New nonprofit will guide Jacksonville's riverfront park

[thelakelander]

With multiple parks and public facilities now under design or construction along the city's downtown riverfront, a new non-profit organization has been formed to guide it all in Jacksonville.

Read More: https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/new-nonprofit-will-guide-jacksonvilles-riverfront-park/

[Captain Zissou]

The multicolored path on the image above is what JTA hopes to use for the U2C route.  Those gates to Lot J are often locked or other barricades impede the currently drawn path, so if this were to ever be built I'd love to see how the cars navigate these obstacles. 

[fsu813]

Here's the website for the new Riverfront Parks Conservancy:
https://riverparkjax.org/

Can find them on social media, as well.

[Captain Zissou]

Is this an outgrowth of Riverfront Parks Now and Scenic Jax, or are they still around?

[fsu813]

Is this an outgrowth of Riverfront Parks Now and Scenic Jax, or are they still around?

Scenic Jax birthed Riverfront Parks Now birthed Riverfront Parks Conservancy.

I'd imagine that once community partners are satisfied that the correct level of funding is allocated for these high-profile park & public space projects, and confident that the high quality designs won't be value engineered to death, then RPN would dissolve. It's purely an advocacy coalition.

The Conservancy is in its infancy, so will be limited, focused on capacity building for a while. That said, it does have an RFP out for riverfront activation now - check out the website.

[WarDamJagFan]

Are these just more renderings on top of renderings on renderings? Or is this an actual real project moving forward? 

[Jax_Developer]

^^ I follow this for my living and still couldn't tell you. It is that hard to follow with all of the changes and lack of transparency.

[Captain Zissou]

^^ I follow this for my living and still couldn't tell you. It is that hard to follow with all of the changes and lack of transparency.

To me this seems like a connected individual getting hooked up with a position and some city money, but I hope that's not the case.  With all of the success that she has had fundraising and getting buy in from land owners and entities downtown, I say add this to Kay Ehas' scope.  There'd definitely be economies of scale that could result in savings for the city.

[fsu813]

^^ I follow this for my living and still couldn't tell you. It is that hard to follow with all of the changes and lack of transparency.

To me this seems like a connected individual getting hooked up with a position and some city money, but I hope that's not the case.  With all of the success that she has had fundraising and getting buy in from land owners and entities downtown, I say add this to Kay Ehas' scope.  There'd definitely be economies of scale that could result in savings for the city.

I mean, there was literally just a very public, very large meeting about these projects, where the Conservancy was also announced. Each project is on a different timeline. Some are already underway, others break ground this year, others years away.

I can assure you that Kay doesn't want to be involved in the details of a large riverfront parks conservancy right now, which is what it'll eventually be, like other cities conservancies. But who knows what the future holds.

[Jax_Developer]

Yeah that meeting was another example of the lack of transparency. The limit on attendance, lack of awareness for it and then the online session not working. I watched the entire thing online, with no audio.. lol.

I'm hopeful these changes are for the better! By no means am trying to be critical of it all, it has just been really hard to follow..

[Captain Zissou]

I mean, there was literally just a very public, very large meeting about these projects, where the Conservancy was also announced.

There was also just a very public meeting about the UF project, but nothing about that is actually being done in a transparent way and it's just an opportunity for politicians to pad their resume and reward their connected supporters.

[thelakelander]

Piers at future site of Shipyards West Park need to be replaced, could cost up to $30M in current design

https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2023/03/02/piers-at-future-site-of-shipyards-west-park-need-to-be-replaced-could-cost-up-to-30m-in-current-design/

[jaxoNOLE]

Piers at future site of Shipyards West Park need to be replaced, could cost up to $30M in current design

https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2023/03/02/piers-at-future-site-of-shipyards-west-park-need-to-be-replaced-could-cost-up-to-30m-in-current-design/

If the existing piers are unusable and the new ones are value-engineered out of the design (or deferred to a later phase), will we at least remove the existing piers in phase 1? It would be a shame to have our "world class" park and beach overlooking those eyesores.

Of course, it's hard not to notice how quickly we can throw tens or hundreds of millions at other highly debatable projects without batting an eye but 30 million to realize a complete park design is met with speculation.