Bitter Editorial About All The Potential: Rob Middleton

[Ocklawaha]

Jacksonville has a beautiful setting on the St. John's river. Unfortunately, the setting has not been well incorporated into a master plan for the city. The city needs to hire a planner to develop a master plan for the core city, with Union Street as the northern boundary, west to the convention center, east to the river beyond the stadium and south to the river.

BINGO! Me thinks we has discovered yet another constant fail, ending the 'core city' at the river... Um the Southside of the River is just as much and in many cases more urban than the north bank.

[I-10east]

KEEP GIVING 'EM HELL GUYS, or whatever....

[Ocklawaha]

I wondered where you were while all of this was being posted I-10E .  This is one of those strange times when I believe you and I are not that far apart.

[Know Growth]

This Thread has spurned great .........potential. I skipped the inclination to share the many dozens of reviews my customers and family members have observed while passing through Jacksonville,why all could have been happy these many years,how we might have escaped Booster Projects etc.

Naw,skip it. Lost Potential.Web Sites such as this certainly of minimal influence.Another lesson in lost Potential.

Better yet to finally receive Brilliant Insight: Today's Jacksonville is simply a result of where Jacksonville has been headed.

(And now know the window to move out pushed up ....)

[lawmn1717]

I couldn't have said it better myself!!  2nd rate city and apparently the powers that be want it to stay that way.

[simms3]

We do need to finish things. We do need to stop being so half assed and narrow visioned.

And its pissing off a lot of people that we can't seem to get the right people in place to do that.

I agree with those points, and maybe I mis-read the column as it was early and I was still getting going.  It is frustrating that we can't get things done, but people also have to realize that most of us are outsiders in our opinions when you consider Jacksonville at-large.  While we realize a working, and far reaching Skyway would be killer and that downtown revitalization would help us all, most Jaxsons don't feel that way.  I think a lot of solutions start with convincing our friends/family/colleagues who live out in Mandarin (barf) and Nocatee (double barf) that these are important issues.

The frustration of backward mindset and half-assed fulfillment of DT projects resonates with a lot of us MJ readers but there is one glimmer of hope that this can all change: the succes so-far of new residential and retail projects close to (but not quite in) downtown. All is not lost if these projects (particularly retail) can create a real spark in not only developing the core but getting some of these long planned projects off the ground and not falling victim to time and indifference.

+1 If there is a market and money to be made then it will happen regardless of poor political vision.

You'd be surprised.  Maybe you've heard of the housing shortage crisis in the Bay Area/San Francisco, which seems to be at the forefront of the national spotlight a lot recently?  The governance of the vision here is often left to the people to decide, so lo and behold nothing happens.  And we are at the point where 350 sf studios down the street from me are going for $600K and the amount of societal angst in this town is like nothing I have experienced in my life.

Vision has to be properly guided.  A political system that gets in the way, or leaders who are either visionless/spineless/incompetent/shitty (Jacksonville) or supplanted by an actual democracy (San Francisco) will of course hinder a vision.

These are real problems that must be tackled.

[E38557]

I loved this...Bravo!!!  If memory serves correctly too, they recently announced that One Spark was such a success that it would be going from a one week event to a weekend, then again changed that to ONE DAY...same day as monthly art walk...The "whats coming" has basically been torturing me for the 22 years I have lived here!!!!!  Loved the reflection you created...  ;-)

[Know Growth]

Was in the company of One In The Know today, someone that possesses grasp of Jacksonville historical events which so often entailed pursuit of Potential. Conversation summed up: Folks try to do something for fifteen cents,when in fact it would have required a dollar.

Decline of Neighborhoods also common conversation thread.

For all we know,luckily some efforts to fulfill potential failed.