New Ford on Bay RFP

[thelakelander]

Hold up—wasn't the original plan for the jail a true PPP where the private sector builds it and the city leases with a buyout option? That structure would actually make sense- as it gives them the room to build a convention center while pushing jail finances down the road. What happened to that framework?

There's never been an official plan for a new convention center or a method to finance its construction. It something this town has talked about as far back as the Delaney administration two decades ago. It may take a decade to resolve the jail issue alone, much less figure out how to finance what comes to that property next.

[Bativac]

On another note, I'm genuinely concerned about what it signals that we only got one proposal for this kind of work. Is Jacksonville really that far off the radar for national developers? I get that we're not New York or Chicago, but this isn't some obscure municipal services contract. If this was Tampa, Nashville, Charlotte, Denver, or Austin putting out similar RFPs, you'd have 3-4 serious bidders competing against each other just for the privilege of working on prime real estate. That's the heat we should be chasing.

Anecdotal, but a friend of mine who runs a big regional civil engineering firm and who is from Jax tells me that no, Jax is not on the radar for national developers (I've asked....frequently). Jax doesn't come up at conferences as much more than an afterthought and is pretty quickly dismissed (unless it's for a strip mall or retail development or storage unit facility far from the core, on cheap land).

If Jax wants to improve downtown then they're going to aggressively have to take control of it themselves. National developers are not coming in to save it.

[thelakelander]

I'd argue that national developers are already here, but historically downtown revitalization has been more of a politically connected opportunity/obstacle thing to the development community, than market driven. This from conversations I've personally had with individuals in the development industry over the years, as well as things I've witnessed in the field and related professions like planning, architecture, engineering, etc. fields. However, I'd also argue that national developers aren't saving any downtown nationwide. The best places have local money, ambition and passion following into them.