Market-rate rentals a growing option Downtown

[Steve]

In April, 5,220 people were documented living in Downtown Jacksonville.

The number of Downtown residents is approaching 10,000 — the residential density many officials, including JAX Chamber CEO Daniel Davis and Downtown Investment Authority CEO Lori Boyer, see as a threshold for housing in the urban core to become self-sustaining.

Boyer said 10,000-12,000 residents will allow the Downtown market to attract essential services like grocers and a pharmacy as well as more retail, restaurants and entertainment.

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/article/market-rate-rentals-a-growing-option-downtown

[acme54321]

Sounds like a bunch of hot air.  The majority of the market rate apartments listed for over $2/sqft arent even ready for occupancy.   Plus, only one is actually "downtown".

[Peter Griffin]

All a step in the right direction, more in the true core/CBD will help a lot.

[Captain Zissou]

This is a real fluff piece.  It lists 1230 Hendricks Ave as having the "magical" $2 number, but they haven't started turning dirt and have no timeline to do so.

What would be more helpful to provide is the number of units under construction and what zones they are being built in.  Like acme said, most of these are not actually in the CBD, so that 10,000 is misleading.

[Tacachale]

This info really isn't very good. Only one of those developments is in the Downtown core. Even using the city's overly expansive definition of Downtown, two of these projects aren't Downtown at all.:

A report submitted to the DIA from commercial real estate services firm CBRE Jacksonville shows, as of April 1, five Downtown residential projects have hit or exceeded the average $2 per square foot price point:

• Vista Brooklyn, a 10-story, 308-unit tower at 200 Riverside Ave. As the name applies, this is in Brooklyn, not the Northbank core.

• Bishop Gate, a three-building, 145-unit apartment complex in Riverside This is in Riverside south of the Cummer, which isn't part of anyone's definition of downtown.

• Broadstone River House Apartments, a 263-unit apartment community on the Southbank On the Southbank, not the northbank core.

• 1230 Hendricks Ave., with 345 apartments, parking and 5,500 square feet of retail space. This is south of I-95, which puts it outside even the broadest definition of Downtown. This is San Marco

• The Residences at Barnett, the 18-story, 107-apartment high-rise at 112 W. Adams St. The only one in the Downtown core.

It also falls into the conventional wisdom about 10,000 downtown. Originally, people talked about the need for 10,000 within the Northbank core. That would be considerable density within a small area and would probably get Downtown moving again. However, the city now considers Downtown to include Brooklyn, LaVilla, the Downtown core, the Southbank and the stadium district. These districts are miles apart from each other and not particularly walkable. As such, getting to 10,000 people across that very broad area is not going to do much for Downtown.

I wonder what the populations of Riverside-Avondale and San Marco are in comparison to the arbitrary "Downtown" that the city has created.

[edjax]

Just spent this past weekend in downtown Cleveland. Just wow, what an amazing transformation since I lived there many years ago. I saw at least 10 historic old buildings being retrofitted for apartments and two new construction projects. One approximately 20 stories and the other 34 stories.  Read an article that once these projects are completed downtown Cleveland will have in excess of 20,000 residents.

[Steve]

Agreed. The goal (though lofty right now) IMO should be something like 12,000, half of which are on the northbank between 95, State, Hogan's Creek, and the River. Even 6,000 in that area would do wonders for things.

[vicupstate]

Just spent this past weekend in downtown Cleveland. Just wow, what an amazing transformation since I lived there many years ago. I saw at least 10 historic old buildings being retrofitted for apartments and two new construction projects. One approximately 20 stories and the other 34 stories.  Read an article that once these projects are completed downtown Cleveland will have in excess of 20,000 residents.

Did you go into the AMAZING grocery store there? 

[thelakelander]

We can ball that 10,000 number up and throw it away because it literally means nothing. Downtown isn't on an island. The actual market includes the neighborhoods surrounding the DIA's imaginary borders.

Population (within 3 miles)

Overall Population: 78,739
Daytime Population: 202,718

source: https://www.regencycenters.com/property/detail/60648/Brooklyn-Station-on-Riverside


1. We already have nearly 80,000 people living and +200,000 working during the day within a three mile radius of downtown. What are we doing to benefit from those existing numbers? What specific corridor is our Euclid (Cleveland), Woodward (Detroit), Main (Greenville), etc.?

2. There are downtowns with blocks of street retail alive and well that don't have anywhere near 10,000 residents living in them. Little Thomasville, GA is one of them.

So while everything we call downtown today could use all the additional residential it can take, if the desire is pedestrian friendly retail, none of these numbers really mean anything without context. Using market rate commercial development along State and Union and in Brooklyn as evidence (i.e. Fresh Market, McDonald's, Chipotle, etc. didn't wait for some 10k downtown magic number), clearly there is already a viable retail market. What's lacking is the policy, direction and a vision to guide its incremental growth into a clustered, compact and pedestrian-centric form.

You'd witness the visual impact a lot quicker if there was a vision and direction for corridors facilitating major through traffic to become urban retail streets. Streets like State and Union should be a market rate gold mine, but we ignore them. Riverside Avenue was already walkable and mixed-use for over a century but we demolished blocks of buildings to widen the street less than 20 years ago. Now we have infill taking place but its coming in a less dense, autocentric development pattern. Adams, Laura, Hogan, etc. have the built density but we screwed with the roadway travel patterns and razed the dense neighborhoods that they connected with the downtown core, so they don't have the necessary traffic counts and visibility for market rate retail. We claim we want to focus on the river but we're demolishing the few buildings that are designed specifically for retail, in favor of green space with little programming or amenities to attract people on a consistent, round the clock basis.

When it is all said and done, when we speak of stimulating the retail market in downtown, most of what I read in the papers and quotes from local leaders comes across as most not having a clear idea of what type of retail they actually want, where it should go and how to get it there, sooner rather than later. This is one of those little situations where having a vetted downtown master plan that serves as a guide map for future implementation would help tremendously.

[edjax]

Just spent this past weekend in downtown Cleveland. Just wow, what an amazing transformation since I lived there many years ago. I saw at least 10 historic old buildings being retrofitted for apartments and two new construction projects. One approximately 20 stories and the other 34 stories.  Read an article that once these projects are completed downtown Cleveland will have in excess of 20,000 residents.

Did you go into the AMAZING grocery store there?

Oh yea. Heinens

[acme54321]

2. There are downtowns with blocks of street retail alive and well that don't have anywhere near 10,000 residents living in them. Little Thomasville, GA is one of them.

Thomasville?  I mean, it's a cool place but we have like 5 Thomasvilles in the urban core.  5 points, San Marco, King St, Avondale, and Springfield to some extent are pretty comparable to downtown Thomasville IMO. 

Yes we don't have the antiquing that they do, LOL.  My mom an her old lady friends still love Avondale though 

[thelakelander]

^Exactly. The problem is we don't have "it" downtown. And let me further define "it". "It" is an environment where you have multiple options to get a coffee, breakfast or buy a shirt on a weekend. "It" is being able to experience continuous blocks and storefronts that engage the street and that have multiple businesses that can maintain reliable operating hours when the 8 to 5 crowd flees the scene. "It" is not being the only human on the block when walking in the heart of the city on a Sunday afternoon.

Thomasville has "it". Lakeland has "it". Mount Dora has "it" but DT Jax does not have "it" despite a historical nationwide trend towards urban revitalization and since the 1990s. Forget about the Chicagos, Bostons, South Beaches and Charlottes. Honestly, we're decades away from that type of urban vibrancy. A major accomplishment for anyone in office right now would be finding a way to activate a few blocks of life in the core of the city within the two to four years. That will blow away all of the puff piece press releases we'll be reading about the Shipyards and the District during the remainder of Curry's second term.

Overall, it is pretty inexcusable that the heart of DT Jax can't claim one full block of activity and multiple continuous businesses that are open 7 days a week. Now with that said, there's nearly 80k people already living in close proximity to downtown and there's a strong national market and demographic of people who want to invest in settings like DT Jax. Thus, if we can get the basics right, "it" can happen quick and easy (well before some 10k population number being pulled out of thin air with no context). However, that easy fix is embracing the concept of clustering.

[vicupstate]

 5 points, San Marco, King St, Riverside-Avondale, and Springfield

I question the degree to which you can depend on these areas to support vibracy in the Northbank core.  Each of those except Springfield already has their own commercial district with true vibracy.  Springfield is on that path, albeit it still has a way to go.

Why would residents in those areas drive past their own vibrant core to go DT?  Only for somethign truly different and unique, IMO. I think having residents in the core itself is a requirement for true vibracy there.

Greenville's Main Street pulls from the whole city, so it didn't need 10,000 residents of its own to get there, but I would argue that DT Charotte didn't reach a critical mass until it reached that level.       

[Kerry]

Using their definition of downtown to count housing, there are already 3 grocery stores.  How many more are desired?

[thelakelander]

5 points, San Marco, King St, Riverside-Avondale, and Springfield

I question the degree to which you can depend on these areas to support vibracy in the Northbank core.  Each of those except Springfield already has their own commercial district with true vibracy.  Springfield is on that path, albeit it still has a way to go.

Why would residents in those areas drive past their own vibrant core to go DT?  Only for somethign truly different and unique, IMO. I think having residents in the core itself is a requirement for true vibracy there.

Greenville's Main Street pulls from the whole city, so it didn't need 10,000 residents of its own to get there, but I would argue that DT Charotte didn't reach a critical mass until it reached that level.       

In a roundabout way, you just proved my point with my example of Greenville's Main Street. In Jax, all that new development in Brooklyn isn't there because downtown or Brooklyn can support it. Fresh Market is a niche and scale of retail either not present or difficult to build in Riverside or San Marco, yet close enough to them along a high traffic corridor that connects multiple neighborhoods with direct access to I-95 and I-10. 

Since downtown Jax has no foot traffic, for retail to really succeed, target the arterial corridors carrying through traffic. Here's a list of every street with an Average Annual Daily Traffic count of 10,000 or above according to Florida Traffic Online (https://tdaappsprod.dot.state.fl.us/fto/):

Above 20,000

State Street - 31,500
Union Street - 29,500
Riverside Avenue - 29,000


10,000 to 20,000

Bay Street (Main to Broad) - 13,000
Main Street - 11,500

These are all corridors that funnel crosstown traffic at pretty high volumes. Other than Riverside Avenue in Brooklyn, they are also no-man's land in terms of vision of taking advantage of their volumes, access and visibility, which are key ingredients for commercial development.

State and Union really stick out IMO. When combined, they carry just as much traffic (61,000) as Atlantic (61,000) and Beach (59,000).
Winn-Dixie/Harvey's, McDonald's, 7-Eleven, etc. aren't there because downtown can support them alone. They're pulling from downtown, Springfield, Eastside, Durkeeville and everyone traveling between the Westside, Arlington and the Beaches. Common sense says with supportive land use policies, targeted anchor redevelopment site opportunities, established Skyway access and FSCJ's desire to turn their campus into more of a traditional 4-year one, they should be walkable centralized gateways for the urban core. Working with them is working with the market.

Randomly hoping someone can open a clothing store or cupcake shop on a low volume, out-of-sight street like Laura and expecting them to maintain evening and weekend hours without consistently programming the hell out of the area to generate foot traffic is wishful thinking at best. Waiting for a population of 10,000 spread across what is now considered downtown is also fool's gold. In reality, that's a pitiful population density of less than 2,600 people. Using that random number as a benchmark without physical context essentially guarantees that things will be morbid for the foreseeable future, regardless of the puff press releases.

So as of now, from what I can see, we do have a market and we do have opportunities that we can take advantage of for quick short term change. However, currently, we have no real plan of how to take advantage of what drives the commercial retail market and how clustering around those market realities can create synergy that stimulates the real change that most dream about and would like to see.