Downtown retail surge brings more investors

[stephendare]

Considering the markup on Starbucks coffee and free rent, it's pretty amazing they didn't even stay three years at 11 E.

it had more to do with the corporate downsizing of a few years ago (600 stores if I remember correctly) than the local store itself.

now the same can't be said about the Landing store which closed last year

so you seriously believe that it was a business decision that left the corporation with one location that carried an expensive lease agreement at the expense of a location that was provided to the company for free?

um okay..... but you are dead wrong.  And you already know that, and you already know that me and Elaine Brown negotiated the free lease for starbucks in the first place.

Why would you continue to propagate this kind of stuff? Because it insulates your friends in the industry to insulate themselves from the consequences or responsibilities for their failures?

[simms3]

^^^Like any downsizing company they shuttered poor performing locations.  Starbucks has thousands of locations it kept, and it kept the strongest.  The two in downtown Jacksonville obviously were in the bottom 600ish or so in terms of profit.  I doubt rent was exorbitantly high (in fact it appears it was % rent at 11 East), so volume must have been very low at both locations.

That's simply a reflection of downtown if the city's most concentrated area of employment and residents within walking distance can't support the world's most popular coffee shop.  That's what it boils down to, so stores at the Landing or not I agree with Stephen that there are fundamental problems downtown that need to be corrected.

[simms3]

And wasn't there a signage effort for the Starbucks at 11 E?  I remember it had signage, but I seem to vaguely remember they had to go through Herculean efforts to get it and it was discussed on this board...

[stephendare]

you are correct simms.

And it was even more favorable a lease than you might imagine.

It was literally free rent for three years, followed by five years of rent at the market price agreed upon at the time of signing.  Starbucks got a white space and their only obligation was to design build and decorate as they saw fit (which is standard for the company anyways)  but there wasn't even a percentage of the rent kicked back to the landlord.

The lease was signed as a way to prevent lease cancellations down at 11 east, as they were alarmingly high, and the number one complaint from people leaving their leases was that there wasn't anything open at all downtown and walkable on a weekend, especially during the day.

The space was not getting any interest anyways, so Vestcor saw it as a marketing and amenities investment for the building residents.

And to be frank it worked as exactly that.

[tufsu1]

Actually Starbucks primarily closed stores that had been open less than 2 years

[simms3]

^^^You are correct.  They closed stores that they opened in a time of massive risky expansion, so they were still underperforming stores.  I don't think the Starbucks in the Landing was a young store, but it still ended up closing last year.

Still, as Stephen reports Starbucks wasn't paying anything to be at 11 East and it probably did not put a lot of money into the buildout, so it sounds as if the sales volume wasn't even enough to cover operating expenditures.

Just thinking logic here - Starbucks essentially had to buy out remaining term for the 600 stores it closed, so it had to weigh which stores it should close by comparing cost to close the store and cost to keep it open.  In the case of 11 East it sounds like it was cost to close = $0, CF if keeping it open = -$x.

[I-10east]

Ah man, that trip to Margaret Street, and Riverside is an arduous journey; It seems like forever to get there; By time I get to DT, in a car (which most caffeine addicted yuppies have BTW) or maybe even the bus trolley my Starbucks Coffee will be ice cold. 

Since when did Starbucks Coffee become the benchmark of a successful DT? That what be like arguing that Wal-Mart is the benchmark for a successful city hell, I'll pick that before overpriced yuppie and hipster laden Starbucks. They tried at 11 East, and it failed, whatdaya want?

[simms3]

Starbucks or lack thereof isn't a benchmark, but rather a vital sign - and that vital sign does not have a pulse.  Ask yourself this - why would Starbucks keep a location in 5 Points, but not in the middle of the city's most concentrated and 2nd largest office market?

10 million people a year visit SJTC.  6 million a year pass through JIA.  If only 25,000 people are employed in the CBD (Northbank), and they show up to work 250 days a year, that's 6,250,000 potential "customers", not including visitors and tourists.  SJTC has several Starbucks.  JIA has 1, I think it had 2 at one point.  Downtown has 0.  There is definitely something wrong when Starbucks doesn't want to open a coffee shop in your downtown, and the reason is not because of a plethora of competing Caribou Coffees (which would still spur them to open to give people options).

Similarly:

One of the city's few landmarks and last vestiges of history is gone, and potentially due to a misappropriation of city funds.  YET, there is not a peep on this nor a public outcry over the missing money and the missing landmark.  I'm talking the G&C Clock, and the vital sign is the public concern - there is no pulse again. (had the potential misappropriation held up a desired road project there would be news story after news story)

Similarly:

If the city even hints at throwing money at downtown improvements, such as the Northbank Riverwalk, there is public backlash.  This is a vital sign reading the temperature of the people, and instead of being 98 degrees, their temperature is 89 degrees, completely backwards.  The people should be running a fever to get this city back on track.

[ChriswUfGator]

Actually Starbucks primarily closed stores that had been open less than 2 years

Anither po-Tuf-kin village, when did the landing Starbucks open?

[thelakelander]

The Landing Starbucks was there for at least 10 years.

http://jacksonville.com/entertainment/food-and-dining/2011-03-18/story/starbucks-close-jacksonville-landing

[tufsu1]

Actually Starbucks primarily closed stores that had been open less than 2 years

Anither po-Tuf-kin village, when did the landing Starbucks open?

how about you stop putting in digs for a minute and look at my earlier post, where I noted that the Landing Starbucks was not closed because of corporate downsizing, but because of slow sales at the store itself....as for when the store at the Landing opened, I believe Lake has answered that question.

[stephendare]

Actually Starbucks primarily closed stores that had been open less than 2 years

Anither po-Tuf-kin village, when did the landing Starbucks open?

how about you stop putting in digs for a minute and look at my earlier post, where I noted that the Landing Starbucks was not closed because of corporate downsizing, but because of slow sales at the store itself....as for when the store at the Landing opened, I believe Lake has answered that question.

Why not take a break from trying to get your own digs in, every day pretty much for the past six years?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and you can't pretend that it's really a magical pan flute that emits wishing smoke.

You pretty viciously denied that there was anything wrong with the policies of downtown for years, blaming the shopkeepers who tried to open shops for their "failures", and ridiculing or hijacking every thread which warned that this would not have a good outcome.

You undermined every attempt to correct the obstacles, and defended the perpetrators of every stupid thing that was done in downtown.

And now at last the downtown is completely collapsed, becoming the only downtown in the nation that cannot even support a Starbucks.

Do you, in retrospect think that you have been part of the solution in the neighborhood you live in?

Do you still believe that any small business owners that close and say there is a problem with downtown are liars who don't know how to run a business, but that any large corporation that jumps ship is simply making a business decision that has nothing to do with The area's administration?

Or do you just believe that telling fanciful stories about how wonderful things are to an ever decreasing group of people is a substitute for making something simple work?

I know that many of the people whose decisions and policies are your friends TUFSU.

Many of them are mine as well.

But at some point you have to stick up for what's right, and what actually works.

You cant agree with sensible principles in theory and then undermine any criticism of irrational principles.

There are worse things than simply looking foolish for claiming that Winn Dixie is a dining option exemplary of a vibrant downtown or that Starbucks closed all of their stores in our downtown for (literally) contradictory reasons.

And that is that you waste so much time for the people who are actually advocating the change that you claim to support and muddy the water so badly (does downtown really have 54 thousand workers coming to offices every day?) that nothing will ever get done.

[tufsu1]

I was not making any digs regarding the Starbucks issue.  I was just noting that one store closed as part of corporate downsizing, while the other was closed because of poor performance of the local store itself.

I was also asked earlier in the thread to provide a listing of new small businesses that had recently opened downtown...so I did just that.

I am really sorry that you continually misunderstand or misinterpret things I say.  And yes, I do feel that I have been and continue to be a strong advocate for making downtown a better place.

[stephendare]

I was not making any digs regarding the Starbucks issue.  I was just noting that one store closed as part of corporate downsizing, while the other was closed because of poor performance of the local store itself.

I was also asked earlier in the thread to provide a listing of new small businesses that had recently opened downtown...so I did just that.

I am really sorry that you continually misunderstand or misinterpret things I say.  And yes, I do feel that I have been and continue to be a strong advocate for making downtown a better place.

so you agree that the downtown area was not able to make a starbucks coffee viable, whether they were leasing or even paying nothing for rent?

[fsquid]

FFS, there is a stinking Starbucks in Julington Creek.

I do miss Caribou Coffee though, preferred that when I wanted to treat myself.