Holland's plan to move elections office from Gateway could be a winner

[thelakelander]

Michael

I would welcome an existing building.  I need 65,000 square feet, with 2 loading docks 150 parking spaces, one story, on the city’s bus route.   I have looked but would welcome looking at any site you are aware of.  I did have the city’s real estate division also review all city own properties.  I will say as mentioned the site we are looking forward is city owned property.  Also, you called it a State Building, it would actually be a City Building.

Sincerely,

Jerry Holland

This is pretty cool.  I wish more responses from our public officials would be this direct and informative.  However, I wonder why one story?  To be honest, I don't know if we should be building any 65,000 square boxes on downtown's streets, including LaVilla.  That's essentially a warehouse solidifying permanent blocks of dead pedestrian scale activity.  Do you really want that sitting at a major downtown Gateway and a street with that much vehicular traffic?

At a mininum, within the Northbank/LaVilla, east of I-95, those 65,000 square feet need to be on an upper level with something else providing an opportunity for pedestrian scale activity at street level.  Other than that, could the skyway be utilized for a portion of those parking spaces? 

My major concern with the general parameters are they seem to be suburban oriented and its going to be impossible to fit them into an urban Jacksonville setting without negatively impacting the surrounding atmosphere.  The only suitable locations would be urban industrial zones with brick warehouses obsolete for many modern distribution uses. 

With that said, those parameters are better suited for a warehouse like the old Load King building off Beaver & Minnie Street (1357 West Beaver, near Shiloh Baptist & I-95).







You basically take something cheap and available like this and retrofit it into your needs.  Other than that, a downtown location needs to properly fit into the surrounding urban context and the overall long term vision of what the city wants downtown to be.

[Tacachale]

^I would agree with that. But I respect that Holland is trying to save us some money and consolidate, and he's evidently having to fight up hill to do it. That's the part I really don't understand.

[JaxArchitect]

My understanding is that the parking is required both for employees and also for rare occasions when they need to train a wave of volunteer staff who will be manning the voting stations.  If so, I agree that there is no need to have dedicated on-site parking as part of the program  (The old adage is that you don't build your church capacity to accomodate Easter Sunday).  Making use of existing parking garages would make more sense.
I also agree that the Hayden Burns Library (with a loading dock) would seem to suffice.  It might be a little tricky because they have times on election night when trucks are backed up delivering the elections machines to the office for downloading purposes.  This could potentially create a bottleneck on some urban streets.
We had been hired by a private developer to develop a concept for a build-to-suit for the Supervisor of Elections (which was not successful).  Based on the program given to us, I don't think having their office space on two floors would be detrimental either. 
They do need a reasonable amount of space for storage of elections equipment in addition to administrative space.
Based on all of this, I agree with many of the previous posts that buildings such as the old Independent Life Bldg (JEA) or Hayden Burns Library could work for them.

[thelakelander]

The Haydon Burns Library would be an interesting site because it would fill a huge hole of dead activity within the heart of the Northbank.  It's a little over 100,000 square feet.  I assume the basement could be used for storage and the upper floors for SOE's needs?  That would allow the street level to be utilized for a mix of interactive uses including a main entry for SOE.

[tufsu1]

^ that was my suggestion from the beginning

[CityLife]

Doug, I'd agree with you on the parking component if it were anything other than the supervisor of elections. Voter turnout is low enough as is, the last thing we need is a factor like parking to keep people away from the polls. If parking is an issue for someone once, they may not ever come back to vote again. Also, if word gets around the morning of election day that parking is a mess, you may have people decide not to vote later in the day.

I would also imagine that there are federal and state mandates that say a certain amount of parking must be provided at elections offices. That is likely why it needs to be near a bus route as well. Otherwise, you'd have sketchy political groups trying to deter voter turnout, through isolated siting, difficult access, and limited parking.

Now perhaps the SOE could get the city to allow free parking in garages election day or something of that nature, but I think the parking needs to be abundant and accessible.

[JaxArchitect]

I'm not sure that the parking is for voters.
I believe it's for staff and the occasional vounteer training sessions that they run at their office.
I could be wrong.  It'd be nice to get verification on this.

[CityLife]

It would be foolish not to have federal parking/transit/access regulations for siting of elections offices. If there weren't, both political parties could easily limit the opportunies for those of the opposite side.

[mtraininjax]

I need 65,000 square feet, with 2 loading docks 150 parking spaces, one story, on the city’s bus route.

Too bad the City sold the Library to private hands. 

There are plenty of warehouses, true warehouses, west of 95 in the Beaver Street/Myrtle Street areas. If my memory serves me right, there are a number near the Rock Tenn facility and close to downtown as well. But again, private hands. The Clerk of Courts had a building over off of Jessie Street and it had the dock, not enough parking, but on the bus route and it was a public building. It would be a start.

[tufsu1]

I need 65,000 square feet, with 2 loading docks 150 parking spaces, one story, on the city’s bus route.

Too bad the City sold the Library to private hands. 

yeah, but it is for sale again....I'm sure Cesery would be happy to unload it

[ben says]

I need 65,000 square feet, with 2 loading docks 150 parking spaces, one story, on the city’s bus route.

Too bad the City sold the Library to private hands. 

yeah, but it is for sale again....I'm sure Cesery would be happy to unload it

Yeah, he'd be happy. His asking price is the exact amount of money it would take him to break even on the whole thing. Clearly he wants to get rid of it.

[vicupstate]

Mayor Alvin Brown’s administration isn’t opposed to Holland’s idea but is looking at a study that would examine the best use of all city-owned property.

This is excellent news and LONG overdue. IMO.  Nothing concrete should occur until this is done.  I remember there was a push to change the location of the LaVilla Middle School at the 11th hour, but it was not done because it would delay the construction.  That was a bad decision, IMO.  The best property in all of LaVillla for residential infill was consumed for a surbandan style school, that could have gone elsewhere, even within the urban core. 

Holland is to be commended for his idea and his email response, but he may be too welded to the one-story requirement. 

I think the city should do a Request For Proposals on this.  I'm sure someone somewhere has a warehouse in private hands that they would like to unload for a bargain.   

The seafood restaurant building was a bad idea, but if done wrong (ie as Lakelander describes above), there could be TWO big mistakes on the same site. 

[jaxlore]

I forwarded on some responses. So we shall see what he says, but it sound like there is some discussion going on so we'll see what him and the mayor bang out.

[jaxlore]

Here is my response to Jerry's reply and his reply:

Jerry

I appreciate your speedy reply and it sounds like you’ve done a lot to try and work on saving the tax payers money. From my perspective, I would just like to see the city take more of an urban approach to our city buildings, build up instead of out. I’ve been discussing this with some folks over at Metro Jacksonville, which I feel is a great forum for forward thinking ideas in the city. Here are some suggestions made from some of the commenters about alternative sites. Of course none of these are owned city properties so I am sure that impacts the decision and the costs. However the inherent benefits of using existing historic structures far out way the short term costs.

1) None of the other government facilities downtown have dedicated surface parking.  Not the Tax Collector on Forsyth, not City Hall or the City Hall Annex, not the Courthouse.  There is no reason they can't use the public parking garages or the on-street parking system - or encourage people to use public transportation.

2) Is there an ordinance that prohibits city departments from leasing space from private buildings?  I don't believe so, because otherwise we would not see so many Tax Collectors’ offices in shopping centers throughout town.

The old library has at least 65,000 sf, a loading dock and a parking garage across the street.

Another comment:

My major concern with the general parameters are they seem to be suburban oriented and its going to be impossible to fit them into an urban Jacksonville setting without negatively impacting the surrounding atmosphere.  The only suitable locations would be urban industrial zones with brick warehouses obsolete for many modern distribution uses. 

With that said, those parameters are better suited for a warehouse like the old Load King building off Beaver & Minnie Street (1357 West Beaver, near Shiloh Baptist & I-95).


Michael

One reason dedicated parking is necessary is because voting is a protected right that must have a higher level of accessibility.  Making voters pay parking or walk long distances from parking garages is seen as barriers for those with limited mobility or finances for parking.  We did look at the old library, but there was no public parking, and the accessibility to load out 32 trucks for the elections appeared create a traffic problem.  Also, because of the need to have the ware house on the first floor, have in other offices on the 2nd floor make it more difficult for voter access.  We  have looked at ware house only sites however the location must also house our call center, poll worker training rooms, canvassing, absentee ballot processing center, making these locations distant of our downtown office creates an inefficient operation and cost more to operate, also we have the need for the location to still be very accessible from all locations for poll worker training and post election canvassing.

Please don’t see my responses as being critical because I do appreciate the feedback and chance to bounce back our concerns.

Sincerely,

Jerry Holland
SOE

[Tacachale]

Another pleasant response. This is incredibly refreshing.

It sounds like the public parking is going to be required. I wonder if there would be a way to work the parking, perhaps reducing the number of dedicated spaces and design the building to fit around it. Also, maybe we can persuade him to go with a more urban design for the rest of the site (that is, if we can find a way to make the building more compact but still meet the office's other needs.)