Convention center, Downtown on draft list for Curry

[downtownbrown]

I know this might be addressed on another thread, but should we even be talking about something as massive as a convention center being built on the old courthouse site? I say this because of the crumbling infrastructure and isn't the parking lot built over the river on bridges? It seems to me like a new convention center might be better placed elsewhere, and turn the old courthouse site into a smaller development, maybe even open up part of the parking lot into a small harbor with boat docks and riverside restaurants. I just wonder about the engineering feasibility of that location. Perhaps we should be putting other ideas on the table.

A convention center on the courthouse site will surely fill in most of the existing parking lot.  It's pretty shallow until you get well out toward the river.  I think it's an ideal location.

[vicupstate]

Chicken and egg argument.

Sports tourism and convention center activity drive the need for hotel rooms.

Turning the trio into a high end hotel with nothing complimentary. You end up with another Robert Meyer.

Business travel should be able to fill up a hotel in the Trio/Barnett (if a hotel was even the determined use) and the 'complimentary' is already there if all four buildings are done at the same time.  Courtyard by Marriott was already interested.  The Bostwick building restaurant would also provide some complimentary use.

The Hyatt is a huge behemoth that is geared to conventions that don't come.

[downtownbrown]

Chicken and egg argument.

Sports tourism and convention center activity drive the need for hotel rooms.

Turning the trio into a high end hotel with nothing complimentary. You end up with another Robert Meyer.

Pretty much! Look at the Hyatt as well. We have businesses (we've essentially subsidized already) struggling on West Bay Street because we haven't been able to make a decision on the future of the courthouse site in over 10 years now. Anyway, the funding from both would most likely have to come from two separate pots.

My suggestion for the convention center would be to start small by putting an exhibition hall with some ground level retail on the old courthouse block, between Bay and the deck that's falling into the river. Connect it to the Hyatt's ballroom level with a skywalk. That should not cost an arm and a leg.

In addition, before we drop one red cent on addressing that deck falling into the river, we should coordinate it's future and the amount spent with the planning and implementation of whatever is decided to go on the blocks around it.

absolutely.  Fixing Liberty, Coastline, and the parking lot is good money after bad.

[thelakelander]

A new convention center on the old courthouse site would be great and it is very encouraging to hear that DT development is seen as highly important. That said, maybe get the projects on the table like the trio, landing, shipyards and healthy town funded before we take on totally new $200 million + projects.

Exactly what Aundra Wallace says...

To be honest, I'm not sure I'd subsidize Healthy Town or the Shipyards, outside of cleaning the property. Both are too far away from the core of downtown to have a significant impact on pedestrian scale vibrancy within this decade and probably the next. Placing too much focus in those areas only ensures that the core of the city will be still be fairly dead in 2025. If there is really a market for them, let them develop market rate. In both cases, it's not like the guys desiring to develop them need to live off the public teet.

With that said, we're going to have to learn how to chew gum and walk at the same time by getting a few complementing projects underway simultaneously. If places like Orlando, Sarasota and St. Petersburg can do this, Jacksonville should be able to as well.

[downtownbrown]

except that Khan is saying he wants his development to go up all at once, and he has committed $500 million.  Add Berkman 2 to that (either finished or torn down) and the neighborhood begins to look like a logical extension to downtown.

[thelakelander]

Chicken and egg argument.

Sports tourism and convention center activity drive the need for hotel rooms.

Turning the trio into a high end hotel with nothing complimentary. You end up with another Robert Meyer.

Business travel should be able to fill up a hotel in the Trio/Barnett (if a hotel was even the determined use) and the 'complimentary' is already there if all four buildings are done at the same time.  Courtyard by Marriott was already interested.  The Bostwick building restaurant would also provide some complimentary use.

The Hyatt is a huge behemoth that is geared to conventions that don't come.

The problem with the Hyatt and the Prime Osborn are the same. They are two complementing uses that should be feeding each other but can't properly because for some strange reason, we found away to develop them over a mile away from one another.  That's only fixed by moving one or subsidizing a completing use adjacent to the existing already subsidized use.

The Prime Osborn is also dead smack dab in the middle of the transportation center, which just received $21 million from Rick Scott to be constructed.  If we continue to ignore both, we're going to end up with a multimillion transportation center, we look back 10 years from now, and wonder why it doesn't work efficiently.

The answer here is a simple one. To get a few of these projects off paper, money will need to be spread out and some of the grand plans for individual sites will have to be toned down to the reality of the market that truly exists.  So when it comes to a convention center, instead of the $500 million bells and whistles, you may have to settle for a $50 to $100 million no-frills exhibition hall that simply feeds visitors into the Hyatt, Bay Street businesses and vise versa.  Even if it only books small trade shows, the people visiting those trade shows are walking past Marks, Olio, the Landing, etc. instead of dirt lots next to the I-95 interchange. 

When it comes to the Landing, maybe you don't spend money demolishing the bridge ramps and buildings. Instead, you spend half as much retrofitting the existing site and upgrading the open spaces surrounding it.

When it comes to the Trio, maybe we can't immediately fund another multi-story garage structure with public money.  Maybe we have to incrementally get started by better configuring and utilizing existing parking lots or bundling parking deals with nearby garages.

In other words, we can get there, but it may mean every project toning dreams and visions down a notch.

[thelakelander]

except that Khan is saying he wants his development to go up all at once, and he has committed $500 million.  Add Berkman 2 to that (either finished or torn down) and the neighborhood begins to look like a logical extension to downtown.

Yeah, that's baloney. Kahn isn't developing the Shipyards at once. There's no market for it.  He'd be out of millions and half those buildings on that pie-in-the-sky plan would be sitting empty. From what I can tell, signs point to him being a master site developer, not the actual developer of the individual uses shown in the renderings.  In other words, we'd pay to put some streets in and parcel out the site. Then his investment company would attempt to get some other developer like Sleiman to come in and spend their money building some retail or a developer like Vestcor to build some apartments. Neither of those guys are going to spend their money immediately, if there's no real market for their product. So, what you'd end up with is something like this until the market can incrementally support infill development:

[finehoe]

The problem with the Hyatt and the Prime Osborn are the same. They are two complementing uses that should be feeding each other but can't properly because for some strange reason, we found away to develop them over a mile away from one another. 

I'd guess that strange reason was because the "right people" didn't own the land.

[thelakelander]

Add Berkman 2 to that (either finished or torn down) and the neighborhood begins to look like a logical extension to downtown.

Think project scale and position of property in relation to the rest of downtown. Factor those things in and you're easily looking at a +20 year development timeline, assuming the economy remains good. From a public perception and vibrancy standpoint, you can achieve a lot more with a lot less investment by getting a 10-to-15 square block area in your core right. On top of this, getting that core spot right doesn't negatively impact the development timeline of the thing on the fringe. In fact, it more than likely improves it.

[downtownbrown]

It may be baloney, but Lamping is saying it out loud.  I think their role model is Jeff Vinick. 

[thelakelander]

Sales pitch. They all sound good.

I just sat in one yesterday in Honolulu for some heavily discounted tour tickets to use the rest of the week. The sales pitch sounded great. Sign up for a vacation "membership"...."not a timeshare" (just like Costco or Sams!) for $10k upfront (or $200/month) and enjoy cheap hotel/condo rooms to Rome, Tahiti, etc. for the rest of your life! Thanks, but no thanks. Now give me my tickets for my hour lost sitting here! I'll happily pay cash for a trip I know I'm going to take as opposed to having another monthly bill.

All of that to say, sales pitch. If you want something, you show a pretty picture and pull out all the bells and whistles to sell your vision. If you come out and present reality from the start, you might not get what you want because most who don't understand the market don't want to wait 20 years.

Regarding Vinick, how much money is he asking from Tampa? How does it compare to the Shipyard's request?  Then when it comes to market comparison of these two sites, there is no comparison.  Vinick's land is already in the middle of it all. Streetcar, Channelside, Florida Aquarium, the convention center, a riverwalk, thousands of residents in the Channel District and Harbour Island are already there. Different market for the products being proposed, so they're timelines shouldn't be compared directly.

[simms3]

except that Khan is saying he wants his development to go up all at once, and he has committed $500 million.  Add Berkman 2 to that (either finished or torn down) and the neighborhood begins to look like a logical extension to downtown.

Yeah, that's baloney. Kahn isn't developing the Shipyards at once. There's no market for it.  He'd be out of millions and half those buildings on that pie-in-the-sky plan would be sitting empty. From what I can tell, signs point to him being a master site developer, not the actual developer of the individual uses shown in the renderings.  In other words, we'd pay to put some streets in and parcel out the site. Then his investment company would attempt to get some other developer like Sleiman to come in and spend their money building some retail or a developer like Vestcor to build some apartments. Neither of those guys are going to spend their money immediately, if there's no real market for their product. So, what you'd end up with is something like this until the market can incrementally support infill development:

This sounds correct.  You were just in San Francisco.  Perhaps you checked out Lennar Urban's development down at Hunters Point.  It's a much larger project with 12K homes, 3.6 million sf office, and almost a million sf of retail, amongst other community amenities and components, but it's being done by a master developer with a very very complex legal structure and the ability for Lennar to partner with other developers on the vertical components, and the city profit participates on the horizontal piece.

Contrast with Brooklyn Point, which is almost *exactly* like the Shipyards in scale and in proposal.  That's being horizontally and vertically developed by a team almost all at once with Chinese money backing...again this is the Bay Area, not Jax.

Both development styles being done, but Jax is a small town that can't take down anything large.  No foreign interest or knowledge, weak job market, relatively slow growth given circumstances (coastal FL city).  Khan and his team, as well as the city and all potential players (any local developers like Vestcor or Sleiman), need to go out and meet with all of the players in all of the Hunters Point developments going up in cities around the country (I think there are only a few such examples...reason being these are such large and complex endeavors).

[finehoe]

Khan and his team, as well as the city and all potential players (any local developers like Vestcor or Sleiman), need to go out and meet with all of the players in all of the Hunters Point developments going up in cities around the country (I think there are only a few such examples...reason being these are such large and complex endeavors).

Here's one in DC, about half the acreage of the shipyards:  http://www.wharfdc.com/

[thelakelander]

I'm in and out of town quite often.



Right now, all I can see from my hotel balcony and hear from my bed is construction. They're all over......except in places where the market isn't there yet. We can get there as well. But first, we'll have to take care of some issues we've been debating for over a decade.

[mtraininjax]

the core of the city will be still be fairly dead in 2025.

The core of the city is dead, most of you cannot see it. Adding a hotel to the LST, whaat? What business traveler wants to go there, versus the HYatt on the river? The Hyatt is stripping all the rooms down to the core and rebuilding them all, so even if the Marriott comes in the next decade, Hyatt will already have made a presence downtown with the businesses and Visit Jax. There is nothing around the LST, unless Eddie and Chuck want to put up their clients there instead of the Gator Lodge.

Forget what happens in other cities, it does not happen here. MetroJax has been dreaming for years of light rail, where is it? still a dream. Jax is not Orlando or Miami or Tampa or San Fran, but it is sprawl and growth in the burbs, as compared to downtown. Downtown is already dead.

You can use the oft provided http://www.esri.com/data/esri_data/ziptapestry or  http://www.bestplaces.net/zip-code/florida/jacksonville/ and see what is in 32202 right now, what its median income is, the type of person in the area. This is what is here right now, meanwhile the exodus continues away from the core, more and more people are choosing to live further away from the downtown core. Why? Because there is nothing in the core right now, and no matter the number of Healthy Towns or Shipyards or Berkmans, they don't fix the continuing issue that downtown is nowheresville.