going in up and down Rogero Rd? I have never in my life seen anything so crazy. They put in islands with palms about every 20 feet or so and staggered from side to side, not in the median but between the road and the sidewalk in the right of way. Forget about riding safely by bike.

[billy]

Traffic Calming, I believe the term is.
It's supposed to slow cars down.

[Bativac]

Not to dredge up an old thread, but when did the Barnes and Noble near Regency close? We went out there a couple weeks ago and it was gone. [EDIT: nevermind, just found an old thread that answered my question.] Circuit City, of course, closed awhile ago... is anything in its place? Or is it a big, empty, custom-built building?

We wandered into the mall and wandered right back out again. Shudder.

My fiancee worked at The Sports Authority 3 or 4 years ago, and they seemed to be "updating" that shopping center recently, but the giant parking lot still gives it a very empty, desperate feeling... and don't get me started on "the new" CompUSA. Can anything save this area? Or will we have to wait for the "Arlington Revitalization Plan" in fifteen or 20 years?

[thelakelander]

A massive remodeling of the mall would help.  Until that happens, things in the immediate area will continue to decline.

[thelakelander]

I think it starts and ends with the mall property.  Unfortunately, General Growth is not in good financial shape to redevelop the property.

[thelakelander]

I'm pretty familiar with the area.  I was only speaking from a short term perspective (5 years or less) in solidifying the retail market, not redeveloping infrastructure.  If you're talking about adding rail down Arlington Expressway to redevelop the area, that's most likely a 20 (if you're lucky) to40 year process from start to finish.

[thelakelander]

Wasn't that a charette?  There is no official adopted redevelopment plan for the area.  The city is currently in the process of doing a visioning plan for the Arlington planning district.  However, it is not complete at this moment.