A New Parking Lot for Downtown

[thelakelander]

^To be honest, this one will probably be around for a while too.  The only other option is to keep the property like it is in its current state.  Looking around that area, cars are currently parking on weed filled building foundations from demolitions dating as far back as the 1980s/90s.  If anything, this goes to show why we should not continue to randomly demolish the existing building stock that remains.

[fieldafm]

^To be honest, this one will probably be around for a while too.  The only option is to keep the property like it is in its current state.  Looking around that area, cars are currently parking on weed filled building foundations from demolitions dating as far back as the 1980s/90s.  If anything, this goes to show why we should not continue to randomly demolish the existing building stock that remains.

100% agreed. 

There are very few buildings remaining around the courthouse where small businesses can move in since everything around it has been demolished.  By and large small businesses don't have the capacity to build mid rise buildings on the avaiable properties, and it wouldnt make financial sense to build single tenant buildings with small footprints for the type of money existing landowners are going to expect for those available properties.  That's why you see places like Pita Pit and even a law office opening in the ground floor of the Courthouse garage. 

The type of investors that will sink money into building 10-15 story mixed use buidlings around the courthouse are wisely investing their money in other markets. 

[I-10east]

A parking garage can get pretty expensive. As dougskiles says, this is being considered a temporary use. Perhaps after five or ten years, things will be different.

My bad, I didn't know that it's gonna be a temporary lot.

[JFman00]

Seen parents playing with their kids on a couple of the more grassy lots or getting their tan on. By all means, lets pave over everything in sight. I'm not convinced that a paved parking lot is necessarily of better use for the public. Reminds me of the Philadelphia case where a small business owner cleared an adjacent lot for some greenspace and seating but was instructed by the city to return it to its original trash-strewn condition.

[thelakelander]

It's a better use for the private property owner, who appears to have inked a deal to lease the spaces to the owner of Everbank Center. Hopefully, we'll focus on making the courthouse green space a more valuable public space.

[simms3]

Oh man...here we go again.


http://archplanbaltimore.blogspot.com/2013/02/parking-bane-of-cities.html

I do get why we're where we're at...I sympathize with the property owner, surface parking in Jax next to a courthouse is surely a mega lucrative operation relative to one's basis invested...and virtually no risk!  In the grand scheme of large city DT property owners, land in Jax is so cheap and property taxes so low as a result of the basis and low millage that it "almost" doesn't warrant temporary surface parking to cover some expenses.  There's certainly no market for anything higher and better for the sight, and I'd wager that if I stuck my pointer finger in the air...the wind isn't telling me that the demand is coming any time soon.

However, why the hell can't people walk 2 blocks in this town?!?  Employment in DT Jax is not really increasing.  Some tenants have played musical chairs, a courthouse moved to the other side of DT leaving one ugly waterfront building empty and consuming multiple city blocks elsewhere in an equally ugly building that has become a national laughing stock of both design/planning and city government abuse and inefficiency.  We would never be in this predicament had city leaders not failed their city so badly in the period 1948-present in the first place.  However, can we start implementing restrictions and proper land use now?

The last thing we need is people willing to sit on land "waiting for a market" while they operate a surface lot (Jax is cheap enough to make this work - hell I'd do the same thing!...temporary parking can be quite lucrative...165 spaces or so at $30/day and 50% expenses for your 3rd party operator, insurance, R&M, etc is net income before debt service of ~$500K-$600K!...very profitable indeed, you can basically make back your purchase price in a short period of time with surface parking alone).  I'd rather see such land condemned and held by the city until it gets its act together to create a market, a city that focuses on what it has (better sidewalks and shade trees can make it convenient and pleasant for people to walk 1-3 blocks instead of building more parking when it's not really needed for the overall area).

[thelakelander]

Nice shot of 1980s Houston!

[spuwho]

My only question is how much money does COJ spend annually propping up parking garages in the city?

I will throw out this little morsel.

I was there when the Great Chicago Flood happened. (a retired coal service tunnel was punctured by a new bridge piling).

This created a unique opportunity for the city. They banned street parking in the Loop. At first it was temporary so emergency generators could get access, after 4 months it became permanent. This did some good things in the core. It reduced auto traffic in the Loop as more people used public transit. It allowed private parking garage owners to raise their prices (no public competition with meters), which in turn made it more financially nonviable to drive to the core.

One side effect was when garage prices went up, there was a temporary bump in new permits for garages because the economics were favorable temporarily. Soon, there was no more land in the core that was economic for garage owners to develop. Private tower developers began to include several layers of parking decks between the street level retail and the upper business/residential floors. It is very economic for them to include several floors for parking due to the ability to sell space to the public, lease parking to business executives or rent spaces to residential tenants.

2 years after the flood, no one missed street parking in the Loop.

This was viable because of two important things:

- Available Public Transit
- Scarcity of available land

So what about Jacksonville?

Just the opposite unfortunately.

- Weak/non-existant Public Transit
- High inventory of available land

The path to reducing the "parking garage" abundance is purely economic in nature, but it does require that COJ take some long term approaches.

- Require new multi-use high rise buildings to incorporate their own parking plans into their layouts.
- Do not allow tear downs in the core unless their is a biz plan for a replacement (stops the land squatting)
- Stop subsidizing garages annually and start using that money to help fund transit improvements
- Begin to sell off the publicly held vacant land in the core in large blocks that are ideal for planned use and development. Reduce the inventory.

By spending all this money on acquiring vacant land and propping up parking garages, they are actually making it harder for the core to redevelop.