Downtown Food Truck Park Opening This Week

[jaxlore]

Yeah unfortunately a good Indian restaurant has been severely lacking in the core for years. Im sure there are several post on here that mention it

[fieldafm]

The Court is open for dinner beginning tomorrow.  Dinner service will run Thursday through Saturday from 5pm until 8pm.

Tomorrow (Thursday) Waugwauga Food Truck, Cuban Fire Grill and Wurstbusters will be serving on site.

[Dapperdan]

Great, now all the downtown restaurants can be ever  more mad.

[JeffreyS]

The Court is open for dinner beginning tomorrow.  Dinner service will run Thursday through Saturday from 5pm until 8pm.

Tomorrow (Thursday) Waugwauga Food Truck, Cuban Fire Grill and Wurstbusters will be serving on site.

Mike you have done a great job with this. First you advocate for built in retail.  Then when the city dropped the ball you picked it up and made something else out of it.

[fieldafm]

Mike:
I dont know how much interest in this there is, but any chance of some universal, good-at-all-foodtrucks-at-the-courtyard gift card being available? I feel like that would be a nice gift for co-workers and such.

I agree that would be cool, but with roughly 60 small business owners that use maybe a dozen different kinds of Point of Sale systems... that's not something that is on our radar to tackle at this time. Getting dinner service working downtown is going to be enough of a challenge as is. That said, I really hope that dinner is well received. Downtown, while improved in recent years, lacks a critical mass of dinner options. To become a consistent evening dining destination, we really feel very strongly that there needs to be more places open with a unique product. Kazu Sushi Burrito is a perfect example... while dinner is still inconsistent, they definitely see (young) people that don't live or work downtown make the trip after 5pm to grab a sushi burrito (I myself eat dinner there at least twice a week). With Bellwether opening soon joining places like Candy Apple (another great, unique space), Spliffs Gastropub, Kazu, Burrito Gallery, Indochine, Zodiac, Lana Thai, Fionn MacCools, etc... and now the food truck court and soon another new restaurant that is about to announce an opening downtown (more on that later), we are hopeful that we can contribute to helping establish that much needed critical mass. 

Mike you have done a great job with this. First you advocate for built in retail.  Then when the city dropped the ball you picked it up and made something else out of it.

I really don't deserve any accolades. Quite a lot of people are responsible for the food truck court. My partner Jack Shad is on site more than I am and he is really the driving force behind The Court.  You can read about some of the things Jack has/is working on here: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2015-mar-a-lot-of-opportunities , http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2016-jan-coming-soon-the-bridge and http://jacksonville.com/food-and-dining/news/metro/2017-03-31/mike-shad-buys-another-riverside-building-plans-renovate

Traci Jenks of Cushman Wakefield made a complicated leasing process involving a unique use with an out of town building owner (institutional investors are typically focused on credit tenants and leasing large chunks of Class A office spaces... and not necessarily some off-the-wall use), a very seamless process. LAZ Parking (who manages the parking garage) has also really supported The Court far above and beyond what we expected. The Jacksonville Landing has also helped us during special events. There are not quite 60 food trucks that sign up for various lunch (and now dinner) shifts (each with between two and four employees on board), and they all work hard to provide consistently good products that don't take an entire lunch shift to prepare- they've all definitely improved with speed of service and offering service with a smile since we opened in late February.

Things get done when everyone works together, and there are A LOT of people that work together to make The Court work. We are still evolving and improving day-by-day, but behind the scenes there are many, many moving parts (and A LOT of people)... and its pretty awesome to be a part of a large team where everyone is working towards the same positive goal.




That said, we hope you'll try us out tonight and going forward with dinner service Thursdays through Saturdays.

[lowlyplanner]

Just a reminder that the City Council's NCIS (Neighborhoods, Community Investments & Services) Committee will have a public meeting today at 4 pm in Council Chambers to discuss the concerns raised by some downtown brick and mortar restaurants about The Court (and food trucks in general).

If you have an opinion about this issue please consider coming by the meeting and expressing it.

You can also find the list of NCIS members here:  http://www.coj.net/city-council/standing-committees/ncis

There's also a link to watch the meeting online.