Tour groups flocking to Town Center

[I-10east]

Really? This is exactly how the rest of this entire forum feels when you make the exact same complaints about downtown....

Whatever dude, you and others can go on and continue to add your 'great feedback' by saying that you hate the SJTC over and over again, even on threads that just have a mere mention of it.

BTW, the downtown comparison is really dumb. If anything, it's usually other TU-esque doom and gloomers that 'complain' about DT, not me. I try to be even keeled and not act as if a nuclear bomb hit the core with every single DT issue. See ya on the next SJTC thread.

[finehoe]

I'm pretty sure the media entity would be in liable for pretending a paid advertisement was a factual "article".

Liable to whom?  Virtually everything that appears in the media is a paid advertisement for someone with control of the pursestrings.

[funwithteeth]

Other than the gee-whiz boosterism of the prose ("Locals still feel as though they have a jewel in their backyard" is a howler, for sure), I fail to see how this article is any different from the more-or-less advertisements for local businesses that appear on the MJ main page.*

*Please note this is not a value judgment on or against Metro Jacksonville. I appreciate the way they give exposure to new, up-and-coming businesses.

[chipwich]

To state the obvious here.  JTC is what it is.  It is a regional mall.  It has a very large assortment of retailers that happen to only set up shop in dense metropolitan areas and I see no reason to hate it.  The planning might be a bit off and the architecture a bit generic, but SJTC provides a valuable service to our city.  The article is a fluff piece, but probably has a decent amount of truth to it.

Truth of the matter is that if any of us lived in Tallahassee, Valdosta, Savannah or the like, we would most likely eventually make an extra trip to SJTC to visit a store unavailable in a smaller market city.  I still know people that travel to Orlando to go shopping at stores that Jacksonville doesn't have (wasn’t everyone just up in arms about IKEA?).  Likewise, most mid-size cities have similar suburban style outdoor malls that serve the same exact purpose.  I would love to see a concentration of high traffic retailers set up downtown, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon (if ever). 

I'll take what we can get.  Granted SJTC leaves much to be desired in terms of walkability, I find it to be a good place to shop.  I like having the both small and big box stores in one central location (though I have to drive to get to some of the big box stores).  I like having stores that Jacksonville never had before. 

Given its regional draw, I would say SJTC is definitely great for our economy.  It gives the small amount of N. FL visitors to visit stores that have good brand recognition.  Please also remember that our City collects that extra 1% of sales tax on every sale plus our city share of the 6% FL sales tax.  Even something as low as $10 mil in sales in extra sales to out-of-town tourists generates $100K for the city.   I could easily imagine the actually extra sales numbers of SJTC being 10 or 20 times that amount.  Coupled along with restaurant sales that benefit servers and extra hotel occupancy derived from tourists, I would say we should be rooting for more success at SJTC, not less.

The more destination shopping you can pack into that place the better.  Success feeds success.  More stores lead to more shoppers (both in and out of town).  That translates to better sales which leads to yet more and better stores.   I'll take the crappy stucco architecture, just bring in the masses that want to visit and spend money here.  Everyone will benefit.  I can't imagine the citizens of Orlando complaining about Millennia Mall this much.  Let’s enjoy SJTC for what it is and what it does for our city.  I think we can both build up our core as well as suburban shopping mall.   It is not a winner take all event, the two can indeed coexist and thrive.

[RockStar]

It excels in its vastness as well as its acres of inconvenient parking lots.

It is a shimmering light of mediocrity and poor planning.

Are you sure those tour busses aren't full of city planners/designers/architects on a field trip of "what not to do"?

[Bativac]

Agree with Chipwich - there is not another area in Jacksonville that mimics an urban "main street" environment where one can stroll along shops and restaurants. My wife and I can have dinner and walk around window shopping for an hour or two.

I would rather our downtown contain a good mix of retail and restaurants, but it doesn't.

Out of town visitors - depending on where they're from - either really like the town center or are unimpressed (one friend from Greenville says "yeah we have that where I live, except we call it 'downtown' and people live and work there, too").

The parking complaints I don't get, unless it's opposition to the idea of giant sea-of-asphalt parking lots. I've never, ever had a problem finding a parking space. And yeah, lots of the roads inside the center are very poorly laid out, but not much worse than the confusing network of one-way streets in downtown Jax.

Anyway, it's working - it seems to be attracting a lot of people and their money - is there nothing that Downtown planners can learn from?

[KenFSU]

Are you sure those tour busses aren't full of city planners/designers/architects on a field trip of "what not to do"?

Typical Jacksonville mentality.

Even our successes are failures.

When the SuperBowl came to town, the newly-carpetted Avenues Mall was the main shopping center in the city, and Pottery Barn was considered high end retail in Jacksonville.

Less than 10 years later, in an empty tract of land, a massive regional shopping center has sprung up, doing incredible business and bringing names like Nordstrom, Tiffany, Louis Vutton, Black & White, Guess, Puma, Apple, Urban Outfitters, Brooks Brothers, Seasons 52, Brio, Cheesecake Factory, Suite, Whiskey River, Black Finn, and about five hundred other stores and restaurants into Jacksonville for the first time, and people still find a reason to be bitter about it.

I swear a lot of people have macros automatically programmed into their computer so that, every time the Town Center comes up, they can -- with a single key press -- spit out a message like "Can't wait till it's dead in 20 years!"

Very few of these retailers would be in Jacksonville right now if not for the Town Center (and certainly not downtown at this stage in the game). It's not hip and urban, but it's unquestionably the most vibrant place in the city right now, for better or worse. And if you give it a chance and are willing to overlook its excessive suburban evils, it's actually a pretty fun place to spend the day.

[I-10east]

^^^+1,000

[copperfiend]

It's not hip and urban, but it's unquestionably the most vibrant place in the city right now, for better or worse. And if you give it a chance and are willing to overlook its excessive suburban evils, it's actually a pretty fun place to spend the day.

Blasphemy!!!!!

[Lunican]

What is everyone buying there? I still haven't bought anything there yet.

[simms3]

SJTC will *have to* be connected by rail to DT via Gate Parkway/Touchton/Belfort up Phillips someday...soon.  While traffic overall in Jax is a joke, that is one corridor that can see substantial backups without effort.  In 18 months add 2,000 new occupied apartment units, 250,000 SF new retail, ~300,000 SF new office give or take, and a few thousand more occupied homes, on the same road system.

SJTC has best in class "traditional" mall stores, but look to some of the high streets in larger cities for ideas of shopping/"today's" strong tenants who could potentially locate to hip urban districts in Jacksonville if the city were to provide the right environment, demographics included.  Nashville, Charlotte, Austin, Richmond and a few other 3rd tier cities are seeing this happen right now (attracting to their best urban neighbs some of the same retailers one might find in Georgetown in DC, Newbury St in Boston, 5th/Pine in Seattle, South Beach, King St in Charleston, Rush St in Chicago, SoHo/Flatiron District in NYC, etc etc).

[jtwestside]

If you were specifically trying to come up with quotes to irritate the urban minded, you couldn't do any better than the ones offered here.

Are you calling me a rabble-rouser?    Honestly I just picked the quote that irritated me most. So I guess I must be "urban Minded"

[finehoe]

in an empty tract of land, a massive regional shopping center has sprung up

That's my issue with the place.  With all the half-empty, run-down developments spread out all over Duval County, was it really necessary to destroy yet another piece of irreplaceable nature?

[tufsu1]

^ in a "free" market country with private property rights, apparently so

[RockStar]

Are you sure those tour busses aren't full of city planners/designers/architects on a field trip of "what not to do"?

Typical Jacksonville mentality.

No that's sarcasm. It's also true. I don't care about the TC; I understand that it's a necessary evil, but my opinion is that, should you build one, do it right. And a "town center" with no central square, no trolley, separated by acres of asphalt so that it's impossible to access all of it without returning to one's car should be stop number one on the Tour of Bad Planning and Design. (And never mind its lack of protection from the elements, and congested parking lot layout.) I'd bore you with a thousand better examples, but I'm sure they're easy to find here on MJ.

Argue that you love the design, please. My only beef with the place is my wife loves to shop.