Bostwick Building To Be Demolished?

[Timkin]

It can be saved, you just have to want to.

+1 Lunican!   as a collective community we must WANT to save these places.

[Bill Hoff]

It can be saved, you just have to want to.

People with the means have to want to.

[thelakelander]

Or a city that values preservation has to want and demand it.

[Timkin]

Seems like money is endlessly available to demolish.  Sure never seems to have been a shortage of it to do that.  Look at pictures of Downtown in 1970  and now.    Wonder what the price tag has been up to now to raze everything?  How many jobs were created in the process?  How many new destinations downtown have formed directly from this continued razing of buildings?

How many jobs COULD be created by saving them, working on them to restore them?  My bet ( I am also no expert, just a hunch) is that there could be significantly more jobs created.

And finally,  Wrecking them vs Restoring.   To raze the Bostwick building and replace it with some new-build , slapped together , stucco wonder that MIGHT make it 50 years , most likely less money to accomplish.   To demo the building and put something in its place of equal quality masonry , yet built to modern codes,  my bet is it is cost-effective , in that case, to save and re purpose existing.

Where to get the money?  Again , I don't know.. I DO know that the city manages to get their hands on endless amounts to demolish.  There is something in this reasoning that just does not equate.

[simms3]

I have seen buildings in equally as bad and even worse shape become real gems.  In fact I work on one.

It would be a real shame to see this one come down.  There are some not so historic/not so significant buildings that should still not come down, but the loss wouldn't be as great.  This building, however, is one of a small number of significant historic buildings in the CBD still standing.  The city will really drop the ball if it forces demolition.  This building can still deteriorate further without being considered totally gone.  And if the walls are potentially about to buckle, then perhaps the city should take the roof out and prop the walls up until someone with vision and financial means can turn the building around.

[Bill Hoff]

Or a city that values preservation has to want and demand it.

That's true, but that calls for a systemic change in what COJ deems a priority. I'm not sure this building, or COJ Code rather, will wait for systemic change.

[thelakelander]

Yes, we need a change in priorities. 

[thelakelander]

It can't be in worse shape than this Springfield building.  Before it's renovation a few years back, the roof had completely collapsed.

[Timkin]

Yes, we need a change in priorities. 

Post-Haste!!!  +1

[acme54321]

It doesn't make sense to me.

If the city has the power to bulldoze these structures, then place a lien on the property they could just as easily take the property outright.  Seems like they would come out ahead by siezing the offending property and then auctioning it off to the highest bidder.

This is one of the most iconic buildings downtown, a gateway almost.  Everyone knows the Jaguar building.  If this comes down it's going to look really bad on our new "pro downtown" mayor.

[strider]

Demolition by neglect. A very commonly used phrase.  But neglect by whom?  Most, including Code, will say the owner.  It is the neglectful owners who are to blame.  And that is exactly how the rolling fines and eventual demolition are justified.  We must make those bad, bad owners pay.

Except that it isn't the bad owners who pay in the end.  It is the entire community.  And then when you really start looking at the process, at how the owners are often treated, at the attitudes of the city employees that deal with this issue, you realize that it often is not the owner, but rather the system or process that is to blame.  It is really demolition by reckless policy.

An owner gets a chance to sell the building but if Code is involved, who knows what gets told to those potential buyers.  If there are rolling fines in place, then the fines not only stay with the original owners property but also transfer to the new owners property.  While deals can be made, the fact is those fines transfer and stay in existence until the building is passed as "safe" by code no matter what. Effecting all of the owners property in many cases.

I can not speak about how much or how little the owners were involved with this property.   But I can tell you that the reckless polices the MCCD has in place and the overall reckless policies that the city seems to operate by when it comes to the care of it's historic structures makes it much more likely that the owners were just as harmed by the actions (or inaction) of the city as were this building and the community at large.

[Bativac]

This makes me sad. The fact that it doesn't surprise me makes me sadder. I didn't realize the building had deteriorated so badly but those walls still look sturdy to me. But what developer in his right mind wants property in downtown Jax right now, especially this piece of property? You need someone with a combination of money, time, and a desire to restore an historic building and return it to functional use. Where's Shahid Khan?!

...At least there are acres of 1970s and 1980s era strip malls that continue to stand as a testament to the city's greatness.

[simms3]

Jacksonville might be the only city I have been to that doesn't make any effort to at least leave the walls/facade still standing by placing prop beams up against them.  Instead, it spends about the same amount of money just bulldozing the building.

Not only that, someone brought up the excellent point of auctioning off the property.  How about a reform whereby if you neglect your property, instead of the city taking it and bulldozing it, you place a tax lien on the property and then auction off the tax lien???  That way, not only does someone take a decent risk in your tax bill, they get the added benefit of potentially receiving the property if you don't pay within 14 months.  It could be a way for owners who don't want their property to essentially dispose of it in a way that may mean less cost to them (maybe not), and a way for someone else who wants the property to pick it up at a decent cost.

I don't know all the ways it works, but seriously EVERY other city does it.  Jacksonville is backward and so behind, and all it has to do is copy just about any other city to be more successful.  That's really what it boils down to.  With so many examples of what to do, and yet nobody in Jacksonville following any of those examples, I can't figure out if city leaders are committing suicide, asleep at the wheel, or what.  I'm just glad I'm not on that sinking ship.

[simms3]

Is Jacksonville the only city that demolished everything and continues to do so today without actually replacing the lost building with something?

I just got to thinking.  In our downtown we demolished a very dense block of department stores and hotels for Woodruff Park - a great place.  We demolished a huge warehouse district around our Gulch, buildings I wish we had today, but we IMMEDIATELY replaced all of those buildings with the CNN Center, the convention center, Phillips (Omni Arena then), and Centennial Olympic Park.  Where would the city be today without all of these places?

Georgia Tech wanted to demolish the Forster Building, which is beautiful but not historically significant, yet the city blocked them with APS's (Atlanta Preservation Society) help, and now they have the facade incorporated into the base of the future 24 floor building they wish to construct.

The last thing demolished in or near the city was the old Ford Plant, which was razed for a billion dollar development near the airport where Porsche's new headquarters is already UC.

I mean nothing is just demolished for the sake of demolishing.  Sure I wish all the old stuff were still around, but some of the new stuff got the city to the big leagues.  Jacksonville has literally demolished its entire being, its entire self for absolutely nothing.  The only two buildings that came down for anything really significant were the Heard Bank for the city's tallest and the Rhodes building for the new Main Library.  Everything else came down for the sake of coming down.

The city is too stupid for words.  What are they going to put on the site, some crappy pocket park?  We all know how Jacksonville does parks - the biggest park system in the country, WITH THE WORST PARKS!  Come on!  I'd rather see little park space and 2-3 GREAT parks than half the county being considered park and NO great parks.  I hate everything the city does.  My hometown is an embarassment, which is why I fight for it as much as I can from 350 miles away and tell nobody I'm from there.

[tufsu1]

simms....please don't compare Jacksonville's history on demolition with Atlanta's....your new hometown has demolished and rebuilt itself several times over (given the first time it was done by Sherman).....I would argue that Atlanta showed virtually no respect for its history until very recently.