Mayor Curry & Shad Khan in talks about Metro Park Development

[thelakelander]

Jacksonville would be pretty foolish to build a +500,000 square foot convention center. Even 200,000 square feet would be pushing it. Something with 100,000 to 150,000 square feet of exhibition space should be sufficient for our secondary market. Also, I can't see water taxis being a viable form of transportation as long as the fare is $5/person one way.

Totally agree with this. I'm far from convinced that a modernized convention center is a top 10 need for Jacksonville, but I'm fully convinced that it would be a fool's errand to try to compete with Atlanta or Orlando with a 500,000+ square foot facility. 150,000 thousand square feet of modern exhibition space, in a more appealing location, feels like it would be a sweet spot for Jacksonville.

Luckily, all past discussion of a convention center in town has not talked about attempting to compete with Atlanta, Chicago, Orlanodo, etc. It's been about competing with cities like Huntsville, Birmingham, Daytona, Mobile, etc. We currently have less than 80,000-square-feet of exhibition space. The places I just mentioned range between 93,000 to 220,000 square feet of exhibition space. You'd also be looking to directly tied to a large hotel and within walking distance of bars, restaurants, retail, cultural attractions, etc. So the vibrancy of the blocks surrounding a convention center can make or break the experience and a facility's ability to compete.

Also, was just reading the Professional Convention Management Association's top two trends for convention space:

1) The definition of meeting space will evolve.

While conversations about convention centers typically include square footage figures and meeting room numbers, more meeting planners are looking for one essential adjective to describe the space inside a convention center: flexible.

"People no longer want to be shut in a room for a long period of time," Claire Smith, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Vancouver Convention Centre, says. "Their attention spans are shorter, and they crave more opportunities to move around, meet people and share ideas."

Smith admits that the shift in human behavior can be challenging for some convention centers.

"It can be hard to respond to behavior changes when you're a brick and mortar," Smith says. "There are limitations to adjusting a physical space."

However, many meeting planners are overcoming those limitations, and Smith highlights that previously under-utilized portions of convention centers are playing an important role in attendee engagement.

"The foyer is the new meeting room," Smith says. "We're seeing groups use that space in ways we never would have imagined with attendees sitting cross-legged on the floor to participate in pop-up dialogues and full session presentations specifically scheduled for the foyer."

2) What's outside will matter even more.

Earlier this year, at the CEIR Predict Conference, Bob Priest-Heck, President and COO of Freeman, highlighted that an emerging generation of attendees looks at venues in a new light.

"Millennials don't see the convention center as the place where the event is happening," Priest-Heck said. "They look at the whole city as the venue."

Smith agrees, citing the 2011 Risk Insurance Management Society Annual Meeting as a prime example. From events at off-site destinations throughout the city to a sponsored sailboat with custom logos in the harbor outside the convention center, Smith says the organization is very conscious of using every inch of a destination to elevate the experience.

"It's important to celebrate the cities we're meeting in," Smith says.

With Next City, we've been doing "unconferences" the last few years. We've held meetings in parks, bars, medical centers, etc. However, that's a completely different animal from a trade show. We have less than 100 people at the unconferences and even they are subdivided into smaller groups.

Reading this got me thinking. A convention center proper at Metro Park doesn't make a whole lot of sense. There's room for a hotel, meeting space, ballrooms, etc. but it seems like it would be hard to squeeze an exhibition hall onto that property. But what if Daily's Place - nearly 100,000 square feet of climate-controlled flex space connected to the hotel/conference center by pedestrian bridge -- served as the exhibition hall. You could even leverage the amphitheater for conferences. You'd have to work around football season, but this actually sounds like the type of quirky venue that might differentiate Jacksonville from the big boxes and help land some mid-tier conventions that would otherwise think the city too vanilla to host.

Indoor practice fields for football are pretty common. However, them being used for convention meeting space is not. Probably because they'd be off limits the majority of the year.

[FlaBoy]

On water taxis, I've been thinking about this a lot as of late. The current fares are expensive, but we work through an outside company, and I don't believe that the taxis are subsidized to nearly the extent that other public transportation in Jacksonville is. What's to stop JTA from getting into the water taxi business? Just in the last week or two on these boards, we've talked so much about the benefits of Skyway expansion in terms of connecting places like San Marco, Riverside, Brooklyn, Baptist/Aetna, the stadium district, the District, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm still in favor of Skyway expansion as a long-term transit solution, but couldn't achieve similar connectivity at a fraction of the cost, in 10% of the time, with infinitely more flexibility, with a water taxi loop?

Pardon my poor MS Paint skills, but something like this:



Call me crazy, but isn't this something that could potentially get a ton of commuter, recreational, event and tourist use if the service was reliable, headways were decent, and cost was more in line with bus fares?

We talk so much about how underutilized our river is, it seems like it would be a great way to get people interacting with the St. Johns, perhaps on a daily basis. You could even expand into Ortega or further into San Marco, have weekend service from downtown to the zoo, vary routes by time of day (extended commuter routes in the AM and PM), etc.

We also talk about Baltimore alot. Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour, just purchased the Baltimore Water Taxi service outright (http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2016/08/22/more-details-on-the-new-water-taxi-stops-under.html) with the intention of increasing the fleet and adding new stops. He's already bought 10 state-of-the-art new water taxis with free wifi, 50-person capacity, and Uber integration. Total cost, $6.5 million (for context, we spent $4 million on escalators for Skyway stations alone this year and it would cost $15 million per track mile to expand).

Again, big Skyway supporter, but a strong water taxi service (rather than the four-boat, five-stop loop we currently have) seems like such a great opportunity in the short-term with a very high bang-for-the-buck.

I actually think this is the type of out of the box thinking we need. My question is, what are the largest and most successful water taxi/ferry transit programs? We are laid out in a way that this makes a lot of sense in comparison to some other cities.

[acme54321]

Call me crazy, but isn't this something that could potentially get a ton of commuter, recreational, event and tourist use if the service was reliable, headways were decent, and cost was more in line with bus fares?

We talk so much about how underutilized our river is, it seems like it would be a great way to get people interacting with the St. Johns, perhaps on a daily basis. You could even expand into Ortega or further into San Marco, have weekend service from downtown to the zoo, vary routes by time of day (extended commuter routes in the AM and PM), etc.

You'd think that something like that to avoid traffic from say Riverside into downtown would be tempting.  One thing that would be a factor for commuters using the water taxi service between downtown and the neighborhoods south would be the idle zone between the Fuller Warren and Main St bridges, that could add considerable time.

[thelakelander]

^Sometimes it's better to keep things simple, even if the simple solution was figured out more than a century ago.

At the end of the day, transit success really boils down to frequency, cost, corridor capacity and routing ability to penetrate where people want to go.

Here's some major issues Jax would need to overcome for a water taxi to be anything more than a tourist service or narrated sightseeing tour.

1. Most of your urban core population centers and pool of potential transit riders aren't on the river. You can focus on those few destinations on the map, but you'd also limit your pool of potential transit users to them.....which isn't a good thing for longevity.




2. Then there's the entire FEC bridge issue that would screw up reliability. If you can't reach your destination because the train stops on the bridge (happens alot), then service frequency, timing and reliability hampers ridership growth. 




3. You'd also lose the ability to stimulate TOD. Stimulating complementing land development to incrementally build ridership should be a big component of urban transit planning.  Who sets the water taxi operator/developer team on fire first when they propose some real density (like illustrated in the graphic below) around a stop in Riverside or San Marco's River Rd?




4. The best ferry services are routes where you literally have no viable alternative to cross a large body of water (not paralleling the edge of the water's edge). Examples would be the Staten Island Ferry or Washington's ferry routes across Pudget Sound.






These are just a few challenges off the top of my head that a water taxi service would have to overcome to be considered a reliable option for every day commuters.

[FlaBoy]

The other thing would be weather conditions. However, the way the city is built around the river provides a ton of opportunity for something more in comparison to most other cities. There is a lot of population around the river especially if compared to building a Skyway line to the Stadium or through Brooklyn to 95. There is almost no difference in close population down Bay or Riverside Ave and just going along the coast  on a ferry. The FEC is certainly an issue though.

[thelakelander]

^ Except a big part of the Skyway/BRT discussion involves expanding into areas away from the river, like Springfield, Baymeadows or Southpoint. Also, Jax isn't really that unique in the grand scheme of things.  For example, Charleston, Norfolk and Baltimore are three East Coast settings worth taking a look at to provide a picture of how something could possibly work in Jax. However, I'm not aware of any of their services acting as a replacement for traditional forms of public transit.

[Captain Zissou]

I would love an expanded ferry system.  I used it in Seattle and it was great.  As a St Nick resident and Brooklyn employee, I would take it to work, take it to play in downtown and take it to the stadium to watch the Jags lose.

[KenFSU]

^Don't get me wrong, you're preaching to the choir in terms of water taxi being an outright, exclusive alternative to Skyway connectivity. Skyway expansion would be the reliable, permanent solution that would spur transit-oriented development. But in the medium-term absence of said Skyway connectivity, I don't know, I kind of like the idea of a water taxi loop as a complimentary, secondary system that could potentially be implemented in short order for less than the cost of one mile of Skyway track.

Just by placing water taxi stops at Riverfront Park and Memorial Park, which the city already owns, and Weaver Riverside Park beside the Yates YMCA, you'd immediately connect San Marco, Riverside, and Brooklyn with all of downtown's major employment centers, either directly, or via Skyway connection. You note that riverfront stops would limit the pool of potential riders, but I'd counter that all three stops are still within reasonable walking distance for many, many people as well.

Going the other way, you'd also directly connect thousands of downtown residents to amenities in the surrounding neighborhoods that aren't readily available downtown. Brooklyn Fresh Market, Riverside Publix, Yates YMCA, Unity Plaza. Memorial Park. San Marco Theater. Etc.

And for the tourists, you'd have a loop that hits or is within a quarter mile walk of the Landing, Friendship Fountain, the MOSH, the Cummer, San Marco Square, Five Points, Veterans Memorial, the Baseball Grounds, Everbank Field, Daily's Place, MOMA, Hemming Park, the Main Library, Florida Theater, Times-Union Center, the Symphony Hall, potentially the USS Adams, and whatever new developments may come.

Yes, you'd have to contend with weather, and trains, and idle zones, etc. And yes, no city has ever magically solved its transit issues with water taxi alone. But to me, it seems like it would be a natural way to provide some extra connectivity and synergy between downtown districts and neighborhoods, get a few cars off the road, and leverage our most valuable asset - the St Johns River. You could even brand the system and design the taxis in a way that ties in with the local community, then market the shit out of it as something unique.

Can't see a universe where such a system doesn't provide some measure of utility to the city, increase quality of life for residents, and pull in some tourists as well.

[thelakelander]

I guess what I'm getting at is that in no way is it a substitute for a public transit system designed to attract the transit dependent and choice riders for commuting purposes.  It's just a mutually exclusive service catering to a niche demographic. The same could be said for a streetcar that only serves downtown, that also shares lanes with automobiles.

[Tacachale]

Here are a few of my random thoughts on this:

1. My read is that Ken's right, that we're talking about a land swap with Metro Park being developed and the Shipyards becoming park space. This isn't a bad arrangement: Metro Park is underused as a park due to being so far out, and the Shipyards has a lot of issues to overcome before real development happens there. It could be much better as a waterfront green space; in fact, pretty much anything is better than what we've got.

2. Signs point to the development being, or at least including, a convention center and hotel. Khan wants these, they were in his last Shipyards plans, and the announcements have hinted that's what it will be. There's probably some other stuff being included.

3. Whatever it is, it's worth remembering the last Khan proposal. This centered heavily around his desired practice field and amphitheater. There, the deal was for Khan to take the Shipyards (for free), with taxpayers still paying for cleanup. All future revenue would be tied to the Shipyards, and Khan wouldn't have even developed it all himself - he was going to parcel it off. This was a bad deal and the thing that stopped it was the city's new CAO, Sam Mousa. Mousa returning to City Hall is one of the best things to happen in Jacksonville in recent years. Whatever this deal is, it was negotiated with Mousa and the city, so we can expect it will at least be better from our end.

4. That said even if it's a great deal, the issues of connectivity and lack of clustering brought by Laurie Boyer and others are very real. If we move the park space closer to the core, but take the potential for a convention center out of it, it's not as much of a gain as it could be. The issue of a new hotel cannibalizing the Hyatt's business, and that of other urban core hotels, is also a problem, especially considering the incentives that went into building the Hyatt.

5. That said, the Stadium District is where it is, and has been for a very long time. Though it's not in the core per se, it's reasonably well clustered area already, and there's a lot of opportunity to do more. While not ideal from a clustering perspective, a convention center there wouldn't have the problem that the Prime Osborne has had for most of its existence of being surrounded by multiple empty blocks. It would be a stone's throw from a number of other things. It will be nice to see continued development there.

6. I wouldn't get hopes up about a Skyway extension to the stadium. Other than game days, it likely wouldn't increase ridership that much anyway. People will still drive instead.

7. As with many other recent developments, I don't see any Northbank projects reaching their full potential until the Northbank residential base increases. Brooklyn and the Southbank will help, but people in those places don't now, and won't in the future, be walking anywhere on the Northbank. Increasing that would also reduce the issue of nodes being separated from each other. This is often a missing piece in our plans.

8. After having some discussions with folks, I'm no longer convinced that the Courthouse space is the best location for a convention center. There's just not enough actual space; the parking lot disguised how small the lot is. The footprint is smaller than the Prime Osborn, which is seen as being too small (among other issues). The Hyatt expansion Lake mentions above might still be good, though that requires tearing down the old City Hall building, which  is much more functional than the old Courthouse. A centrally located convention center would still be the best deal, if the land and finances worked out.

9. As others have touched on, no convention center project should be made with the intention of competing with major centers like Orlando. Instead, it should be about getting a slice of the pie that would be easy for us with a better facility. It should also be done with the added goals of enhancing downtown, and freeing up the Prime Osborn to become a train station again.

10. All this aside, I look forward to hearing about what the projects will entail. It's a good time for urban Jacksonville right now.

[FlaBoy]

^ Except a big part of the Skyway/BRT discussion involves expanding into areas away from the river, like Springfield, Baymeadows or Southpoint. Also, Jax isn't really that unique in the grand scheme of things.  For example, Charleston, Norfolk and Baltimore are three East Coast settings worth taking a look at to provide a picture of how something could possibly work in Jax. However, I'm not aware of any of their services acting as a replacement for traditional forms of public transit.

I don't think anyone is saying it should replace plans for transit into Springfield and Southside. I think it was an idea in the meantime to make meaningful connections for our biggest nodes of activity in the urban core without spending $150 million dollars. What would be the difference between a water taxi route and extending the Skyway to the stadium down Bay St or down Riverside Avenue? I would love to see the Skyway expanded but doubt the money is there anytime soon to do it all the way to the Stadium or to the Riverside Arts Market.

[KenFSU]

I've always wondered why Metro Park was built in such a remote location. Found out today - via a Times-Union interview with Jake Godbold - that it was pretty much a last-minute decision resulting from panic. Godbold's original proposal for Metro Park (and the vision that the federal grant was secured upon) involved replacing Water Street with a truly urban park/esplanade connecting two soon-to-be-completed developments, the Jacksonville Landing and the Prime Osborne Convention Center.

Would have likely looked something like this:



The City Council rejected Goldbold's plan, refusing to close Water Street.

Florida Gov. Bob Graham tried to take the grant money from Jacksonville as a result, leaving Godbold less than two weeks to come up with a plan B. WJCT had long wanted to build a performance stage and park around its studios, so rather than lose the money, Godbold agreed to develop in that area.

My apologies if this is common knowledge, but I thought it was really interesting, and certainly explains the odd initial placement.

Also, even though Metropolitan Park currently stands at around 27 acres, this came as the result of several expansions over the last 30 years. The original park was a modest 10.8 acres. The land swap discussions that we've heard in the Times-Union rest on a 27-acre swap, but I'd wonder if we're only legally bound to the 10.8 acres originally built out with the help of the grant.

[thelakelander]

I find Godbold's original proposal to be an interesting one. Too bad it fell through.

Flaboy, I just noticed your last post. I'll respond tonight.

[spuwho]

I would love an expanded ferry system.  I used it in Seattle and it was great.  As a St Nick resident and Brooklyn employee, I would take it to work, take it to play in downtown and take it to the stadium to watch the Jags lose.

I too have used the Washington State Ferry system extensively and it is incredibly beneficial for those who live on the peninsula, however........it is incredibly expensive to maintain and is heavily subsidized by motor fuel taxes to make up the gaps at the fare box.

I am not against it per se, but having lived there, I see people who choose to live extra distance from the Seattle core on the basis of the ferry.  In this case ferrys propogate the same level of sprawl that critics of highways abhor.

Finally I think ferrys in Jax are a non-starter. We already own a ferry at Mayport that has been treated like ugly stepchild that no one wants to keep but everyone wants someone else to get rid of. Our transportation policy and thinking in NE Florida just doesnt support ferries.

Everyone wants easy access, but no one in Florida wants to pay for it. So highways will continue.

I think Ock has it right for any TOD to/from any major development in Jacksonville, whether it is Khans, Rummells, Davis'es or whomever. Streetcar.

[Noone]

I guess it's about time for me to finally finish up that Baltimore article ;-)

+1 Brother and an "Amen" to 2015-305. Shipyards JUMBO Public Fishing Pier.