ruminations on the importance of residency on opinions

[doglover]

Stephen, Just out of curiosity, what part of Riverside do you live in?

[doglover]

Neither Doglover nor Dogwalker are from that immediate area. 

Do not presume to know me or where I live. I do live in that area. But you haven't told us, what part of Riverside do you live in?

[JeffreyS]

Everyone's presumption that if what happens in Jacksonville off your individual block is non of your business is silly.  I can understand fairness on any street. 

[doglover]

Everyone's presumption that if what happens in Jacksonville off your individual block is non of your business is silly.  I can understand fairness on any street.

I agree completely, but it seems like anytime anyone posts anything about the urban core that stephendare disagrees with, one of his first tactics is to say something like "and you live where exactly"..he did it to me earlier in this thread...so I was just curious, since mr. dare seems to be THE authority on riverside, especially this specific situation, does he even live in Riverside?

[JeffreyS]

I have seen him do that. I think he lives in Springfield.

[JeffreyS]

My recolection is of you giving people a hard time about wanting to be in the suburbs so they shouldn't be bothering the core. I could be wrong.

[doglover]

ah, so here are my missing posts...in case anyone is wondering, I did not start this thread, it was pulled from another thread...

[grimss]

Similarly, the urban core and transition neighborhoods were never designed nor meant for bucolic silence or low density of the suburbs, and they should not be subjected to, nor forced to comply with suburban standards.

We provide these different kinds of zonings so that people have options and alternatives.  People who dont like the city can live in the country.  People who dont like suburbs can live in downtowns.  People that dont like the hustle and bustle of the city can live in the suburbs.

Actually, Stephen, have to disagree with you on this one, at least from a historical perspective and especially as regards the particular situation in Riverside Avondale.  Riverside was platted in 1868 and, although its outer boundary was adjacent to the shipping docks and lumber businesses in nearby Brooklyn, Riverside was intended to be a purely residential suburb. Even after Riverside was incorporated into the city when the trolley was extended in the 1880s, it remained entirely residential and/or farmland until the 5 Points shopping corridor was developed in the 1920s. Avondale was most assuredly intended to be upscale residential ("Riverside's Residential Ideal, where only the correct and well-to-do people would live.") The Park & King commerial corridor was largely the creation of the trolley, as I understand it, and the portion we now think of as Upper King (Intuition, Bold City) was on the other side of a small African-American development called Silvertown; the light industrial uses, etc., that we associate with that area were not part of the original Riverside or Avondale developments.

All the commercial zoning we have in Riverside today is a direct consequence of the boneheaded rezoning implemented after Jacksonville's consolidation, when planners decided the best way to "save" struggling historic neighborhoods was to turn them into commerical zones that would attract new development. (Brooklyn, anyone?)  Prior to the 1968 consolidation, Riverside was 85% residential. After consolidation, the area stretching from Park Street to the river between Five Points and King Street was reclassified as an office and institutional zone, and Riverside suddenly had the highest allowable density zone in the city. As you might imagine, this change didn't occur because the residents asked for it--indeed, the zoning now made single family houses permissable only by exemption. Much as we've all come to appreciate the mixed-use nature of the community today, all those cute bungalows that are zoned CRO, on Park Street, for example, were unquestionably built as residences and Riverside likely would have remained low density if the zoning hadn't been changed in one fell swoop.

[Ajax]

No hard feelings.  Sometimes I get people mixed up with their past claims as well.  Most notably Notnow.  Somewhere along the way I got the fellow mistaken with an old poster named John Cocktosen, and I am constantly embarrassing myself with claims that he posted something or another that he absolutely did not post....not even once.

Such is the case on this claim, I believe.

But what a great name! 

Sorry, I just had to say that.  Please continue...

[thelakelander]

From the research I've done on Jax over the years, here's my perspective of the city's older inner ring neighborhoods.  While some areas were originally platted in the 19th century, they remained fairly rural and undeveloped during their early years.  After the Great Fire of 1901, Jacksonville underwent a huge period of growth up through the Great Depression.  By 1930, a city that literally burned to the ground 29 years earlier, had 130,000 residents within a 26 square mile area. 

During this period, neighborhoods like Springfield and Riverside were completely transformed as downtown grew into a true central business district.  It is during this period when growth (stimulated by streetcars) created the majority of the historic residences we all fight to preserve today.  This same period also saw the development of commercial districts to serve those residents, like Park & King and Five Point, in Riverside's case.  By the same token, this same period also saw rapid industrial growth along the CSX "A" line in the neighborhood.

Sanborn maps and city directories indicate the older industrial buildings along King and Rosselle date back to the late 1910s/early 1920s.  For example, the building housing Bold City was originally a part of the Schell-Sasse manufacturing Company in the 1920s.  The white brick building at King & Rosselle was a Pepsi-Cola bottling factory between 1933 and 1946.  The CoRK warehouse also dates back to the 1920s.

The building Intuition is in was constructed around 1960.  In 1930, that site had a Grooms Doughnut factory on it.  Right across the tracks, Leggett Heating and Air Conditioning site opened as the Dinsmore Dairy Company in 1930 and the Metro (further down the tracks) was a part of the Foremost Dairies ice cream factory.  Although they aren't valued like the residential architecture, a good chunk of the commerical and industrial buildings throughout the city are just as historic because they were mostly developed during the same period of rapid growth.

Also, when speaking suburbs 100 years ago verses suburbs today, the density scale is completely different.  Although Riverside/Avondale was originally developed as a primarily residential suburb (with a few neighborhood commercial districts), the density was still more than five times as dense to what Jacksonville's newer suburban areas are today.  This was simply due to it being fully developed before WWII, when local development patterns really began to transition from pedestrian/transit to automobile orientation.  Even today, after years of density decreases partially due to reduced family size and additional commercial development, Riverside still has census tracks with population densities as high as 7,000 people per square mile.  Considering a few of those tracks include chunks of the river, I suspect they're actually denser.  On the flip end, majority of the Southside's census tracks are below 3,000 people per square mile.

I'm posting this to illustrate that single family or low rise housing doesn't necessarily equal low density.  Savannah doesn't have many tall buildings but it averaged nearly 12,000 people/square mile in 1920.  Riverside hasn't been a low density neighborhood in over a century.  Its possible to stay within the intent of the overlay and see a dramatic increase in population and density over time.  Simply, put a house or commercial building on every remaining vacant lot in the neighborhood and you'll have a pretty dense pedestrian scale community. Both scenes below are possible in certain areas of Riverside, while also keeping in line with the overlay.





So, I'll sum this up by claiming that when discussing Riverside's character, it isn't a high vs. low density or an urban vs. suburban topic.  At its lowest, it's a medium density community currently.  I also don't think anyone can rightfully claim increased density can't happen within the overlay or that the overlay is meant to preserve low density development patterns.

[obie1]

lakelander is always the voice of reason. I want to be him when I grow up

[grimss]

I agree, Lake is a welcome voice of intelligent reason, and in terms of researching our city's history, he's got to be getting up there on the Wayne Wood level.

What I was attempting to point out is that the mixed-use zoning we see today, with commercial (whether medical office or restaurant) directly abutting residential, simply wasn't part of the mix that was "planned" for our historic urban neighborhoods. Yes, there were 2,500 residents in Riverside by 1895, but that was probably because, outside of Springfield and some hearty souls who were in Arlington, that was as far out as you could go and still be convenient to downtown in a non-car world. (In fact, Riverside prospered because, pre-trolley, folks could take ride their naptha launches on the river to their offices downtown.) Even in the 1920s, commercial businesses designed to serve local residents were limited to the trolley-route corridors, and the rest was residential. (I'll have to check with Wayne, but I don't think all the cool industrial businesses you cite on Upper King were even remotely deemed part of "Riverside" until probably new zoning maps kicked in the '60s.)

Our vision of density and mixed-use is just fundamentally different today. I, for one, enjoy the vitality it represents. But one can't just state that "transition neighborhoods" were designed from the get-go to be extensions of the urban core, with all the heavy utilization that entails. I would still insist that's a byproduct of the Consolidation rezoning. Just look to the Book of Jacksonville, published in 1895, which has this to say about Riverside:

"The people of Riverside take great pride in their suburb. They are ambitious that their premises shall be always neat and attractve, their houses painted, and their lawns green, and growing, and blooming. They have their little social sets, independent of the rest of the City. It is not necessary to seek diversion "up town" in order to pass a pleasant evening. They are quite sufficient within themselves. They form a unique community. By reason of the care exercised among the promoters of the settlement as to who shall and who shall not settle amohng them, the lawless element is almost entirely elimiated. In fact, there is nothing congenial in Riverside to tough characters, there is nothing to attract them; they could not live in comfort and content, they would be so entirely out of their element, hence the commission of crime there is very reare; it is no place for criminals. Peace and quiet reign in Riverside, and when the toll and traffic of the day are done the bgod people may seek repose with the certainty of being undisturbed, and compose themselves to pleasant dreams."

[thelakelander]

I believe Riverside was pretty rural until the streetcar was extended into the neighborhood around 1887.  I'm not sure about the original plat of the industrial area around King and Rosselle.  Silvertown was platted around 1887 but it didn't extend to the tracks.  However, looking at the street pattern, I'd be surprised if it was not platted at the same time as the rest of the neighborhood west of Stockton and North of Forbes.

Riverside's land use development pattern is pretty much the same as Jacksonville's other older neighborhoods.  Commercial and mixed use along former streetcar lines (original TOD) and single family/apartments/duplexes the further you get away from old streetcar routes.  Along the railroad tracks, a mix of industrial uses are scattered and clustered in certain spots throughout town.

I also don't know if we ever had true "transition neighborhoods" outside of LaVilla and the Cathedral District.  Old aerials and Sanborn maps indicate linear or clustered commercial districts along former streetcar lines through a number of inner city neighborhoods.  In fact, its pretty similar to what you'll find in neighborhoods in cities as large as Chicago to those as small as Savannah.  Without the Sanborns in front of me, I'd suspect that northeast of Margaret, other than the Park Street strip, the majority of mixed use and commercial would have been along Oak and Edison and Riverside (north of Edison) before WWII.  Most of the stuff along Park and Riverside, in what's known as Brooklyn today, would have come from zoning changes after the streetcar era.

[thelakelander]

The neighborhood, as platted out by stockton et al was always mixed use, transit driven and commercial/residentially diverse.

Yes, the neighborhood, like the rest developed during an era before cars was mixed use.  None would have been able to fully function without some sort of commercial component.  One of the coolest things about old Jax is to get up on a Saturday and drive the old streetcar routes through various neighborhoods in town.  You'll quickly discover that just about every single neighborhood has some sort of small commercial cluster around a streetcar junction.  It's a cool long lost development pattern that I'd love to see come back to Jax one day.  In fact, I think a lot of our older neighborhoods are doomed until the connectivity that built them comes back. 

However, the term "mixed use" means more than residential on top, retail on bottom.  They can be next door in the form of neighbors. You'll find this along the streetcar lines like Oak Street.  Mixed use can also mean a commercial strip bordering a residential strip, such as Park & King or College & Stockton.  To a degree, I think our use of trying to classify zoning uses into strict terminology has created a misunderstanding of the term.  To a similar degree, the same is true with modern day terminology of transit systems.  Hybrid situations do and have always existed.  Luckily, I believe the intent of the overlay does a good job preserving the neighborhood's historic development pattern.

[thelakelander]

Where exactly does it do a destructive balance?  Also, destructive in terms of scale or location?