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Kings Avenue: The Importance of Rehabilitating Buildings

When you travel to a city, you don't want to go to that place out on the expressway interchange. You want to go to the center of town to see how it emerged. There, you'll find your most interesting buildings. If the city had any long-range vision for itself, it embraced these old places and continued to adaptively reuse these buildings to keep it as an interesting focal point of their community. -Tony Troppe, The Everett Group, during a 2004 interview with Smart Business

Published December 2, 2008 in Neighborhoods     Digg Digg   Share this article on Facebook Share on Facebook   twitterTweet this!




The small buildings along Kings Avenue (lower left corner) once housed many businesses and industries adjacent to South Jacksonville's shipyards.  Today, many of these buildings have been preserved and restored into new uses.























Buildings tell stories, and when you remove the buildings, you remove a chapter from the history and character of the community.  Kings Avenue proves when buildings are preserved they can combine to create a distinct district with its own unique sense of place that can't be duplicated in the suburbs. 

Article by Ennis Davis


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» 5 Comments

Sigma

December 02, 2008, 02:51:41 PM

Speaking of the importance of re-habbing old buildings, check out this link (pg 54-57).

http://www.zinio.com/express3?issue=325511596

I know the CEO and remember when downtown Greenwood was very sad.  This area deserves one of your "Learning from" segments.  It has truly been a remarkable turnaround. 

Jason

December 02, 2008, 04:10:29 PM

Welcome Sigma.  Thanks for the link.

deathstar

December 02, 2008, 05:46:55 PM

K, COJ, take note of your accomplishments there, and spread that throughout the city!

thelakelander

December 02, 2008, 10:16:22 PM

The number one accomplishment here is that public agencies did not get in the way.  Redevelopment was driven by private sector market rate investment and creativity.

GatorShane

December 03, 2008, 11:08:57 AM

Great Pics! This area is really coming along. I do wish we had one huge district like Ybor City, but I do think it is cool that we have several smaller ones around town. This will add another distint street to our cityscape.
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