Redevelopment Strategies: "Cycling"

[Metro Jacksonville]

Redevelopment Strategies:  "Cycling"



The redevelopment of a neighborhood works best when the upgrades and improvements are part of an organic and predictable process called cycling.

This process is most easily understood by comparison to the process of "Cycling" a saltwater aquarium, and draws its name from that comparison.

Any saltwater tank enthusiast knows that no matter how much money has been spent on the interior of the aquarium, and no matter how exotic the fish that are intended to inhabit the tank, everything starts with the one of the lowliest and least expensive fishes on the market:

The Lowly Damsel Fish.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2009-aug-redevelopment-strategies-cycling

[stephendare]

Not 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.

[jason_contentdg]

^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]

I 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]

Very 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]

I 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.  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.

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]

There 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]

Exactly 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]

Dogwalker, 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]

Exactly 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.

  then whats the actual downtowns excuse LOL

[stephendare]

Glad 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]

Stephen, 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]

Stjr, 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]

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? 

Wow!  for a minute there I thought you were talking about healthcare reform. 

Excellent points, and a good read.

[stephendare]

btw.  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