"Cycling" a Saltwater Tank:
http://reefsources.itgo.com/guide/biological.html
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Now, every new tank must be "cycled." This cycle is closely related to the nitrogen cycle discussed above. But in this case, we are referring to establishing significant concentrations of beneficial bacteria in order to support the aforementioned nitrogen cycle.
This is how the cycle is achieved: After setting up the tank, some hardy species such as the much-maligned damsels are added to the tank and fed regularly (you can actually use only live rock if you wish, as dying matter in the rock produces the necessary ammonia source). In a few short days the concentration of ammonia climbs steadily due to an inadequate concentration of the right types of bacteria. The fish are a little tense by now; clamped fins and rapid breathing. Over time, several more days, the beneficial bacteria gain a foothold and the ammonia concentration starts to drop. Now here comes the equally toxic nitrite. Since the necessary bacteria for nitrite conversion still don't exist in concentration, nitrite quickly ramps up to toxic levels. The little fishes are stressing out by now; clamped fins, and pumping gills, and hiding in the corner. Finally, the appropriate bacteria levels are present and nitrite starts to decline, leaving nitrate in its wake. This is a good thing. Once ammonia and nitrite have dropped to 0 and nitrate starts to rise, the tank is cycled. Now you can start adding livestock…slowly.
This is how the cycle is achieved: After setting up the tank, some hardy species such as the much-maligned damsels are added to the tank and fed regularly (you can actually use only live rock if you wish, as dying matter in the rock produces the necessary ammonia source). In a few short days the concentration of ammonia climbs steadily due to an inadequate concentration of the right types of bacteria. The fish are a little tense by now; clamped fins and rapid breathing. Over time, several more days, the beneficial bacteria gain a foothold and the ammonia concentration starts to drop. Now here comes the equally toxic nitrite. Since the necessary bacteria for nitrite conversion still don't exist in concentration, nitrite quickly ramps up to toxic levels. The little fishes are stressing out by now; clamped fins, and pumping gills, and hiding in the corner. Finally, the appropriate bacteria levels are present and nitrite starts to decline, leaving nitrate in its wake. This is a good thing. Once ammonia and nitrite have dropped to 0 and nitrate starts to rise, the tank is cycled. Now you can start adding livestock…slowly.
In marine biology, nothing else can survive in the tank until all of the water has passed through the bodies of these extremely tough little fish.
The materials they produce and the effect they have on the water makes the water able to support other life.
But the damsel fish and their ilk are the only ones tough enough to survive the toxic water and its transition process.
Until they have done their job, the tank will kill anything else that lands in its environs.
This same dynamic is repeated in the redevelopment process.
As a district begins to redevelop, it happens with a few shop versions of Damselfish plunging into the hostile environment and toughing it out until the area begins to change.
They will attract street traffic, which is its own form of Imprinting (see the metrojacksonville article) As the all important street traffic begins to pick up, then other shops and businesses will be encouraged to open, with greater chances of survival than the first crop.
Eventually as the area improves and acclimates, the businesses that need the most amount of foot traffic and passersby to succeed will finally begin to trickle in, once there is a possibility of actually surviving.
This process can take a couple of years or a couple of decades.
But it is by far the most stable of the development strategies, as new shops are added only as the district will actually support them.
The trick is finding the initial "cyclers".
They tend to be a difficult and hardy group, fiercely independent and natural born risk takers.
They have greater success when they open in groups, are owner operated and have a vested interest in the community.
Mostly they tend to be younger, and a community can help these types of businesses by showing patience in the learning curve and giving firm positive and negative feedback.
San Marco Square
Five Points was cycled in the early 90s. (see the Metro Jacksonville article on Niching in Five Points )
San Marco was cycled in the early 80s.
John Currington and Phyllis Lockwood opened up a few complementary businesses, Cafe Carmon and Peterbrooke's Chocolate. They ran the places themselves and did most of the remodeling and repairs personally. John was honored with a park bench placed on a sidewalk in his name as a result of his many personal labors.
Mike and Terri Schneider were almost broke when they opened up The Loop Pizza as a way to pay off debts accrued at another venue. Terri retiled the kitchen counters herself. Mike baked pizza. They prayed a lot.
Many years later and much wealthier they opened up the upscale Bistro Aix just a block or so down from their original venue, Applejacks Barbeque.
The Shotwells personally worked at the San Marco Theater as concessions and ushers.
Mimi still works her curio consignment shop, and Sandra has worked at Edwards tobacco shop since she was a young girl.
Debra opened and ran her shop Dress Up, until Krista Eberle (who had been working for the Schneiders at The Loop) bought the shop from her and eventually opened up her eponymous dress boutique.
Atlantic Beach was cycled in the mid 90s.
When Dave broke away from Ragtime and opened up the SunDog Diner, the fact that the two businesses could succeed simultaneously cycled the Atlantic Beach Town Center and the place rapidly opened up with a Peterbrooke's and a Loop from San Marco.
Cycling avoids the negative process of bubbles and busts, and is integral to creating a Community of Place, where the town center becomes its own destination and is heavily supported by the surrounding residents and inhabitants.
Article by Stephen Dare
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stephendare
August 03, 2009, 09:14:59 AMNot paying attention to this process and having a group of greedy, fairly unscrupulous landowners along Main Street artificially driving prices, is what caused the sudden death of the Springfield Main Street.
Unfortunately the wholly unnatural goading of the lease prices by a few individuals who felt that they could control the pace of development dovetailed nicely with the main neighborhood group's ambitions in the neighborhood.
Now Main street is mostly abandoned.
JoeMerchant
August 03, 2009, 09:23:50 AM^Hopefully after the construction on Main Street finishes, we'll see some growth. At the least we'll be able to take that out of the equation all together when dealing with the corridor issues.
stephendare
August 03, 2009, 09:33:37 AMI do not doubt but that we will see growth, Jason. This recession and the continuing pigheadedness of downtown regarding its public policies guarantees that a huge spurt of growth will return to the core for the next five years--but not downtown with the exception of another doomed artificialy created hubbub around the opening of the Courthouse. Instead the growth will go to the neighborhoods surrounding downtown. It will be interesting to see how it is dispersed however.
There are four neighborhoods competing for this phenomenon, and both Riverside and San Marco have positioned themselves well to be the main beneficiaries.
There will be new niche clusters developing. The back channels and the general cafe discussion is increasingly full of new groups and ideas discussing various plans.
And niche clusters have to cycle. There are a number of places where this might happen naturally.
Hendricks Avenue, near the library and tennis courts, for example.
Or perhaps surrounding the new House of Insetta project over on Kings in San Marco.
The best inventory for a project is along park street in Brooklyn, except that the city still has its unvisionary little fingers gumming up independent development over there.
There are three zones of Main Street that are able to support a Cycle.
And hopefully the self destructive boycotting and war making on the businesses in the area is a thing of the past.
Deuce
August 03, 2009, 09:34:12 AMVery interesting article. I love the comparison to establishing a salt water tank. I've always wanted one and have read about how hard it is before.
I can see this in Springfield as the first round of businesses went under (i.e. 9th & Main) and the second round has had better success (3 Layers).
civil42806
August 03, 2009, 09:44:38 AMThere are four neighborhoods competing for this phenomenon, and both Riverside and San Marco have positioned themselves well to be the main beneficiaries.
There will be new niche clusters developing. The back channels and the general cafe discussion is increasingly full of new groups and ideas discussing various plans.
And niche clusters have to cycle. There are a number of places where this might happen naturally.
Hendricks Avenue, near the library and tennis courts, for example.
Or perhaps surrounding the new House of Insetta project over on Kings in San Marco.
The best inventory for a project is along park street in Brooklyn, except that the city still has its unvisionary little fingers gumming up independent development over there.
There are three zones of Main Street that are able to support a Cycle.
And hopefully the self destructive boycotting and war making on the businesses in the area is a thing of the past.
Does anyone other than me get a kick out of how the impending redevelopment of Downtown seems to be centered on everywhere but downtown?
" both Riverside and San Marco have positioned themselves well to be the main beneficiaries."
"Hendricks Avenue"
"San Marco." god knows that area is a slum.
"Brooklyn" You can hear the wind blow though the vacant lots about as well as La villa after the city finished leveling everything.
Dog Walker
August 03, 2009, 09:47:02 AMThere is a wonderful book that, among other things, outlines this phenomenon. It is "The Life and Death of Great American Cities" by Judy Jacobs. It was written in the 1970's and the last thirty years have only proved Ms. Jacobs insights correct. She talks a lot about the organic nature of growth vs. central planned efforts.
Judy Jacobs died this past year, but not before her insights, controversial when she wrote them down, had been proved correct again and again earning her universal respect.
stephendare
August 03, 2009, 09:48:07 AMExactly Civil. As covered in the article, you know that depressed real estate is the breeding ground of a cycling redevelopment.
But downtown will not change the policies that destroyed its retail base in the first place.
stephendare
August 03, 2009, 09:50:58 AMDogwalker, I love Jane Jacobs.
I found her writing relatively late in life, and everything I have personally experienced in these neighborhood renovations validated everything she wrote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs
civil42806
August 03, 2009, 10:05:00 AMBut downtown will not change the policies that destroyed its retail base in the first place.
stephendare
August 03, 2009, 11:02:24 AMGlad you asked, Civil.
The downtown has policies in place that are unwittingly designed to destroy any small daytime based businesses.
Unjustifiable parking taxes levied on all potential customers, draconian fees.
Artificially high lease rates that are backed up by no known meter of commercial value.
Improper signage
A police policy of barricading and quarantining downtown streets from any and all access during major events. This ensures that all times during which masses of people might support new small businesses downtown are rendered useless as thousands of potential customers risk tickets and possible arrest if they decide to patronize downtown.
The City itself is one of the largest landowners and will not lease its properties.
The City run redevelopment agency has latent 'redevelopment plans' that cover major areas of downtown. Most potential cycling or niche or clustering development is cut off at the beginning by this agency.
Until the downtown addresses these things, there will be no revitalization of the downtown.
stjr
August 03, 2009, 11:51:35 AMStephen, along these lines, note the destruction of smaller, historic, approachable, scalable buildings and spaces that can grow an area incrementally while maintaining its character. What we do is develop "all or nothing" sanitized and master planned whole city blocks or areas creating the often unrealistically achievable need for instant and simultaneous development all at once to attain any kind of threshhold for sustainable success.
In other words, to get anything sustainable going, it takes a huge "explosion" to light the fire, rather than a mere match. And such "instant" efforts lack any momentum or proven success to encourage and add the additional efforts of others, especially the unique and necessary smaller niche players who need to be more cautious with their investments.
Large scale redevelopment makes for a complex, difficult, expensive, and much more risky process and demands intervention and oversight by unreliable, unstable, sometimes unskilled, offten distracted, always unpredictable, politcally, not economically driven, and ever changing government administrations, committees and personnel. Whew! Who could live with a business partner like that?
Free enterprise demands that developers go where people want to be. What government should focus on is infrastructure - creating accessible, inviting, attractive, convenient, and secure public "spaces". And then just sit back, and the people will come.
stephendare
August 03, 2009, 02:12:34 PMStjr, I don't think I could possibly agree with you more. In fact, I might go one better and suggest that but for the various revitalization efforts in Jacksonville, we might have had a real powerhouse of an urban core downtown.
These groups are generally very Anti "Cycling". Meaning that they want Minerva to jump straight from the head of Jupiter full grown and ready for a timed SAT test. They have little or no patience for the 'weedy' little mom and pops or the indie set ups or even the immigrant driven upstairs/downtstairs shop studios.
Combined with the new deal era municipal taxation strategy, they have destroyed the infrastructure that made urban cores organically self sustaining.
Sigma
August 03, 2009, 02:20:44 PMLarge scale redevelopment makes for a complex, difficult, expensive, and much more risky process and demands intervention and oversight by unreliable, unstable, sometimes unskilled, offten distracted, always unpredictable, politcally, not economically driven, and ever changing government administrations, committees and personnel. Whew! Who could live with a business partner like that?
Wow! for a minute there I thought you were talking about healthcare reform.
Excellent points, and a good read.
stephendare
August 03, 2009, 02:43:52 PMbtw. For related ideas in this series, check out two prior articles on redevelopment strategies, "Visual Imprinting" and "Niching"
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2009-jul-redevelopment-strategies-visual-imprinting
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2009-jul-redevelopment-strategies-niching
Dog Walker
August 03, 2009, 02:56:58 PMStephen, Thanks for the correction on Jane Jacobs name. Had a senior moment there.
Avondale, San Marco, Five Points, Murry Hill, Miramar are all areas without a central planning agency like the Downtown Development Authority and they have all done much better about redeveloping than downtown. Small businesses move in and out. Some succeed and stay others get too big and move out, still others fail for one reason or another and create a vacant spot for someone else to try and succeed.
Central planning of the economy didn't work for the Soviets and it won't work for downtown either.