Peterbrooke Downtown closed

[Zac T]

Just noticed during lunch today that Peterbrooke has closed their Downtown location on Laura Street over the weekend. Listed as permanently closed on Google. Another loss for the Northbank

[thelakelander]

That's unfortunate but not surprised. Foot traffic in the area is down from what it was a few years back.

[Ken_FSU]

Will happily be proven wrong, but I'm sure not optimistic about Bread and Board reopening either, unless they've got invisible workers fixing the floors for the last four months.

Estrella has eliminated lunch service as well and cut back hours for dinner.

The Northbank, particularly the Laura Street Corridor, is absolutely collapsing, and anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. Great that we've got projects like Gateway in the pipeline, but the CBD is burning by the day.

Peterbrooke, Jumpin Jax, Vagabond, Olio, Bread & Board, Jacob's, Magnificat, Zodiak, Burrito Gallery, and numerous others - all gone.

Office vacancies are up, projects like the Laura Street Trio are stuck in purgatory for nearly a decade, the Ambassador Hotel and Independent Life building have seemingly been abandoned and are again exposed to the elements, and unhinged homeless are everywhere.

Despite the insistence that a master plan exists, I still haven't seen anyone in city government present a unified, actionable vision or plan to transform the Laura Street corridor and adjacent blocks into something that is a little less 1940s Hiroshima, and a little more loosely functional, C+ urban corridor. Just a park on the Riverfront, and a $6 million hedge maze at JWJP so the vagrants can harass people and defecate/masturbate in peace.

Just beyond frustrating, and beyond the point where you can blame any one person, entity, or external market condition. Just a failure at all levels.

Even sadder that the incompetence has gone on for so long that no one really even seems to care anymore. Bread and Board Provisions, downtown's most notable retail and restaurant spot, closed its doors nearly four months ago. Local media doesn't seem to have even noticed.

We can't keep shrugging our shoulders at the losses and looking toward renderings for hope. Take that $40 million the DIA wants to give to Related for luxury condos on the Southbank and shovel it into the Laura Street Corridor as fast as legally possible. It's going to take YEARS to reverse the losses of the last two or three years that have piled up during some of the most economically advantageous years the city has ever seen, can't let them keep piling up further.

[heights unknown]

Wow. Wow. Wow. WHY can't our City leaders work together to strengthen, progress, and make our downtown a success? For all of Big Jax not just for downtown residents. Jacksonville is supposed to be the epicenter of North Florida but Gainesville and Tallahassee seem to be doing much better and behaving much more in that context. I know, I know, take the major Colleges/Universities out of those towns and they probably won't fare very well either. Too many excuses and too much laziness in our City Government relative to downtown. And...yes, this crap has been going on for much too long. If Gateway bows out, we're really in BIG trouble (I shouldn't say that too loud though should I?).

[heights unknown]

Years ago, circa 1980's, I had a friend from Germany visit me from the Stuttgart area (from a City called Bad Urach). I was in the Navy at the time and took him around town. That was during the day. He was really impressed with downtown (this was back in 1989) and its skyline (the skyline was lacking at the time but to him it was like New York). So when night time came, we went nightclubbing, and, there weren't many hot spots in Jax back then. He kept asking me, "where is the hot spot where all of the bars and restaurants are?" I had to explain to him how Jax was set up, spread out mind you. The next day when I picked him up, he told me he couldn't believe that a city of the size of Jax did not have anything hardly going on, whether around town or downtown; the one thing he said to me has rung in my head since that time; he said: "IT'S A SHAME; ALL OF THOSE TALL BUILDINGS AND IMPRESSIVE SKYLINE AND NOTHING HAPPENING!" I was 33 years old back then (boy I'm old); and Jax still hasn't changed, and downtown to me is even worse. Skyline is a little better than back then, but still overall, and in downtown, NOTHING HAPPENING.

[fsu813]

Office to residential conversion should be a tippy top priority.

[Ken_FSU]

P.S. Did some asking around about Bread & Board tonight. Will eat my hat if it ever reopens, which is very sad. FANTASTIC, warm, friendly staff that got lied to and left holding the bag from the sounds of it. Can't blame the city for that, but huge loss to the CBD.

[CityLife]

Even sadder that the incompetence has gone on for so long that no one really even seems to care anymore. Bread and Board Provisions, downtown's most notable retail and restaurant spot, closed its doors nearly four months ago. Local media doesn't seem to have even noticed.

What about Snyder Memorial? Of all of Downtown's failures, it's hard to pin down the worst mistake, but one that I am possibly in the most disbelief about is the City's inability to turn it something. Especially with the amount of money it throws around on bad ideas and mediocre projects.

Look at this thread from 2016 about it:

https://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,26947.0.html

Pretty sure similar discussions were on here even well before that one too.

[thelakelander]

Some want Snyder to become a museum. There's more potential for that space. I wonder what's the delay in RFPing the building?

[Ken_FSU]

Some want Snyder to become a museum. There's more potential for that space. I wonder what's the delay in RFPing the building?

While I could never fault anyone for wanting to build a Civil Rights museum adjacent to James Weldon Johnson Park considering the key role that Hemming and the surrounding department stores played in our city's Civil Rights history, a museum just isn't the best use of that space at all. I also don't think there's enough room to do it right. MOSH's current building would make more sense.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, a flexible, regularly programmed JWJ Park, anchored by a flagship restaurant/bar at Snyder, reactivated retail bays at the Main Library and MOCA, and smaller in-park food and beverage offerings could help jumpstart that whole corridor all the way down to Riverfront Plaza. Particularly if you spend a few million to extend the Skyway into Brooklyn, which remains the biggest layup imaginable in terms of rapidly expanding the area's potential user base.   

[thelakelander]

That's a basic and practical solution for JWJ Park and its outer square. Snyder is too small to be a museum wortg any weight in attracting a decent amount of visitors. Right now, the Ritz is larger and severely underutilized. Instead of spending millions on a buiding, drop some money into a real interactive interpretive experience. Something that attracts people nationwide. A real makeover there would make more sense and help assist with the revitalization of LaVilla.

[Joey Mackey]

How long until Bellwether closes? The urban core is on life support, and nobody seems to really care.

[jcjohnpaint]

I was in downtown for business last Thursday. I have never seen it this bad. At 5, there were nobody but homeless people walking around. I don't think we have more homeless than any other city, we just have nobody else in the mix.

[thelakelander]

I think people care but don't have the answers to quickly address the situation. Most of the necessary investments and solutions will take years to implement and businesses struggling to survive will not be around when these things come on line. This is the reality of not doing the right things 5, 10, 15 years ago. Warning signs about decisions being a generational setback were expressed and ignored back then. I'm confident things will get better but we'll have to live with the outcome of previous poor public decision-making before they get better.

[BridgeTroll]

That's unfortunate but not surprised. Foot traffic in the area is down from what it was a few years back.

I think I know the answer but Lakelander would be the best voice to articulate why foot traffic has decreased... anger, frustration, bewilderment... incompetence for sooooooo long is .... I'm not sure what. It isn't even shocking anymore...