Are You Okay Investing $233 Million For Lot J?

[Ken_FSU]

Not that it will make much difference in your comparison, I think you shortchanged the Live! size. From the site plan, it looks like it is about half the parking lot (along the N-S axis); the sketched area looks to be a little smaller.

But, yeah, ours is dinky in comparison.

Here's the site plan overlayed on top of the aerial, lined up by street alignment and the positioning of the stadium and Daily's Place.

If I shortchanged, it's by less than a tenth of an acre, which still leaves it at less than half the size of any comparable Cordish entertainment complex.



I mean, check out the scale of this "arena and mall" (#4) compared to to even the boutique hotel (#1 in the picture):



We all joke that Lot J is the new Landing, but if you just look at the Landing courtyard and the restaurants surrounding it (excluding the retail mall), it's roughly two to three times bigger than what the Jags are proposing for entertainment at Lot J. The entire Live! complex is less than half the size of Hemming Park.

At an ask of $230 millon (+ the land thrown in for free).

With ZERO apologies for the exhausted, worked 80 hours this week, unfinished/half-assed Photoshop, at the very least, how about killing the office component, doubling the size of the Live! complex, and moving it to face the St. Johns/Bay Street instead of being hidden from it:

[Charles Hunter]

cool. Thanks for the feedback. We are Jacksonville! We think small!

[KenFSU]

^Hopefully I'm wrong.

It's just legitimately insane to me that we shot down $12 million in incentives to refurbish the Landing, yet are considering spending TWENTY TIMES more money to build a replacement one quarter the size.

[thelakelander]

Live!, all of Lot J for that matter, make no sense from a public subsidy perspective if this is being done in the name of downtown revitalization. It's a mile and half away from the real downtown. If you add up the employees, square footage, etc. of the few major projects within three blocks of Hemming Park (Hyatt Place, Barnett, Trio, VyStar, Ambassador, JEA, Jones Brothers, etc.), you have more coming now (dab smack in the middle of downtown) than what Lot J will be at buildout, for a fraction of the public subsidies. So I don't understand how this is transformational for downtown development and the actual stuff in downtown is not. I'm also not sure I understand why we'd want to own another Landing next to the stadium when that same situation was seen as a major liability for the city at the present centralized site.

Now, if the argument for $233 million in incentives (lion's share of that being hard cash) is that the Jags need this to be viable in Jax, then that's a separate discussion altogether.

[Ken_FSU]

^Feels like a hail mary legacy grab from a second-term mayor who's promised to transform downtown between the old Courthouse site and the stadium, only to see the Berkman fizzle out, the convention center disappear, the Navy take the USS Adams back, the Doro District put on ice, etc. And now, the clock is ticking and we're trying to rush this thing through so construction can start in January during the off-season while the Hart Bridge ramps are being removed and hopefully be vertical by the end of his run.

One other thing that stands out to me from the renderings is the configuration of the Live! complex. I've always wondered why it wasn't fronting Bay Street/Gator Bowl Blvd and looking out toward the St. Johns River. This seems like the obvious place to put it to maximize visibility. But if you look at the sketch, the Live! venue is opening toward the same stadium concourse that Daily's Place uses on event days for concessions. Due to the very small footprint, it makes me wonder if the restaurants and bars that typically surround a Cordish Live! venue will instead be offloaded to the concession stands and Bud Zone at the stadium.

I could see this just being the typical Cordish large sports bar, with little else compared to other Cordish Live! venues. And then on concert days, the sports bar is transformed into the Live! arena and the stadium concession stands are opened up.


Again, hope I'm wrong, but if you look at the aerials that I posted above of venues like KC Live!, Power Plant Live!, and Ballpark Village, you can see the Live Arena in the center of the complex, with lots of restaurant and entertainment space surrounding it. If you look at what the Jags are proposing, it's basically just the Live Arena! itself without all that other development surrounding it.

If this thing happens and the city ponies up $230 million, I just wonder if we're going to even get a true Cordish entertainment complex, or if we're just going to get a 2,000-ish capacity arena doubling as a sports bar that the Jags can ticket and then siphon visitors to the stadium for food and beverages.

It's kind of telling that all the renders refer to that quadrant as the "Live! Arena" rather than Live! entertainment complex.

[thelakelander]

The density and surrounding context in those other cities makes those sites a situation where everyday use is easily viable. This Live! won't be as large as those unless we simply want a center with mostly vacant spaces.

[Kerry]

The reason all this costs so much while only being a fraction of the size is because this isn't designed to be a successful entertainment venue.  It is designed to transfer city dollars directly to the Jags and improve game day revenue also directly benefiting the Jags.  No one gives a crap beyond the 7 home games.  It is an 'approve this or Jags move' project.  Simple as that.

[Bativac]

Crazy how much money the Jags have cost the city. They do not bring any prestige to Jacksonville and at this point the city would be far, far better off without them. Forbes ranks the Jags 25th on their list of NFL tea valuations... and even that is just for the team owners. The city gets nothing out of them other than some occasional charity work.

It would make so much more sense to make sure the schools are funded and to not tear down the Landing for the sake of another park than to blow a quarter of a billion dollars on a consistently losing football team. People from outside looking in would truly wonder what the hell is going on down there.

[Kerry]

Crazy how much money the Jags have cost the city. They do not bring any prestige to Jacksonville and at this point the city would be far, far better off without them. Forbes ranks the Jags 25th on their list of NFL tea valuations... and even that is just for the team owners. The city gets nothing out of them other than some occasional charity work.

It would make so much more sense to make sure the schools are funded and to not tear down the Landing for the sake of another park than to blow a quarter of a billion dollars on a consistently losing football team. People from outside looking in would truly wonder what the hell is going on down there.

When the Jags franchise was awarded to Jax it was supposed to usher in an era of growth and prosperity.  The NFL was going to put Jacksonville on the global map and visitors and corporations would be rushing into Jax and spend so much money that the City's investment would be repayed many times over.

It never happened.  Instead, here we are 20 years later still bailing the team out, spending millions on stadium swimming pools and the world's largest video boards (that were only the largest for about 10 months), and the financial windfall has only been a money pit.  The only entity that made any money were the players and team owners.

Not only should we cut the Jags loose but we should sue the NFL to get the money back.

[heights unknown]

Crazy how much money the Jags have cost the city. They do not bring any prestige to Jacksonville and at this point the city would be far, far better off without them. Forbes ranks the Jags 25th on their list of NFL tea valuations... and even that is just for the team owners. The city gets nothing out of them other than some occasional charity work.

It would make so much more sense to make sure the schools are funded and to not tear down the Landing for the sake of another park than to blow a quarter of a billion dollars on a consistently losing football team. People from outside looking in would truly wonder what the hell is going on down there.

When the Jags franchise was awarded to Jax it was supposed to usher in an era of growth and prosperity.  The NFL was going to put Jacksonville on the global map and visitors and corporations would be rushing into Jax and spend so much money that the City's investment would be repayed many times over.

It never happened.  Instead, here we are 20 years later still bailing the team out, spending millions on stadium swimming pools and the world's largest video boards (that were only the largest for about 10 months), and the financial windfall has only been a money pit.  The only entity that made any money were the players and team owners.

Not only should we cut the Jags loose but we should sue the NFL to get the money back.

I agree wholeheartedly with you Kerry; but Jacksonville, and downtown in particular are already "in the pits" so to speak; can you imagine Jacksonville without the Jags? It would be even worse...believe me, and I know that you would agree. I guess it's damn if you do and damn if you don't, maybe, for our leaders (I guess, it's hard to guage exactly what they are thinking or where they are coming from). Time will tell. But trust me, if the Jags leave, the void left will be even bigger, deeper, and darker.

[Kerry]

Crazy how much money the Jags have cost the city. They do not bring any prestige to Jacksonville and at this point the city would be far, far better off without them. Forbes ranks the Jags 25th on their list of NFL tea valuations... and even that is just for the team owners. The city gets nothing out of them other than some occasional charity work.

It would make so much more sense to make sure the schools are funded and to not tear down the Landing for the sake of another park than to blow a quarter of a billion dollars on a consistently losing football team. People from outside looking in would truly wonder what the hell is going on down there.

When the Jags franchise was awarded to Jax it was supposed to usher in an era of growth and prosperity.  The NFL was going to put Jacksonville on the global map and visitors and corporations would be rushing into Jax and spend so much money that the City's investment would be repayed many times over.

It never happened.  Instead, here we are 20 years later still bailing the team out, spending millions on stadium swimming pools and the world's largest video boards (that were only the largest for about 10 months), and the financial windfall has only been a money pit.  The only entity that made any money were the players and team owners.

Not only should we cut the Jags loose but we should sue the NFL to get the money back.

I agree wholeheartedly with you Kerry; but Jacksonville, and downtown in particular are already "in the pits" so to speak; can you imagine Jacksonville without the Jags? It would be even worse...believe me, and I know that you would agree. I guess it's damn if you do and damn if you don't, maybe, for our leaders (I guess, it's hard to guage exactly what they are thinking or where they are coming from). Time will tell. But trust me, if the Jags leave, the void left will be even bigger, deeper, and darker.

I disagree with your agreement - lol.  Jax (like every other revitalized city) is going to have to hit rock bottom first.  The Jags just delayed rock bottom and made the hole even deeper.  We are nowhere near rock bottom but if Curry could have a 3rd term we could probably reach it soon.  I don't know if Jax would have committed the same funds to urban revitalization as it has to the Jags but even if it was 1/2 as much it would have been money much better spent.  Now we are being held hostage.  If the Jags leave every penny spent on them would have been for nothing, but we also can't continue to pay them forever.  For many cities, Jax included, pro-sports is a progress trap.  They promise to be a catalyst for growth but only deliver debt while sucking up every available corporate dollar.

BTW - awhile back I speculated that having the Jags was actually costing us numerous events that could be held at the stadium.  I don't know the specific events but Oklahoma City is considering an 18,000 seat downtown stadium and they estimate it will host 80 events per year.  Yes that is significantly smaller than TIAAF Bank Field but there is a big difference between 80 events and the 10 or so here.

[Ken_FSU]

Did some asking around.

For what it's worth, the city has been told the Live! facility will be 70,000 square feet across multiple levels.

[thelakelander]

70,000 square feet of leasable space or total? In both cases, much smaller than the Landing but significantly higher in costs.

[KenFSU]

^70k total, inclusive of the Live! Arena.

[Captain Zissou]

The City will provide 50% of the cost of the development of the Live! District, up to a maximum of $50M.  If the City's 50% of the Live! District is less than $50M, the balance shall be reallocated at the Developer's discretion to other portions of the Project.

Unless this thing is made of 100% marble, there's not a 70,000 sq ft building in the world that will cost $100M.  This will end up being at least 30M that the developer can use to fund whatever use they want, depending on market demands.  Lot J is going to have 6 self storage facilities, a small entertainment venue that closes after 5 years, and maybe a car wash.