Ben Carter Properties and Area Development

[thelakelander]

Ground floor retail isn't going to balance the cost of structured parking if you're in a situation where you simply don't need a garage to make the project work. As for vision, I still put that on the city. Carter/Simon's vision was a suburban mall without a roof and that's what they successfully built. If Jacksonville wants more walkable development, all we have to do is change our zoning policies to force it. Then it won't matter if it's a SJTC, McDonalds or gas station because their site layouts would be required to treat the pedestrian as a priority.

[tufsu1]

garages tend to cost around $20,000 a space (and even more for small ones)....so that space is roughly 9' x 18'....or 162 square feet....and the cost of 1000 car garage is about $20 million

so...1000 ground level parking spaces takes up roughly 5 acres (including aisles and landscaping but no stormwater pond).

So, basically the only way structured parking is a better deal is if the property is too small to fit everything wanted and/or the price of land is greater than $4 million per acre.

[simms3]

A few notes about the center.

1) Garages are very expensive in several different ways and land in Jacksonville is way too abundant and too cheap to financially justify a garage, from anyone's perspective, from a lender's to a self-financed project.

2) A movie theater is not fitting for the center and would more likely go in an adjoining power center (if Tinseltown weren't already nearby).

3) You have to worry about attracting bands of teenagers without supervision, especially the kinds of teens who skip school and commit crimes.  Location, tenancy, layout, security, hours of operation...all of it flows harmoniously to attract a certain demographic.

4) Those "islands" may be ugly and not urban, but when you want to eat at Rennas on your lunch break or you want to visit a store for necessity on short order, it makes no sense to park a quarter mile away and "meander" to your destination.  When you live in a driving town (and I do, too, even though my city has the 7th busiest train system in the country), you need to factor in parking, ease, and convenience if you're a store or tenant of convenience.  Juicy is different from UPS Store.  One is for women and girls with free time who want to visit that store and others.  The other is for people who want to scurry in and out as quickly as possible and visit no other store.

5) They looked at putting residents above the shops, but there were too many conflicts, even as minute as garbage pick up scheduling conflicts, etc.  Residents above the shops did not make sense for that area.