Springfield Nightscape Deteriorating.

[stephendare]

It has only been a couple of months since I have been back in Springfield pretty much full time, and over the past 3 months especially, the nighttime reality has appallingly worsened.

With the closing of the Main Street Bakery permanently, the lack of people on the street for a stretch of 12 blocks and the inadequate lighting has bred what it always does.  Crime.

Since shortly before the shooting, we have been taking tours of main street every two hours from 10pm till 3 am and what we found has been alarming to say the least.

The crime was pretty much beaten off of Main Street a few years back.

Obviously it never completely left the neighborhood, and most of what remained was regrouped over on 8th street, albeit drastically reduced.

Aside from the troubling nodes of activity on the night that Boston Tom was brutally shot in the door way of Shanty town, last night the streets were crawling with activity and totally unfamiliar people clearly up to mischief.

In particular, the corners of 7th and Main were boiling with activity and commerce until 3 am last night.

On the East side of the street, centered around the apartments above the pawn shop, there were at least 15 people engaged in money transfers, calling up to the windows, making trades at the access door on 7th street and at least one blowjob in the alley behind the building.

Also the corners of Hubbard and 8th, always busy were especially raucous last night, and we observed active commerce of some kind (I assumed it to be drugs) on Main at the corners of 7th, 5th and 3rd until we stopped at 3.

At present, Main is unsupervised and untravelled by good people at night.  With no action at all, this will get completely out of hand.

There needs to be night time activity or beefed up community and police patrols or this will quickly deteriorate.

[thelakelander]

What type of night time activity would you suggest?

[duvalbill]

It has only been a couple of months since I have been back in Springfield pretty much full time, and over the past 3 months especially, the nighttime reality has appallingly worsened.

With the closing of the Main Street Bakery permanently, the lack of people on the street for a stretch of 12 blocks and the inadequate lighting has bred what it always does.  Crime.

Since shortly before the shooting, we have been taking tours of main street every two hours from 10pm till 3 am and what we found has been alarming to say the least.

The crime was pretty much beaten off of Main Street a few years back.

Obviously it never completely left the neighborhood, and most of what remained was regrouped over on 8th street, albeit drastically reduced.

Aside from the troubling nodes of activity on the night that Boston Tom was brutally shot in the door way of Shanty town, last night the streets were crawling with activity and totally unfamiliar people clearly up to mischief.

In particular, the corners of 7th and Main were boiling with activity and commerce until 3 am last night.

On the East side of the street, centered around the apartments above the pawn shop, there were at least 15 people engaged in money transfers, calling up to the windows, making trades at the access door on 7th street and at least one blowjob in the alley behind the building.

Also the corners of Hubbard and 8th, always busy were especially raucous last night, and we observed active commerce of some kind (I assumed it to be drugs) on Main at the corners of 7th, 5th and 3rd until we stopped at 3.

At present, Main is unsupervised and untravelled by good people at night.  With no action at all, this will get completely out of hand.

There needs to be night time activity or beefed up community and police patrols or this will quickly deteriorate.

Could this be a possible backlash of Amendment One?  In any event, Rutherford needs to beef up the police presence here a bit more.  I live in San Marco, and every time I come home via Phillips highway, the drive is nothing short of eventful.  The adults only Mt. vernon motort lodge is downright creepy and hookers pretty much run rampant.

[nvrenuf]

We've been saying the same thing for quite a while now. For about 2 weeks we had incredible police presence on West 8th street then it shriveled up. We have constant activity that is pushing off into the residential areas, lots of hookers, drug dealers and last night vandals breaking out car windows.

[RiversideGator]

The ultimate solution is to keep renovating properties and get rid of the element which is doing this sort of thing.  Eventually, they will have nowhere to live and will haunt some other neighborhood.

Also, perhaps Stephen could open another restaurant on Main Street.  Whatever happened to this?

[thelakelander]

Stephen how is your space along Main coming along?  Wasn't it supposed to be open by now?

Ah, the ever delightful Sebastian Horsley, recently banned from entering the United States on account of his rather irreverent book, The Dandy in the Underworld.

We are having a reading of this book at Boomtown, June 13th, along with a showing of Irish, English and Italian Dandy Fashion from the late 1800s.

Boomtown's space on Main Street has been very slowly coming along.  The slowness is due entirely to the electricity of the building.

The building had not been energized in several years which meant naturally that it had to be inspected.  It passed inspection.  Two months went by and then JEA informed us that the electrical metering service would have to be relocated outside for easy access to JEA employees.

This will take about a week.

As soon as we have electric throughout the building, we will be featuring the smaller performances of our programming, and we are under a little pressure to be fully functional as our larger performances are beginning to feel real pain, both through having no space, and in two cases of having entirely the wrong spaces in which to perform.

We will not open as a restaurant for several months.  Nor will we be open except for performances and special events which will be announced mostly through invitation.  And I have not decided that that it will definitely open as a full restaurant in any case.

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,2331.0.html

[Driven1]

where is this space anyway?  what address?  I ask because hopefully it is near where all this criminal activity has popped up.  and boomtown could keep the area well-lit and help drive out most of this criminal activity like before...

When we first opened, there were more than 70 of the homeless and bad guys living behind the shops and under the houses.  All those same opportunities are still there, more so actually since the City Center Ministry cleared out, leaving all that untended space.

We need to get stuff open at night and bring some decent people back onto the street at night.  It took me and John, (and Lisa Neary and Diallo and Suzanne Pickette and Morrison Peirce and Lee Harvey) almost 3 years and a whole lot of unpleasantness to fix it the first time.

[thelakelander]

Its just north of the 7th & Main intersection.  A building with night time activity all lit up at night would be a huge improvement over what the location looks like today.

Some had claimed a few months ago that Amsouth was going to go in on the SE corner of 7th & Main.  Does anyone have an update on the status of that project? 

[Driven1]

wow...a main street bank right there would be a tremendous boost to the "commercial image" of the whole area IMO.  would be Regions now though (with AmSouth having been taken over by them).

[Driven1]

Its just north of the 7th & Main intersection. 

lake, is it on the east side or west side of main?

[RiversideGator]

Which building exactly are we talking about?

Also, what work have you done thus far, Stephen, and when and what do you plan to open? 

Finally, who is the landlord?

[thelakelander]

Its just north of the 7th & Main intersection. 

lake, is it on the east side or west side of main?

East side of Main. I believe its the little red brick building, just south of the old Surfside Furniture Building.  You can see it here:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=jacksonville&ie=UTF8&ll=30.345473,-81.653609&spn=0.001319,0.003152&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=30.344908,-81.654044&panoid=A-IL-HdngKFh9LDQhlMa9w&cbp=1,63.0660503690234,,0,-7.915122017060416

[Driven1]

is it currently under lease?  that building is looking rough and thoroughly abandoned. 

man...i love that google streetview thing...anyone know how they do that???

[RiversideGator]

I have your number?  I dont think so.

I am just curious about your plans.  I think this clearly fits within the context of this thread.

[Driven1]

I just googled "Hionides" and "jacksonville" and found the folio weekly article (that mentions a fellow from MJ.com) and i found an old metjax.com thread where RG and Stephendare (among many others) were going off on Hionides...

http://www.metjax.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5912

If you ask me, Hionides needs to be contacted and told to put some lighting on his properties along Main St to decrease the criminal element in the area.  Does anyone know how to get in touch with him?  A phone number or email?