Duval County Public Schools narrows list of bidders for headquarters move

[thelakelander]

Duval County Public Schools has narrowed the slate of companies vying for a piece of the district's effort to sell its Downtown Southbank administration building and develop a new headquarters off the riverfront.

A July 7 purchasing department memo shows a bid evaluation committee recommended the district start negotiations with top scorers to sell its headquarters building at 1701 Prudential Drive along the St. Johns River.

The top scorers are Miami-based Related Development LLC; the Jacksonville Transportation Authority; and PSF 1 Jax Metro LLC of Jacksonville.

Full article: https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/article/duval-county-public-schools-narrows-list-of-bidders-for-headquarters-move

[acme54321]

JTA???  I don't know what that's about but I imagine it has to do with leasing the site to someone as "TOD" like their adjacent parcel.  They need to stick with transportation not going out of their way to get into development IMO.

[Charles Hunter]

I agree with acme54321, it's one thing for JTA to work with developers for parcels actually adjacent to transit infrastructure, but to go about acquiring property for speculative development is way "out of their lane" (intentional transportation pun).

[Captain Zissou]

How are our city agencies both so insane?  First the fraud committed by JEA and JTA is burning through millions to create something that will probably never come to fruition and even if it does, it won't serve a purpose. Now, despite not even executing on their core business, they are branching out into new areas that they have no business in.

[edjax]

Maybe JTA could concentrate on getting that 100 ft extension into Brooklyn finished first.  May be time for Mr Ford to move on? Not seeing too many good leadership decisions lately.

[thelakelander]

I agree with acme54321, it's one thing for JTA to work with developers for parcels actually adjacent to transit infrastructure, but to go about acquiring property for speculative development is way "out of their lane" (intentional transportation pun).

Basically sounds like all the speculative land grabs that were once proposed in the early 2000s with the original BRT boondoggle that eventually died.

[marcuscnelson]

JTA???  I don't know what that's about but I imagine it has to do with leasing the site to someone as "TOD" like their adjacent parcel.  They need to stick with transportation not going out of their way to get into development IMO.

I actually disagree. In a world where transit needs efficient land use adjacent to the infrastructure in order to be successful, and securing operating dollars from governments can be incredibly difficult, it makes a ton of sense for the transit agency to own and ground lease the property near stations for TOD. It doesn't have to own all the property in a certain radius, but turning, for example, the parking lot of a rail or BRT station into a transit village that easily connects riders to the system can provide money to fund better service that would be hard to come by otherwise. It also encourages, particularly with the right zoning codes, private developers to build their own projects near it and further support ridership. It's a model that's repeated by transit agencies around the world.

I will say that this model being successful generally requires building reliable systems with fixed infrastructure that people at JTA like Nat Ford have been very clear they don't believe in building. That's where I see the problems cropping up.

Maybe JTA could concentrate on getting that 100 ft extension into Brooklyn finished first.  May be time for Mr Ford to move on? Not seeing too many good leadership decisions lately.

The impression I'm under at this point is that they've decided to forgo that project in favor of just skipping to using the LOGT funding to rebuild the guideway for the shuttles.

The thing I've found frustrating about the Ford era is how it seems in a lot of ways the agency has really worked to do right by its employees and set itself up for financial success, and to a reasonable extent has focused on getting at least the Flyer network and JRTC built out, but then you have just this enormous albatross in the form of U2C that dilutes the impact of the rest of that work. It's such a shame.

[thelakelander]

The problem is that JTA isn't an expert at TOD or real estate development. We'd get a better product with them being a supportive passenger in the development train and not the entity behind the wheel.

[ricker]

This makes me think of the new river crossing proposed in u2c renderings. Is their hope to line up a possible future additional crossing with one of the remaining piers?

[jaxlongtimer]

Maybe JTA wants to convert the Skyway track to a horizontal office building (see the miles long horizontal city Saudi Arabia wants to build in the desert for inspiration).  Finally, a real use for that thing.  LOL.

On a more serious note, I recall JTA still owns some land near their Skyway garage off Hendricks.  Maybe they want to offer that up for a developer to partner with the School Board to build something there.

[thelakelander]

I was under the impression that something was already planned there?

[marcuscnelson]

The problem is that JTA isn't an expert at TOD or real estate development. We'd get a better product with them being a supportive passenger in the development train and not the entity behind the wheel.

They're not right now, that's something you have to build internal capacity for. Same thing they should (but clearly will not) be doing with regional rail, getting internal staff and building institutional knowledge instead of depending on consultants for everything.

This makes me think of the new river crossing proposed in u2c renderings. Is their hope to line up a possible future additional crossing with one of the remaining piers?

Last I checked the river crossing is gone from any currently filed plans, and there already are plans for the northbank so that seems safely dead.

[vicupstate]

No one has commented on this yet, but the top contender at the moment is .......Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

Is this likely putting DCSB in some of their current offices? 

[thelakelander]

I hope it's the Brooklyn office and not Deerwood. BCBS has a lot of empty office space, so it could be either.

[thelakelander]

The problem is that JTA isn't an expert at TOD or real estate development. We'd get a better product with them being a supportive passenger in the development train and not the entity behind the wheel.

They're not right now, that's something you have to build internal capacity for. Same thing they should (but clearly will not) be doing with regional rail, getting internal staff and building institutional knowledge instead of depending on consultants for everything.

They've yet to capitalize on most of the properties they own around existing Skyway Stations. I hope they focus on them as opposed to acquiring more property.  The private sector will do something there and it will likely be as dense as the market can support, making it TAD. Anything JTA touches will likely sit vacant and empty for another decade.

This makes me think of the new river crossing proposed in u2c renderings. Is their hope to line up a possible future additional crossing with one of the remaining piers?

Last I checked the river crossing is gone from any currently filed plans, and there already are plans for the northbank so that seems safely dead.

[/quote]

This extra river crossing was never a serious thing. It was a result of someone doing some high level visioning that never made sense in reality.