Convention Center Wars

[Steve]

Totally agree with Lake. Pretty underwhelming outside the food hall. Wish they would get rid of Market St and Courthouse drive. No sense in including vehicles through that area. 

Ingress and Egress for the Hyatt, it's 1,000 hotel rooms and 120,00 SqFt of exhibit space. They aren't going anywhere.

Case in point why the site should be a convention center.

[thelakelander]

Considering the Hyatt, it doesn't make sense. They expect trucks to make all those tight turns to get to the Hyatt's loading docks on Market Street?

[Steve]

Considering the Hyatt, it doesn't make sense. They expect trucks to make all those tight turns to get to the Hyatt's loading docks on Market Street?

These renderings look like they come from a company that is used to doing suburban design where you just have to figure out wetland mitigation and how many trees to cut down. Doesn't look like typical urban design.

[downtownbrown]

Big difference between "Food Hall" and Restaurants.  Food Hall is what you find on the second floor of the Landing.  No thanks.

[thelakelander]

Not true. What's in the Landing is a food court. Food courts and food halls are two completely different things. The driving principles behind the modern food hall are authenticity, quality and celebration of food culture. These principles tend to be the complete opposite of the traditional American food court, which focus on fast-food mantras of familiarity, predictability and mass production. The most successful food halls also tend to contain interactive layouts by hosting live entertainment and social events, which allows consumers to experience the space in a variety of ways. Many food halls actually have sit-down restaurant's and bars in them as well.

[jagsonville]

Winter Garden has a nice little food hall anchored by crooked can brewing if you are looking for an example pretty close to home. I think this development is ok, not the best but it's also not a pie in the sky development. I just find it odd that it was released with an ongoing rfp for a convention center still unsealed to the public. Let the lawsuits commence! Lol

[thelakelander]

Here's a few pics of Winter Garden's Plant Street Market that I took a few months back. It's 12,000 square feet.

[Kiva]

It looks a lot more busy than the Landing!

[KenFSU]

DIA's sticking to the rules, selecting a winner from the three bids originally submitted, and then figuring the rest out with the city later.

[jaxnyc79]

Other than that the food hall component, I find the rest of it pretty underwhelming. Bay Street should be lined with commercial space on both blocks and the hotel site is about as suburban as something one can stick in the middle of the Northbank. If we don't use this site for a convention center, I'd hope we can find a way to maximize the property with more density.

Great - Yet Another Rendering from Iguana and its Partners.
Why is this all so difficult?  Is there 3-D software to simulate these developments at street-level so that planners and approvers have a clearer sense of just how dead downtown will remain if these developments without streetscape activation continue to persist?  My God, a surface parking lot right on the waterfront (next to hotel)?  It's a no-brainer.  The buildings should all abut a wide sidewalk, Bay Street should take on a dense, walkable, commercially-clustered corridor as it does wind through high-rises.  Put commercial/retail on the ground floor, with the apartments above that, and right on the sidewalk.  Same thing with the hotel!  It should abut the side walk, and restaurant or convenience store uses should be at ground level. 

Why is Jax so afraid of the cluster? 

[thelakelander]

Pretty unfortunate. We're lighting millions on fire to de-densify. How anyone believes this type of strategy leads to pedestrian scale vibrancy is beyond my understanding. I know there's a segment of the population that believes these buildings are ugly and should go. However, from a ROI perspective, I wonder why we never attempted to RFP before deciding to demo. It's little things like that that make many question if we really have a coordinated plan to achieve a long term goal or is every little project being planned and funded in total isolation.

[downtownbrown]

Not true. What's in the Landing is a food court. Food courts and food halls are two completely different things. The driving principles behind the modern food hall are authenticity, quality and celebration of food culture. These principles tend to be the complete opposite of the traditional American food court, which focus on fast-food mantras of familiarity, predictability and mass production. The most successful food halls also tend to contain interactive layouts by hosting live entertainment and social events, which allows consumers to experience the space in a variety of ways. Many food halls actually have sit-down restaurant's and bars in them as well.

Thank God.  That outdoor seating will be brutal on that side of the river, but I's sure they'll figure that out.

[KenFSU]

^And if we do demo, it should at least be an improvement on what's already there.

Rimrock's plan for the old courthouse site creates a ton of dead space along Bay Street and hides its best feature (and the river) from downtown, but at least it's adding bodies and restaurants downtown.

But there's no universe where a parking lot and a sad limited-service hotel is a suitable replacement for the Annex property:



I know we've got a fetish for RFPing large swaths of riverfront property as a package, but perhaps one way to encourage denser, more compact use would be to RFP the two properties separately, rather than jointly.

It might cost a little more, but there's no reason that Rimrock couldn't fit everything proposed in that two-block plan onto the old Courthouse site.

[jaxnyc79]

^And if we do demo, it should at least be an improvement on what's already there.

Rimrock's plan for the old courthouse site creates a ton of dead space along Bay Street and hides its best feature (and the river) from downtown, but at least it's adding bodies and restaurants downtown.

But there's no universe where a parking lot and a sad limited-service hotel is a suitable replacement for the Annex property:



I know we've got a fetish for RFPing large swaths of riverfront property as a package, but perhaps one way to encourage denser, more compact use would be to RFP the two properties separately, rather than jointly.

It might cost a little more, but there's no reason that Rimrock couldn't fit everything proposed in that two-block plan onto the old Courthouse site.

Amen to that.  Small is beautiful.  I wish we could divvy up spaces along the riverfront into mini-blocks with narrow streets with mostly clustered 2 and 3 story mixed use structures, creating a waterfront village feel with max pedestrian scale and tenor

[thelakelander]

I agree with carving up properties into smaller RFPs. It increases density, the playing field, and encourages more diversity in development participation. With this plan, I'm still not understanding the need to close Market Street for a sprawling five-story stick built apartment complex more suitable for Gate Parkway and East Baymeadows than it is for the Northbank. Still interesting to see no one crying about view corridors. Sleiman was tar and feathered over his plan to block Hogan Street. Perhaps it is more about the man and not the project.