Demolitions in Springfield: the facts

[Lunican]

SPAR isn't a government entity, but didn't COJ send everyone looking for a COA to SPAR first?

[Miss Fixit]

CUFG, I don't believe we have met; I don't know you so I hope my impression of you is false, but you certainly seem to be one of the most bitter, singularly focused individuals I have encountered (electronically, that is).You obviously know very little about me.  I DO know Joe and Gloria and Stephen and I am positive that they will all agree that I am not one to "sit idly by". I am not a SPAR member. My relationship with Springfield is brief, only two years, but during that time I believe I have been much more involved than you have in fighting demolitions and working to improve the neighborhood. We all know the history and I agree that history is important. The demolitions in Springfield are a disgrace and must not continue. The lack of business on Main Street is shocking. But your stories are old and tired; you never seem to have anything new to say. Yes, I know, you've advised that you will not shut up. I just need to start ignoring you like everyone else does.

[ChriswUfGator]

CUFG, I don't believe we have met; I don't know you so I hope my impression of you is false, but you certainly seem to be one of the most bitter, singularly focused individuals I have encountered (electronically, that is).You obviously know very little about me.  I DO know Joe and Gloria and Stephen and I am positive that they will all agree that I am not one to "sit idly by". I am not a SPAR member. My relationship with Springfield is brief, only two years, but during that time I believe I have been much more involved than you have in fighting demolitions and working to improve the neighborhood. We all know the history and I agree that history is important. The demolitions in Springfield are a disgrace and must not continue. The lack of business on Main Street is shocking. But your stories are old and tired; you never seem to have anything new to say. Yes, I know, you've advised that you will not shut up. I just need to start ignoring you like everyone else does.

You don't know whether I've been involved or not, if you've been here less than 2 years. If that's the case, I have a decade's worth of experience with Springfield over your short time, which makes your indictment all the more misplaced. Moreover, they're not my 'stories,' SPAR's refusal to support the mothballing legislation, carwash appeal, etc., were within the last year, and those certainly aren't 'stories' at all much less of my creation, are they? Neither is the cold fact that SPAR allowed 500+ properties, or a full third of a national historic district, to be demolished. Which of course just became known this month. This week in fact. But listening to you, I suppose that's ancient history?

I'm afraid the facts simply don't line up with your narrative.

Again, if you don't like my commets, then feel free to tell that gentleman next to you to remove that gun from your head so you can stop reading them. Why would you expect anyone to 'shut up' merely because you disagree? You must have an awfully high opinion of your opinion. You're entitled to yours, be it as it is based on the short time you've been here, and I'm certainly entitled to mine. So unless I'm missing something, and I'm relatively sure I'm not, then it appears at this point that we simply agree to disagree.

Or don't agree. I don't think we're going to change either of our minds at this point either way, do you? Of course I'm not acting like a 6 year old and threatening to 'ignore' you or expecting you to 'shut up.' In fact I've said from my first response that you should immediately have that gun pointed at your head surgically removed so you can ignore my posts if you so desire. Not sure why you think that would bother me, a quick review of the record reveals I first suggested it.

In fact, let me go so far as to say I'd be honored.

[Debbie Thompson]

CUFG, where is your anger for the City of Jacksonville, who is tasked by municipal law to preserve historic districts? As a legal mind, you know about that.  There are 500+ houses gone.  It’s awful (although some of those are probably post-fire demos.)  Still, it is the City who issued all those demo permits.  SPAR has no power to demolish a house.  While SPAR didn't fight the demos in the recent past like they should have, and even encouraged some of them to, in my opinion, their shame, it is the City of Jacksonville who is ultimately responsible for this mess, and continues to be. 

Our City government has very little to no vision or interest in preserving our history.  With all the historic homes and structures surrounding the urban core, we could have been a huge historic tourism destination had it been properly managed with brick streets, street cars, and little mom & pop shops.  Savannah and Charleston would have been jealous.  But, in typical Jacksonville style, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

At least one current council member is actively trying to destroy even more, although he calls his proactive insertion into the free market of not allowing the preservation of what’s already there “not interfering with free enterprise.”  Huh?  Go figure that one out and comment on it.

Nearly every SPAR post you write is the same stuff, just recycled and repeated, over and over.   At one point, it was important to shed light and draw attention.  But, it's no longer helpful.  The point has been made.  We are trying to move forward in a more positive way.  Instead of recycling the past ad nauseum, why not find out what’s going on currently and form an opinion about that?

[sheclown]

ChrisGator, I believe, is waiting for a sign of repentance.  While change has occurred, this step has not.  He was greatly hurt by SPAR with Louise's direction, like many of us.  That sort of thing is tough to understand unless you have been a victim of it.

Want him to heal?  Why not ask SPAR to contact him and let him vent directly to them.  Let them acknowledge to him the hurt they have done.  It is what anyone who has been attacked wants.

This is what is missing.

[Debbie Thompson]

While I agree with you, She Clown, in my personal experience, I don't get too many people who have hurt me calling on me to repent.  Do you?  And yet I have somehow found the will to move on.  :-)

[sheclown]

SPAR is not a person.  It is an organization which wants to have authority over the neighborhood and influence over how precious resources are used.  TRUST is an important part of its success.  It is requesting that the neighborhood trust it and be willing to move forward. 

While I agree that very few people who have hurt me in the past call me to repent; however, those who want to maintain a relationship with me do.

And, like it or not, ChrisGator is part of the "neighborhood."

[Springfielder]

There aren't many who have had a true disdain for the actions and underhandedness of spar, and have witnessed the injustice and blatant disregard for the actual historic preservation, of which spar is supposed to represent, than I. Nor could there be too many others who have been as vocal about all of the negative spar has created and caused, than I. For I have been around this neighborhood a long, long time.

However, I know for a fact that Miss Fixit has been deeply involved in the good of this neighborhood, and has been instrumental in working to turn bad into good, and has been quite successful at it. She's fought the entities that needed to be met head on, and has won on many levels, which has resulted in very positive steps for the community as a whole.

My point is, we all know that spar has made some huge and horrid impacts upon Springfield, their actions have hurt many, and have excluded most who were not in 'their corner', so to speak. I am very cautiously watching and waiting to see how the 'new' spar works, and would love to see a more cohesiveness with other organizations that have proven themselves to be for the betterment of the neighborhood. It's up to spar to either become part of the positive and more or less join forces, or not. Either way, the neighborhood will continue to move forward with it's fight to save the historic structures, and continue to work to improve things for all.

[ChriswUfGator]

CUFG, where is your anger for the City of Jacksonville, who is tasked by municipal law to preserve historic districts? As a legal mind, you know about that.  There are 500+ houses gone.  It’s awful (although some of those are probably post-fire demos.)  Still, it is the City who issued all those demo permits.  SPAR has no power to demolish a house.  While SPAR didn't fight the demos in the recent past like they should have, and even encouraged some of them to, in my opinion, their shame, it is the City of Jacksonville who is ultimately responsible for this mess, and continues to be. 

Our City government has very little to no vision or interest in preserving our history.  With all the historic homes and structures surrounding the urban core, we could have been a huge historic tourism destination had it been properly managed with brick streets, street cars, and little mom & pop shops.  Savannah and Charleston would have been jealous.  But, in typical Jacksonville style, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

At least one current council member is actively trying to destroy even more, although he calls his proactive insertion into the free market of not allowing the preservation of what’s already there “not interfering with free enterprise.”  Huh?  Go figure that one out and comment on it.

Nearly every SPAR post you write is the same stuff, just recycled and repeated, over and over.   At one point, it was important to shed light and draw attention.  But, it's no longer helpful.  The point has been made.  We are trying to move forward in a more positive way.  Instead of recycling the past ad nauseum, why not find out what’s going on currently and form an opinion about that?

No luck with that gun-from-head removal surgery? I'm dsappointed, I was really crossing my fingers for you to pull through.

Regarding my 'anger' at COJ, I have to take exception to your use of the word 'anger' at all, as I'm not angry. I just see the facts for the facts. To any extent possible, I've taken COJ's actions up in the proper venue. COJ settled with me every time, dropping a quarter of a mil worth of code liens SPAR generated with its mass bogus complaint call-ins. And COJ's contractor is about to settle another claim for knocking my friend's building down. I don't just sit on random message boards like a monkey with a typewriter regurgitating ancient history and in need of direction to the proper outlet, though I certainly appreciate your vote of confidence. I've been suing COJ since before it became fashionable. And though I appreciate the rather ironic suggestion otherwise, I am well up on current Springfield events.

One more time, if you disfavor my posts, then feel free to have that gun removed from your head so you can stop reading them. I hear Johns Hopkins has an experimental gun-from-head removal surgery in clinical trials, I'd advise contacting them to see if perhaps they can help you overcome your obvious difficulty.

Of course, SPAR, as Lunican noted above when he mentioned the travails of anyone seeking a COA, is judgment proof insofar as it unofficially controlled certain of COJ's decisions regarding zoning and code enforcement, but bore none of the costs or liability for its actions. Which wasn't any coincidence. But I suppose that must be ancient history which renders his post nothing more than garbage you'll threaten to ignore. And speaking of, a deal is a deal. You promised, as I recall, to ignore me, and so far you've repeatedly breached that compact, and much to my disappointment.

And nor are you the arbiter of what point has been sufficiently made, and by whom. With the implied expectation that once you deem a topic covered, everyone should immediately shut up and move along, Once again, you must have an awfully high opinion of your own opinion. Two opinions you'll note I don't share.

Regarding Sheclown's comment, you've put the same silly sarcasm blinders on in interpreting her words as you have mine. Nobody is waiting for any handwritten repentance delivered on a silver tray by a gloved waiter, for what you continue to mischaracterize as ancient history. The problem is that moving forward, in order to put SPAR behind us, they actually have to be behind us.

In order to move on, they cannot still be doing the same old things which were, despite your apparently bottomless well of apologism, improper, unforgivable, and damaging. Despite SPAR's claimed support for mothballing, the day of council review they ditched and not a single SPAR member showed up to support it, and in fact they tried to have it yanked from the agenda, forcing a last-minute rewrite to remove language they thought reflected badly on them. Clearly so concerned with the houses, as always. That was last month, in case you don't have a calendar handy. Or evidently don't have one at all.

I'm not sure what your goal is in this interchange? If you really expect everything to be peaches and cream 24/7, then you may want to consider another message board. If you have some larger goal in mind, feel free to PM me and let me know, or else get word through, as it appears we have many of the same friends. If there is some strategy related to SPAR that I'm missing, then by all means please clue me in. But you're not going to win a SPAR apologism debate on these facts, I'm afraid that ship sank before it left the dock. Hard to be bygones when they aren't gone much less bygone. And I suspect you're also not going to win your ad hominem side debate with me, which relies entirely on what must be a blissful ignorance, apparently extending through the present, and on your continually misstating the facts.

Unless you explain your position, aside from us simply not liking each other, which in case you haven't noticed doesn't bother me in the slightest, then I'll happily await your fulfillment of your promise to move on and ignore me. As I said originally, I'd be honored. The larger questions about SPAR and its role in the neighborhood moving forward can only be answered by waiting and watching to see how they reach out, integrate, and try to achieve something positive. So far I haven't been liking what I'm seeing from the 'new' SPAR. And frankly Neither has anyone else. But you aren't going to simply come in and declare 'it's over, move along, nothing to see here...' and expect that will do anything to answer the SPAR question for anyone, including me, without your looking like an ass.

Time, and not your unilateral declarations, will be the judge.

[sheclown]

I am in the wonderful position of personally knowing Debbie, MissFixit and ChrisGator.   And, believe it or not, we are all in agreement in many issues relating to Springfield. 

Missfixit, as her name implies, spends most of her time volunteering to fix things in Springfield.  She is a powerhouse, a force to be reckoned with.  She plays her cards close to her chest, so don't ever assume that you know her or know what she is thinking.  I would trust her and her judgment under any conditions.  If I could have representation at the Pearly Gates, I'd like her to argue my case.

Debbie, the metaphorical nurse, the healer, she stands behind those she believes in.  She would love you, ChrisGator, if she got to know you.  I could hear her giggle at your antics (only if they were not aimed at anyone).  Most of us who are involved with Debbie have been "correctected" by her at least once or twice as she sings the song "turn the other cheek."  She lives by this and prays that others do too.

And ChrisGator, a loyal friend,  brave enough to speak his mind even when he gets attacked for doing so.

[ChriswUfGator]

I am in the wonderful position of personally knowing Debbie, MissFixit and ChrisGator.   And, believe it or not, we are all in agreement in many issues relating to Springfield. 

Missfixit, as her name implies, spends most of her time volunteering to fix things in Springfield.  She is a powerhouse, a force to be reckoned with.  She plays her cards close to her chest, so don't ever assume that you know her or know what she is thinking.  I would trust her and her judgment under any conditions.  If I could have representation at the Pearly Gates, I'd like her to argue my case.

Debbie, the metaphorical nurse, the healer, she stands behind those she believes in.  She would love you, ChrisGator, if she got to know you.  I could hear her giggle at your antics (only if they were not aimed at anyone).  Most of us who are involved with Debbie have been "correctected" by her at least once or twice as she sings the song "turn the other cheek."  She lives by this and prays that others do too.

And ChrisGator, a loyal friend,  brave enough to speak his mind even when he gets attacked for doing so.

She may be the nicest person in the world, Gloria, and your endorsement certainly carries weight with me.

However, when it comes to SPAR, their own actions and attitude, and not your friend's half-baked apologist rants and ad hominem commentary on a message board, are going to be the determining factor in establishing their role moving forward. That line of commentary on her part is ill-advised and premature. Most people, including me, are in wait-and-see mode with the 'new' SPAR, and only time and their own actions and positive efforts will be the determining factor, not her opinions, or in this case her opinion on the weight of her own opinions. Your friend, in coming here and making these unilateral declarations that everything is peachy and we can just 'shut up' and move along, makes herself out to be an ass to anyone who's been here longer than 5 minutes.

If SPAR wants trust and positive support, then it needs to earn it by its own actions. And the jury is still out. I was admittedly less-than-amused at their refusal to support mothballing, their last-minute attempt to submarine the council bill, and their nevertheless taking credit for it in their own newsletter two weeks ago, which Stephen and I tore apart in another thread. So I guess you could say the initial signs aren't positive. But I suppose time will tell.

[ChriswUfGator]

And Gloria, let's not forget SPAR calling you a liar and undermining the mothballing legislation, by claiming that your figure on the number of demolitions is a fabrication, and that the true number is 1/3'rd of what you've claimed. This has given Schellenberg ammunition for his misguided effort to repeal it;

Letters from readers: Historic Springfield Houses
Posted: August 13, 2011 - 12:00am

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/letters-readers/2011-08-13/story/letters-readers-historic-springfield-houses#ixzz1Y9hxG3O2


Bill needs revising

Unfortunately, the editorial regarding the Springfield article distorted the facts.

Although the original bill stated that over 450 historic homes have been demolished in Springfield, when I inquired about the number, no one could verify it or provide data to back it up.

In fact, when the bill was discussed at the council meeting, a member of the Springfield Historic Society stated the number of demolished homes was more likely a third of the 450 listed in the bill.

Also, the editorial mentioned the five-year moratorium. But that was reduced to three years before passage.

Despite the erroneous figures present in the original bill (and in the editorial), I voted against the bill for two main reasons:

- The three-year moratorium granted in the bill is not a term of three years commencing from the date of the mayor's signature. In actuality, homeowners can use this three-year moratorium whenever they want. I will be introducing a bill to rectify this gross error in the bill.

- I believe in the free enterprise system.

It is not the place of government to interfere with the laws of supply and demand, to choose winners and losers, or to subsidize the failures of private investors.

We will learn from our mistakes, but only if we are allowed to make them.

Matt Schellenberg, City Council member

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/letters-readers/2011-08-13/story/letters-readers-historic-springfield-houses#ixzz1Y9hdaHs9

I don't know about you, but I don't consider things that happened in the past month or so to be ancient history, do you?

Again, your friend's apologist commentary on SPAR is grossly premature and ill-advised. At best, the jury is still out.

Or is she planning on writing the Times-Union to tell them it's all ancient history and to 'shut up' as well?

[sheclown]

"let me know if you have a plan that I should be involved in"

There are a large number of homes still standing on the infamous "formal track" -- the exact number and the addresses have not been received in spite of repeated requests.  These formal track homes got nailed with their death sentences beginning in 2007 (the year that 26 houses went down). 

Patterson Apartments was one of these homes, a formal track decided in 2010 and demolished in 2011.

Just what deal was made, what plan was hatched?

It is a plan that is still very much in play today.  And will be tomorrow and for years.

...There are no appeals allowed on formal track homes. 

[Debbie Thompson]

Chris, in your rather long post, you were unfortunately, mixing us up and responded to my post by castigating Miss Fixit in my stead.  While I might like that (she's young and beautiful after all) I'm not too sure she would.

To both of you, Chris and Stephen, it was not my intention to be an apologist for the actions of SPAR about old houses.  I don't wear blinders.  I've taken Louise deSpain and others in SPAR (Gerry Troy, Mac Bissette and others) to task on many occasions about the old houses in the 7 years I have lived in Springfield, not that it did any good. 

Chris, I don't know how you got the idea that I disliked you,  I read all your posts. How else would I know what they are about?   If I chose not to, it wouldn't take a gun to my head, as you suggested to Miss Fixit, to make me not read them.  Not sure why you don't think I can disagee with you without disliking you.  I thought I was civil about it.  I'd take my post down since my intent was not to cause you grief, but it's been quoted so many times in the last few hours, there would be little point in it.  So please accept my apology for offending you instead.

I'm tired of fighting.  Don't want to fight with you. Don't want to fight with Stephen.  Tired of fighting SPAR. Hope to see improvement in that organization soon or I'll have to seriously rethink my membership.  Hope to proactively fight for our remaining old houses. If I didn't care so much about them, I'd stop that too.

[Springfielder]

That's it, Debbie...too many others think that just because others see things differently, and/or disagree, that it means they dislike the person posting...which generally, isn't the case. I know for a fact that both you, and Miss Fixit are far from the kind of people that simply take spar at their word. We've all been around long enough, we've all seen what spar has done in the past and none of us have blinders on. It's just reached the point, everyone knows the truth, and it's become tiring to continue keep discussing it...the old beating a dead horse stance. Just because we've reached the point that it feels (to us) that it no longer feels necessary to continually bringing up the past in order to educate others...like I said, we all know the truth about spar. I simply don't feel the need to insult others for having a different outlook, nor do I feel that because someone has a differing opinion of spar, that they're wrong. 

Oddly enough, even though it may not appear...we're all basically on the same page when it comes to lack of trusting spar. I know that I'm in a wait and see mode, have been for quite some time...I would like to feel optimistic, I would like to believe that spar sincerely has taken on a new found desire to do what's right for the community of which it's supposed to be serving...but because of their history, and because of the loss of trust, I wait to see. Proof of sincerity is to be proven, and they must indeed, prove themselves worthy of my trust.

Even with the newer board members, there's cause for concern...when one had taken down a historic house. The fact that I get along with this neighbor does not mean that I accept the 'reason' for it being taken down. New board members does not always equal new leadership or a new and improved outlook on what's best for the community. Time will tell.