Illuminate JAX proposes to light up the skyline

[Lunican]

The LED retrofit done last year on the Empire State Building cost them a few million dollars.

[thelakelander]

Here's the problem that must be overcome:

Pamela Smith did not see the presentation Friday, but said when she moved to Jacksonville from Miami to be the owner's representative at EverBank Center at 301 W. Bay St., lighting the building was a consideration. Smith said she is familiar with a similar project, "Light Up Miami."

According to lightupmiami.org, the south Florida nonprofit organization's purpose is "enhancing the image of Greater Miami through illumination, arts and festivals, because this increases our safety, economics, quality of life and community pride while attracting visitors, conventions and business to our area."

Smith said she investigated lighting the office tower and estimated the cost at $250,000, which she said she doubted at the time the owners of the building would approve.

Smith said she is open to looking at the concept again, but is not sure that lighting up the building would attract more tenants.

During downtown's old days, most of the buildings were owned by local entities that took pride in the community.  After decades of mergers and consolidations, that civic pride is somewhat gone.  Now, it's about dollars and cents.  The success or failure of a concept like this will rest on convincing someone to pay the installation costs and cover the long term operational expenses. 

Kind of sounds like mass transit......

[CityLife]

"Smith said she investigated lighting the office tower and estimated the cost at $250,000, which she said she doubted at the time the owners of the building would approve." That is also likely based on standard installation, not all the bells and whistles that this proposal has.

"Installation costs vary widely, from $30,000 up to $500,000, depending on how complex the lighting is. At the high end of the spectrum, Marquis said, lighting could be set to music and "one building can interact with another, shimmer back and forth."

Based on the quote for the cost to light up the Everbank tower, I'm going to assume the $30k to-$500k range is per building. If so, we're probably looking at something in the $5 million range. That is really beside the point though...you can liberally say it will only be $2 million. The real question is, where would everyone rank this on their total list of ways to improve Downtown?

[thelakelander]

Any idea on what's the annual costs?  Most of these buildings already have lighting installed.  Evidently, building owners aren't too keen on paying the ongoing expenses with keeping them on.  So what changes between what is happening now and what will happen if new lighting systems were installed?

[CityLife]

its either worth doing or it isn't.  Its not really a ranking system because each of the projects that you would include in any such list are also dependent on a different time frame.  I think lake has it right, this is something that the private businesses would support or not.  How much, for example does the Jazz festival cost in toto?

How do you determine what is worthy and unworthy without weighing the alternatives? As the article states, the owner of the Everbank center doesn't appear to be very interested and doesn't think it will help their ability to attract tentants. If so, that means the money for this will have to come from public sources, private donations, or grants. In which case, it is important to know if this should be a high priority fund raising goal for downtown, or if the money could go to better sources.

If the owners or tenants want to foot the cost, then let them do so, but if not...I think its important to discuss the merits of the proposal and whether its something to go all in on.

[thelakelander]

If the owners aren't willing to foot the ongoing costs, then it's not worth it, IMO.

[Lunican]

Considering that the Empire State Building is worth more than all of Downtown Jacksonville, their ROI is a bit different.

[I-10east]

Considering that the Empire State Building is worth more than all of Downtown Jacksonville

Sources??? According to wiki the ESB is worth 618 million (2013).

[tufsu1]

^I meant to put that in there. Lets assume its $5 million total for installation, with upkeep and energy costs paid by the buildings owners.

I purposely made the total amount of money much larger to see if it would even make the cut given a much larger budget and also to see where it would fall in people's total priorities.

LED lights arent that expensive, you know.

Where did you get the five million dollar figure?

the article says installation for some of the buildings could $500,000....so the $5 million figure may not be that far off

[thelakelander]

What the article doesn't address is why aren't the lights installed on most of the buildings now, not in operation? Solve that issue and everything else will take care of itself.

[simms3]

What the article doesn't address is why aren't the lights installed on most of the buildings now, not in operation? Solve that issue and everything else will take care of itself.

Why would LLs light their buildings at night?  Common area electric is charged to tenants.  No tenants in DT buildings are off-hours users and likely none would reimburse LL for their PRS of off-hours common area electric.  Off-hours recoveries are a big thing - how many DT workers in Jax are in their offices past 8PM?  Common for a busy financial district in NYC, Boston, SF, and Chicago to have a relatively large degree of workers at any given hours of the night in most if not all major buildings.

Then you have to consider that LLs in Jax don't really get anything from their tenants (especially considering it's the ultimate tenant's market and even they aren't coming to the table).  First and foremost, most of the buildings are at a vacancy level that is generally unsustainable from an investment standpoint, let alone from the standpoint of spending additional moneys.  Now if prospects for rent growth and lease-up were strong (they are not), then LLs might spend money on things like enhanced lobby that bleeds out into streets, new elevator cabs, additional security for elevators/tenants, and exterior night lighting.  Not in Jax.

My building has rents from $84-$106 full service and is generally 95+% occupied with late night workers, including myself.  And ironically it has no exterior lighting.  BofA Jax rents from $18-$22 full service, and probably has similar operating costs outside of taxes/insurance (CA has EQ insurance requirements and my building is 50 floors, and the basis for taxes on my building is also north of $1B whereas BofA would probably be lucky to go for north of $100M...but all else is likely similar).  Tenants in BofA in Jax are still bargain hunting despite the building.  That's tenants in Jax.  There is no room or need for them to go crazy, and it's their market, but rather than pay higher rent and shoot for a new lobby, barricades in elevator banks, and a crazy TI, they'd rather go for lower rent and CAM caps.  Just the nature of their business level and their needs.

Hopefully Illuminate Jax can get traction and funding, but I wouldn't look to LLs since most of them are squeezed so tight right now, and wondering when they can exit the market, ha.  And I doubt as if most tenants are willing to pitch in in the name of a "more attractive skyline".  That's not what's bringing them to DT Jax right now (who is coming to DT Jax?).

[thelakelander]

I'm definitely not sure it's the best use of limited public funds dedicated to address downtown at this point.  Nevertheless, I agree that LLs have no real reason or desire to pay for enhanced night lighting at this point.  If they did, the lights already installed on those buildings would already be on.

[simms3]

Considering that the Empire State Building is worth more than all of Downtown Jacksonville, their ROI is a bit different.

The ESB is about to be publicly traded, LoL.  Unsolicited off-market bids have approached $1.5B to prevent the IPO, but the controlling interest (a wealthy family) is only interested in going public.  So, yes the building is far more valuable than all of DT Jax!  Pretty ridiculous, though I can pretty easily think of about 10 Manhattan "boring" office towers that are worth even more than the ESB...my company has bought and sold a few of them in the past 10 years. 

Bottom line is that ownership of ESB has the means, capacity, and reason to light that building up.  Not all buildings lend themselves to be lit up.  I would only want to see the 4 top corners of the BofA building lit up in plain single-color fashion (perhaps different colors for holidays and events), but nothing more.  LEDs going up the sides would turn me as a tenant off of that building, which is set up for high profile financial services firms (it was built for a goddamn bank) and law firms.  It's certainly not a building that would look good with signage either (what building does, honestly?).

[vicupstate]

During downtown's old days, most of the buildings were owned by local entities that took pride in the community.  After decades of mergers and consolidations, that civic pride is somewhat gone.  Now, it's about dollars and cents.

This is so true.  Businesses have a much smaller commitment to the communities that they draw their profits from in today's economy.  I wish there was a way to change that everywhere.

For reasons Lake and Simms have described, this project will be challenged to take off, but I hope somehow it does, if the private sector can do it's (lion share) part.

Don't underestimate the affects of 50 or so thousand people driving through your city every night (on 95), and seeing an impressive skyline.  It could be a much needed icon for a city that really needs to raise it's profile. 

[thelakelander]

As it stands now, the skyline looks pretty impressive driving through.  After all, there's virtually nothing (in terms of urbanism) worth seeing on I-95 between Richmond and South Florida (excluding Jax) or on I-10 between Mobile and Jacksonville.  The way the highways rip through the heart of the urban core, you get looks of the skyline from a variety of views during a single trip.  In fact, I'd go as far to argue that even the skyline in its current state is deceiving. It makes the city look more lively than it really is.  It entices you to get off the highway only to be disappointed in seeing the scene so empty at street level.