Parking rates may be going up

[Bill Hoff]

A thorough discussion of Downtown parking, including possible meter & garage rate hikes. Apparently Downtown Jax has very cheap parking.

Fyi: http://floridapolitics.com/archives/185190-jacksonville-transition-budget-review-economic-development

[fsujax]

Cheaper than Anchorage...

[thelakelander]

How vibrant is DT Anchorage in comparison?

[simms3]

$80/mo for downtown office parking.  That's 1/4 the market rate of covered residential parking in my neighborhood 2+ miles from downtown!

It's also less than I pay for transit each month, certainly a lot less than I pay for transit + rideshare + cabs each month.  I do believe Jax DT parking rates are the lowest in the country.  There really is no argument for parking costs in Jax when premium suburban office rents on the SS can be a full $1-2 more per square foot than premium view space downtown.

I think we can all lay claim that executives just don't want to drive as far from their PVB homes and there are no inherent advantages to being in DT Jax (though these advantages can be created wisely and strategically).

[fsujax]

How vibrant is DT Anchorage in comparison?

From the surface it appears more vibrant...I mean there is a huge shopping mall, Nordstroms and lots of restaurants...not to mention all the tourists in summer. Also like Jax lots of parking lots and garages.

[thelakelander]

The reason I ask, is because while parking may be some of the cheapest, the downtown experience is one of the lowest. IMO, we'd be better off jump starting life into DT and focusing on creating a grand end user experience, instead of figuring out how to milk the consumer for extra change.

[simms3]

^^^True.

Companies providing parking for employees, residents parking their cars in covered and secure garages, hotel visitors valeting their cars or parking covered and secured garages, and tourists/visitors coming in for the day or night to experience downtown should all be different camps.

[Lunican]

What exactly warrants a price increase? Is it the lively downtown or the superbly maintained lots?

[Lunican]

By the way, what happened to this...?

In an effort to clean up the appearance of downtown, the JEDC has developed a Surface Parking Improvement Plan to address the blight stimulated by downtown Jacksonville's parking industry.

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2010-dec-downtowns-blighted-surface-parking-lots-under-fire

[Todd_Parker]

By the way, what happened to this...?

In an effort to clean up the appearance of downtown, the JEDC has developed a Surface Parking Improvement Plan to address the blight stimulated by downtown Jacksonville's parking industry.

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2010-dec-downtowns-blighted-surface-parking-lots-under-fire

I believe the plan's budget was exhausted on the study done to determine the feasibility of the plan. (credit: Joseph Heller)

[Debbie Thompson]

At 10:32, Jack Shad:  Right now, private operators are disincentivized from building garages without "extensive city subsidy."     Huh?  Is lack of parking garages a big issue downtown?  It seems like they are everywhere.  Oh, and incentivize isn't a word.  The correct word is incent.  (Just a pet peeve.)

[thelakelander]

By the way, what happened to this...?

In an effort to clean up the appearance of downtown, the JEDC has developed a Surface Parking Improvement Plan to address the blight stimulated by downtown Jacksonville's parking industry.

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2010-dec-downtowns-blighted-surface-parking-lots-under-fire

A few of those old lots survived the JEDC. Ron Barton left in 2011 and Alvin Brown replaced the JEDC with OED in 2012.

[Noone]

Parking? How about one dedicated ADA parking spot with the recently completed $17,000,000 Southbank Riverwalk?

[Tacachale]

Oh, and incentivize isn't a word.  The correct word is incent.  (Just a pet peeve.)

Both "incentivize" and "incent" are well established words, appearing in many dictionaries, including Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster. Both are relatively recent innovations, as words go; both have really only come into common use since the later part of the 20th century.

http://grammarist.com/usage/incentivize-incent/

[simms3]

^^^Thanks!!  And it bugs me that there are so many proper grammar and old English toting posters on MetroJacksonville.  I interact daily with Harvard grads who are just brilliant, who prefer to use shortcuts or invented words or acronyms when possible, and I fall into the same camp.

At the end of the day, a large component of this website is devoted to urban planning and discussion, and many people who hold careers in related fields are absolutely not concerned with the proper use of words.  If it's well understood, or even better understood, to use a "commonly used" word or phrase rather than one that appears in the King James Bible, rest assured plenty of intelligent people will skip the grammar lesson to get their point across, especially in the real estate/urban planning worlds.  It's like highway speeds.  Sure the posted speed is 65 and it would be proper to go that fast, but everyone else is going 85...it can actually be quite dangerous to not go with traffic, and it can be quite dangerous to use big/proper words. 

It's sometimes almost intimidating reading people's posts that contain words that I've literally never read either in a novel or heard in everyday communication.  So many big word users on MJ.  If we could slang all of the threads up, I'd be totally down for that!

If we can be on that page, I'll stop Googling words I rarely use to see if they are ok to post online in the framework I'm trying to use them!