Balanky proposes 26-story tower/gondola lift for Southbank

[KenFSU]

Back from the dead.

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/article/balanky-plans-southbank-tower-with-gondolas-across-st-johns

[acme54321]

This is an outrage!  Where will be park for the bearded pig?!?

[thelakelander]

Cool looking project if it can be pulled off. I can't imagine, they'd force it to only be office/retail. Other than that...umm who needs a gondola system? That defeats the purpose of a new AV river crossing for the Skyway ;-).

[Captain Zissou]

Gondola crossing sounds pretty unnecessary to me.  This is something I imagine would be broken, rotting, and nationally mocked within 10 years based on our city's track record for maintaining its assets.

[Dapperdan]

A Gondola is a great idea. Modern gondolas are making a comeback. Disney World is building one in between its resorts and parks. It is relatively cheap to implement and modern cars are actually pretty nice. Why would this be a bad idea?

[jagsonville]

Pretty silly that one of the holdups is JTA restricting residential on the lease of land. With Baptist building a garage next to their JOI building right now they will probably stop using King Street so parking should be plentiful for this development.

[Tacachale]

Cool looking project if it can be pulled off. I can't imagine, they'd force it to only be office/retail. Other than that...umm who needs a gondola system? That defeats the purpose of a new AV river crossing for the Skyway ;-).

LOL!

[thelakelander]

A Gondola is a great idea. Modern gondolas are making a comeback. Disney World is building one in between its resorts and parks. It is relatively cheap to implement and modern cars are actually pretty nice. Why would this be a bad idea?

I was joking with my initial post concerning the gondola vs autonomous vehicle crossing. However, any new river crossing will need to meet some type of demand to make the ROI worth it from a public investment standpoint. Not saying it will be a bad idea but also not sure there's real demand for anything other than it being a novelty. Something that would be cool to do once and take pictures of, moreso than an essential transit element designed to meet commuting and accessibility needs. With that said, a lawsuit seems to cloud this entire project but one component seems a lot more realistic to pull off than the other.

[KenFSU]

We talked about a gondola pretty extensively last year:

https://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=28273.0

I really love the idea, just not now.

Finish the Shipyards and Doro District, complete that Cordish project, fully build-out the District, and add that 28-story tower first.

If and when all of that development is actually complete, I think you'd actually have the demand and utility to justify a gondola crossing as an alternative to the insane Skyway crossing bridge that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and block sightlines of downtown from both the stadium district and District.

Bonus points if the gondola could directly carry JTA's clown cars across the river.

[RiversideRambler]

So many options to cross the river. I can use a bridge, the ferry, the Skyway, and possibly a pedal pub or gondola. What's next? Zip line? The Jacksonville Chunnel?

[Steve]

Pretty silly that one of the holdups is JTA restricting residential on the lease of land. With Baptist building a garage next to their JOI building right now they will probably stop using King Street so parking should be plentiful for this development.

According to the article that was negotiated around 10 years ago. That was a while before Nat Ford got to JTA. I'm betting they will work this out.

The Michael Blaylock-led JTA was.....something. There certainly were some good folks there, but as a whole the organization was.....not good. They probably thought that Dense Residential was a bad thing for transit.

[Keith-N-Jax]

Some of you people are just as short sighted as the city itself

[marcuscnelson]

If they can afford to build it, and can build it sometime in the near future at a cost that doesn't painfully depend on taxpayers, I say go ahead.

[thelakelander]

The article says the gondola would have to be a public/private partnership and only if the city builds a convention center first. Basically, it won't be happening anytime soon, if ever.

[marcuscnelson]

The article says the gondola would have to be a public/private partnership and only if the city builds a convention center first. Basically, it won't be happening anytime soon, if ever.

Well... it was fun while it lasted.