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Habijax looks for major new impact
You can find the impact of Habijax throughout Jacksonville's neediest neighborhoods.
In some areas, there are batches of Habijax housing. In a few other areas, you will find a Habijax house here and there.
In most of those older neighborhoods, you can easily spot the Habijax houses - they are the only new ones.
Now Habijax is moving toward a new model, becoming an important part of the New Town Success Zone.
Habijax intends to transform an entire neighborhood in what could be a model for other Habitat groups in the nation.
It's a dramatic idea funded by a $400,000 grant from Wells Fargo. But that's just seed money. Habijax intends to match it about three times over with a private fundraising campaign.
Mary Kay O'Rourke, CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Jacksonville, expects this project to last five years.
Look at a map of the New Town and College Gardens areas, and the impact is amazing.
There are various colored dots that represent the homes to be improved. The dots practically fill up the map.
There will be some new housing with 12 new homes planned for this spring with supervision from Northeast Florida Builders.
Full article: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2011-09-08/story/habijax-looks-major-new-impact
During Summer 2011, Transform Jax was offered an opportunity to provide urban planning advice to Habijax as they move forward with their New Town initiative. The presentation below is a brief summary of planning efforts that have been done to date.
Transform Jax was founded in May 2011 as a result of a common desire between a group of urban core planners to continue the effort to make innovative urban core revitalization concepts discussed throughout the community a reality. The group's vision is to improve the vitality and quality of life in Jacksonville's downtown and urban core neighborhoods through creative, innovative, attainable, and sustainable solutions.
For more information: info@transformjax.org
Developed during the first decade of the 20th century, New Town is a traditional African-American working class community and the focus of a major neighborhood revitalization initiative. During its early years, the neighborhood enjoyed considerable growth due to a streetcar line that ran down Kings Road and the presence of multiple rail lines throughout the area. Surrounded on the West, South and East by industrial uses, the majority of the community was employed in the industrial and railroad sectors.
Like many inner city communities, New Town's economic prosperity has been in a state of decline since the mid 20th century. Since 2000, the neighborhood's population has decreased 17% while vacant housing units have increased 45%.
After understanding the history of New Town, Transform Jax performed a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats analysis on the neighborhood. Neighborhood strengths included the presence of Edward Waters College, Jacksonville Farmer's Market, and the area's industrial base. Another strength that can easily be overlooked is the neighborhood's existing urban form. The presence of the existing urban street grid and building fabric means the revitalization process does not have to start over from scratch. Instead, it's history, culture, and physical assets can be re-utilized, strengthening the area's character long term.
New Town's weaknesses included a lack of public park space, poor maintenance of public right-of-way (ROW), limited connectivity to downtown due to Interstate 95, and incompatible suburban infill.
Opportunities to build upon included recent Kings Road streetscape enhancements, the proposed Success Park, the S-Line former railroad ROW , and the neighborhood's traditional mixed-use development pattern.
Originally developed as a walkable community, several parcels in the neighborhood are more suitable for multifamily housing.
13 to 21% of New Town's residents rely on public transportation. The addition of mixed-use development creates an opportunity for job creation and services within walking distance as opposed to an over reliance on JTA to better serve the community's needs. Opportunities for mixed use commercial districts in the neighborhood exist along several corridors including Beaver Street, King Street, the S-Line and Myrtle Avenue.
Threats to New Town's future, history, and culture include ignoring the needs and wishes of the existing community, incompatible infill due to the City of Jacksonville's suburban zoning regulations, and demolition of existing building stock. Autocentric zoning practices resulting in suburban infill development helps destroy the historic pedestrian scale environment of New Town. Poor planning coordination of public and private projects leads to a waste of public resources. The S-Line Greenway is an example of waste due to poor planning coordination. This multiuse path was constructed in the center of a 60' wide former rail corridor that will also be the path of a commuter or light rail line providing connectivity between the airport, Shands, Northside neighborhoods and Downtown. Funded by the 2030 Mobility Plan & Fee, when this transit project is constructed, the greenway will have to be demolished and rebuilt. This process could have been easily avoided with better coordination between public agencies. Better coordination would have resulted in the path in a manner that would have allowed for future rail to be installed next to it, as successfully demonstrated in cities like Detroit, Seattle, and Charlotte.
Clustering complementing uses within a compact setting is one of the most efficient revitalization concepts for urban neighborhoods. Local successful clustering examples can be found in Springfield, with new infill housing along Market and Silver Streets, and the College and King intersection in Riverside. Applying this concept with Habijax, quick transformation block by block can happen by clustering infill development were feasible. With this information in mind, a series of graphics highlighting parcels already owned by Habijax and vacant properties possibly available for acquisition was created. When all information discussed above is combined, the Tyler Street corridor starts to stand out as a possible location for the initial clustering of infill development. Tyler Street is a major secondary roadway that connects the residential heart of New Town with Edward Waters College/Kings Road and Beaver Street/S-Line Greenway. Tyler Street's characteristics include a fairly wide path of pavement between curbs, sidewalks and a mix of uses within a walkable setting.
In 2012, Transform Jax anticipates continuing to assist Habijax in implementing these concepts as a part of their development plan for investment in New Town.
Article by Ennis Davis
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Noone
December 23, 2011, 03:20:56 AMVery exciting.
dawnemerick
December 23, 2011, 09:47:27 AMThanks Metro Jacksonville for yet another insightful article on a community that is filled with incredible assets and history but is marred by chronic poverty, neglect and environmental injustices.
With that said, I think Transform Jax and Habijax completely missed a major opportunity to see and do things differently with this Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. Last month, Metro Jacksonville invited me to be a guest author for a Guest Series feature. The entire article focused on how the connection between our built environment and the health of a population has been undervalued or even absent.
When I finished reading this article and reviewing the slides, I cringed when I realized that improving the community’s health was not even considered as a strategy or outcome with the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. What was even more upsetting to me was that the results from a 2009 door-to-door community-based participatory health needs assessment conducted in New Town were left out of the mix when developing the case for the Revitalization Initiative. (http://www.nefloridacounts.org/javascript/htmleditor/uploads/Debrieffor_general_meeting_Read_Only.pdf) With funding from Baptist Health, the Health Planning Council worked in partnership with New Town residents for over a 7 month period of time to learn more about the health status and causes of health disparities (social and environmental determinants of health) in New town. Over that period of time, we trained and paid 25 local “Health Builders” to gather door to door surveys (665 surveys) and conduct focus groups (10 groups). Did you know that Health Zone 1, which includes New Town, leads the city in heart disease mortality, HIV/AIDS deaths, STD rates, teen birth rates, and holds the second highest rate of cancer and diabetes mortality? Did you know that Health Zone 1 also has the highest asthma related and uncontrolled diabetes ER visits in the city? Did you know that New Town is also home to the biggest “Food Desert” in the city? Did you know that there are more liquor stores and fast food establishments per capita in New Town than in any other community in Jacksonville?
Study after study after study has indicated that 75% of factors that influence a person’s health fall outside of the health care system. People with higher Walkscores weigh 6-10lbs less on average than people in less walkable locations; people living within a 1/3 mile walk to a supermarket are 11% less likely to be obese. Unfortunately, it appears that not one bit of information from this community based health survey was used to help develop the case for the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. How can health not be at the table with such an important opportunity in New Town or any other community?
The Health Planning Council along with many of our regional partners like planning, architectural, and landscape architectural design firm ELM have been pushing to change the way Jacksonville thinks about aligning public health and urban planning closer together. Everyone—planners, journalists, community based organizations, public health officials, hospital CEOs, builders/developers etc. must understand the economic imperative of healthy and thriving communities. A great example of how neighborhood redevelopment efforts have incorporated the health of their community into their revitalization efforts is High Point, Seattle’s Housing Authority's largest family community - (http://www.seattlehousing.org/redevelopment/high-point/). High Point was conceptualized and executed in 2004---7 years ago! Come on Jacksonville!
While I loved reading this article and it brought a smile to my face, I still strongly believe that Transform Jax and Habijax truly missed an opportunity to take a holistic approach to improving the health, quality of life and the economics of New Town residents.
Think differently Jacksonville.
thelakelander
December 23, 2011, 10:01:57 AM^Thanks. If it helps, just to let you know, the information described in your post has been collected, considered, and incorporated into what has been presented so far. Quite frankly, you can't go into a neighborhood like New Town and health planning and its impact on the urban environment not be a factor. Regarding the statistics posted above, one thing that really began to stand out was the lack of green space and recreation opportunities.
Clustering, infill and the addition of a mix of uses within a compact setting are potential opportunities that address the points raised in this post that were mentioned in the slides above. Also, keep in mind that this is a brief "bird's eye" summary that doesn't include all the slides of what was presented the other week, which revolved heavily around land acquisition and initial buildout strategies. Last but not least, work is no where near complete. Hopefully, this will help alleviate some of your concerns that health planning has been ignored to date.
tufsu1
December 23, 2011, 11:31:26 AMAlso note that there are many groups working to revitalize New Town....and health planning is part of the overall Success Zone initiative.
TransForm Jax was specifically working with HabiJax on land use and development issues related to their investment strategy for the future.
duvaldude08
December 23, 2011, 12:16:27 PMThis is absolutely wonderful!
sheclown
December 24, 2011, 06:27:53 AMVery exciting.
JeffreyS
December 25, 2011, 09:58:21 AMGreat article and Kudos to the TransForm Jax team.
thelakelander
November 06, 2012, 05:22:03 PMhttp://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-11-06/story/donors-give-habijax-new-town-project-big-boost
tufsu1
November 06, 2012, 08:03:12 PMgreat news!