Downtown Development Update: What's rising, what's delayed

[Charles Hunter]

How many of the separated spaces from Winn Dixie to Aldi conversions remain empty? Fort Caroline is still empty after almost a year.

I don't go by that center often, but it's not the only vacancy in that center, is it?

[Ken_FSU]

Town Center feels more like downtown than downtown feels like downtown. Pearl square can't get online fast enough.
 

^ 90% of St. Johns Town Center is suburban sprawl. Only the original core strip is urban/walkable. That said, everyone gets your point re: level of activity.

Correction lol! 100% of SJTC is suburban sprawl. Its just as urban and walkable as the Avenues or Orange Park Mall. The main strip is a mall without a roof.

....my bad. Apologies to the Avenues and Orange Park Mall. Both are slightly more walkable....because they have air conditioning, which is pretty nice during the summer months!

Ultimately semantics in terms of "feels more like downtown than Downtown Jacksonville," but I do also see the point that MDTJGA was making and think the urban crowd is far too dismissive of the Town Center when there are plenty of opportunities to learn from what they're doing right. Particularly when the Town Center keeps exploding outward while the CBD continues to implode from the inside.

The CBD would kill for the residential and and hotel units that the Town Center area has been producing since it opened, and the Town Center area has absolutely been eating the lunch of the urban core in terms of attracting the target demographic needed for downtown to thrive. Might be suburban, but the day-to-day pedestrian activity, vibrancy, retail stability, and tenant quality mops the floor with Downtown Jacksonville. Absent massive population influx, retail activity and residential occupancy is a zero-sum game. And the type of folks who spend weekends at the Town Center are the same types of folks that we'll need to attract downtown to make it successful.

[acme54321]

Might be the lack of mentally unstable homeless people on every other corner.

[thelakelander]

Town Center feels more like downtown than downtown feels like downtown. Pearl square can't get online fast enough.
 

^ 90% of St. Johns Town Center is suburban sprawl. Only the original core strip is urban/walkable. That said, everyone gets your point re: level of activity.

Correction lol! 100% of SJTC is suburban sprawl. Its just as urban and walkable as the Avenues or Orange Park Mall. The main strip is a mall without a roof.

....my bad. Apologies to the Avenues and Orange Park Mall. Both are slightly more walkable....because they have air conditioning, which is pretty nice during the summer months!

Ultimately semantics in terms of "feels more like downtown than Downtown Jacksonville," but I do also see the point that MDTJGA was making and think the urban crowd is far too dismissive of the Town Center when there are plenty of opportunities to learn from what they're doing right. Particularly when the Town Center keeps exploding outward while the CBD continues to implode from the inside.

The CBD would kill for the residential and and hotel units that the Town Center area has been producing since it opened, and the Town Center area has absolutely been eating the lunch of the urban core in terms of attracting the target demographic needed for downtown to thrive. Might be suburban, but the day-to-day pedestrian activity, vibrancy, retail stability, and tenant quality mops the floor with Downtown Jacksonville. Absent massive population influx, retail activity and residential occupancy is a zero-sum game. And the type of folks who spend weekends at the Town Center are the same types of folks that we'll need to attract downtown to make it successful.

From my view, they're apples and oranges markets, so there's not much to learn unless the goal is to want downtown to have the same tenants as a typical modern shopping mall, context and demographics. If so, downtown revitalization efforts (if that were the unified community vision for downtown) will struggle another 100 years because that's not its market, property ownership pattern, urban core demographic base, etc.

SJTC is what Avenues was in the 1990s, Regency/Arlington in the 1980s and Orange Park Mall in the 1970s. Its also a good 40-50 years in the making. As the metropolitan area continues to expand out, retail trends change and apartment age, another area will replace the SJTC area in prominence for that type of development. Most likely that spot will emerge somewhere in Northern St. Johns County.

The urban core is a different ballgame altogether. It history, density, surrounding context, politics, land ownership, ethnic and economic demographics are totally different and all of that plays a significant impact on development...especially when compared to suburban development patterns and trends. Even more successful downtowns like Atlanta, Tampa, Charlotte, Orlando, St. Petersburg, etc. don't have the same type of tenant mix or development mix as SJTC and other malls in their regions.

With that said, there's more new stuff going in now (e.g. retail, F&B, hotel, etc.), than what downtown has witnessed in decades....but things take years to materialize (Gateway Jax's is coming along nicely though and I'm excited about what Beaver Street will resemble in five years). Nevertheless, we do have some challenges to overcome like....still not having a unified community vision for downtown's future, making strategic short term investments to keep existing businesses open, and dealing with a shifting post pandemic office and F&B market.

[thelakelander]

Might be the lack of mentally unstable homeless people on every other corner.

This definitely has to be addressed!

[jcjohnpaint]

Not to mention all the failed malls that opened in cities hoping to bring the mall experience to their downtowns. Landing is an example. I can think of 10 others off the top of my head. I feel a successful downtown would look more like 5-points than SJTC. I guess there are exceptions like 5th Ave in NY or Oxford in London, but those cities are on another level than most.

[jaxlongtimer]

I've said it before... Downtown needs only a few basics and none of them involve throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at developers.

1. Develop a coherent and reasonable community based master plan for Downtown and the rings around it and consistently and reliably adhere to its implementation over many years.
2. Change zoning to require near continuous retail/interaction along street level facings.
3. Have robust inner city mass transit that connects with surrounding urban neighborhoods and makes it easy to move about Downtown.
4. Increase green public spaces and maximize public access to the river which should be the focal point and character-making of Downtown.
5. Make streetscapes more pedestrian friendly and keep them clean and well maintained.
6. Increase visibility of JSO to make Downtown civilians feel safer.

Whether a small, medium or large city, most or all of these elements are common to all that are robust.  Do the above and developers will be knocking our doors down.  Our insistence on chasing pots of gold at the end of a rainbow isn't going to get us there.  So frustrating to see the lack of focus on the above vs. chasing developers.  We have it backwards.

[thelakelander]

^Investment in those no frills, non-headline popping quality-of-life elements are essential but have been long overlooked and ignored over the years. In recent years, we've began making investment in green spaces but it will take some time for the benefits of these public improvements to come online. We're still struggling big time with the others areas pointed out.

[acme54321]

Might be the lack of mentally unstable homeless people on every other corner.

This definitely has to be addressed!

I don't know how the Gateway Jax team isn't pushing the city hard on this considering their proximity to the Clara White and Trintity Rescue missions.  That immediate area is out of control. 

I drove by there with a bunch of coworkers last week and it was embarrassing for the city.  Most of them live in the burbs, Clay, or St Johns.  How are we supposed to convince people to come downtown when that is the first thing they encounter getting off of 95.

Good news is that Sulzbacher's new campus is moving along.

[Aristocles]

Might be the lack of mentally unstable homeless people on every other corner.

This definitely has to be addressed!

I don't know how the Gateway Jax team isn't pushing the city hard on this considering their proximity to the Clara White and Trintity Rescue missions.  That immediate area is out of control. 

I know how the Gateway Jax team is doing this: firmly but very quietly.