Bring Home The USS Adams To Downtown Jacksonville

[thelakelander]

American Cruise Line has a boat. Why are they letting their citizens wonder around like zombies? Seems like a built in opportunity for more income.

With that said, I actually agree with you in regards to us not maximizing our downtown or city's best assets overall. We'd be a lot farther if we stopped continuously waiting for a sugar daddy to ride in on a big white heavily subsidized horse to save the day.

[downtownbrown]

Viator is the best worldwide tour company that I know of.  Local tours. Local hosts.  I've used them in a bunch of different countries.  Here's what they off for cruise ship visitors.

https://www.viator.com/Jacksonville/d4373-ttd

[Adam White]

American Cruise Line has a boat. Why are they letting their citizens wonder around like zombies?

Apparently Viator offers a zombie walk experience!

[RiversideRambler]

Viator is the best worldwide tour company that I know of.  Local tours. Local hosts.  I've used them in a bunch of different countries.  Here's what they off for cruise ship visitors.

https://www.viator.com/Jacksonville/d4373-ttd

A wacky adventure walk game and a one way trip to the airport 

[Snaketoz]

For even more fun they could go to Riverside Park and watch a duck fight.

[downtownbrown]

Right, so if we had the Adams....

And the Berkman 2 theme park extravaganza....

And someplace to eat at the Landing....

And a famous rib joint in the Elbow....

[thelakelander]

Definitely recommend Jenkins. That's where Obama planned a visit before canceling a campaign trip to Jax because of a death in the family.We have longtime rib joints. They just aren't marketed by to certain demographic in the way that long time local establishments are promoted in some other peer communities.  Outside of a revamped Landing, the Adams, Berman 2 theme park would struggle to survive without more around that side of downtown to support them.

[Todd_Parker]

...and a one way trip to the airport 

for $65!

[Kerry]

Right, so if we had the Adams....

And the Berkman 2 theme park extravaganza....

And someplace to eat at the Landing....

And a famous rib joint in the Elbow....

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  Even Dorothy stopped along the way to Oz to collect the support staff she needed to be successful at the end.  Jax seems to be fixated on the top-down approach instead of bottom up.  Make Jax a great place via little pieces and the big pieces will fall into place.  We won't need to give Khan millions for Lot J, he'll just build it on his own.  Same with The Distirct and all the other silver bullet projects.  The Adams should have been, and could have been, a part of something which was greater than the sum of its parts.

[thelakelander]

I wouldn't lose sleep on the Adams. Start working with the authentic assets we already have and systematically infill and expand incrementally from there.

[Tacachale]

I wouldn't lose sleep on the Adams. Start working with the authentic assets we already have and systematically infill and expand incrementally from there.

+1

[Kerry]

Ummm, the Adams was in-fill and incremental expansion.

[thelakelander]

No not isolated at the Shipyards it wasn't. Things also need to make financial sense. USS Adams isn't representative of an attraction that can financially sustain itself on its own in a field next to a jail and coffee roasting factory. It's the type of attraction that needs to be placed in an area where it can benefit from an existing traffic flow. You can't just place stuff simply for the sake of having it. There needs to be some logic to the revitalization madness. What's the overall plan and how does each little investment play a role in making that plan become reality. I'm pretty convinced at this point that we don't really have a clue.

[Adam White]

Having a ship in the middle of nothing won't achieve anything worthwhile. What it WOULD achieve is very low visitor numbers (once the novelty wore off), leading to people complaining about wasted money and using it as an example/excuse for why we shouldn't do anything to revitalize downtown if it is going to cost anything.

[Kerry]

I don't pretend to know the visitor volumes they projected but if you don't think naval vessels aren't a destination attraction you haven't looked very deep into the subject, nor probably even visited one.  I started to write a list of all of them and their relative location within their host city but it started getting long, so here is a link with all of them listed and you can use GoogleEarth to see the actual location.  I think you will find with a few exceptions, most are in a far more remote location relative to the local town center than the Shipyards is to downtown Jax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museum_ships_of_the_United_States_military