A Message to City Hall: Practice What You Preach

[Metro Jacksonville]

A Message to City Hall: Practice What You Preach



It's the typical story out of the City of Jacksonville: continuing to trade Babe Ruths for a bucket of balls and a pair of dirty socks. This particular story involves the city making a move to strengthen the core, but ignoring or forgetting to incorporate the small details that create really vibrant street scenes. You know, the ones we can't seem to stimulate no matter how much public money is invested in the Northbank. The latest fumble in this never ending game of musical chairs centers around the  new  city hall annex building and Hemming Plaza.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/398

[anonymous]

The hypocrisy continues, and they really have no room to argue their point on  having an extra 540 s.f.  This is a very good article.  I still think the city and mayor's office want the best for this city, but I am starting to wonder...  Maybe the mayor pitched the idea around, or someone did, and then the city employees involved with the project and the employees from the section of the GOB network moving in thought it more important to have that extra storage closet.

[patrick]

I agree we should be doing everything possible to develop the urban core, but it might be possible the city offices need every available inch of office space in these building for municipal employees.  It might be the only reason they re-developed the building was because it was big enough to accommodate their space needs.  If that was the equation, I would rather a re-developed and fully used building without retail then a neglected hulk standing empty because it could not satisfy the city’s needs.

Of course, the wasteful and bloated municipal payroll that created the need for so much space is a topic for another day.

[thelakelander]

At some point you have to decide how you want your downtown to develop and be a leader in implementing plans to feed street level vibrancy 24/7 (if that's your goal).  If you can't spare 200 to 500sf in a 60,000sf building than maybe the someone should be looking at alternative options, instead of cramming offices into a space with no place to grow?   If 200 to 500sf is really that big of an issue in meeting the city's needs, then we have problems that the City Hall Annex will not solve.  Maybe they should shoot for the old JEA Tower instead?

Nevertheless, despite which way you look at it, it's a lost opportunity considering the frontage on downtown's historic public square.