Brushing Off The Dust: 20 Affordable Fixes For Downtown
August 12, 2013 21 comments
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Following the City Council Finance Committee's recent decision to remove $9 million intended for downtown revitalization, many are ready to label Mayor Alvin Brown's efforts to revitalize the city's heart a bust. In May 2011, we asked Metro Jacksonville readers for cost-effective ideas that city leaders could get behind that could spur downtown revitalization. With Mayor Alvin Brown's two years of efforts unable to bare fruit so far, perhaps it's time to dust off a few of these ideas and actually implement them?
Interested in cleaning up Hemming Plaza? Let's try continuously programming it with special events.
6. Have actual, downtown business owners and residents sit in on the decision making that goes on in the Mayors office when planning the yearly special events calendar.
7. Run a free trolley on Friday and Saturday nights from Riverside to the Downtown Entertainment District from 8pm-3am. Works at the Beach, why not Downtown?
It's going to take a mayor with a strong backbone and a serious desire to see downtown Jax return to glory. He or she will have to push things thru and convince the citizens of Jax that improving downtown and making it attractive will not only cost the average Jax resident nothing, but perhaps save them money (more businesses downtown = more tax dollars coming in).Quote by Metro Jacksonville discussion board member Bativac
8. Do not spend another dime on any expert consultant or do any more studies if you are just going to ignore what they say.
9. Moratorium on suburban-road building/widening/overpasses, so that we can stop subsidizing the continuing sprawl of our city.
10. Modify public policy and work with existing building owners so as to aggressively encourage the integration of ground-level businesses with sidewalks.
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