Advocating for a Sustainable Jacksonville

The genesis of Preservation SOS began with the knocking down of one too many historic homes. Ready, willing and able to do what they can to prevent further demolitions in the historic district, Preservation SOS has successfully lobbied for mothballing legislation to preserve the integrity of vacant homes for future use and repaired homes of long term residents in danger of losing their properties to the wrecking ball.

In a developing story, the young non-profit organization has played a leading role in exposing Jacksonville's illegal use of federal dollars to fund the demolition of historic building stock. As a result of their efforts, there have been no demolitions in the historic district in six months.





Some may wonder what's the importance in keeping existing building fabric where possible?

Benefits include safeguarding our local heritage, education, civic beauty and bolstering community pride.

Economically, having an abundance of existing buildings allows urban pioneers at all income levels to be a part of the renaissance.

We can see this all around us today. The lack of available building stock in downtown is one of the primary reasons businesses many desire in the Northbank, end up in areas nearby such as the CoRK Arts District, King Street, and Hendricks Avenue instead.





In 2010, we hosted our first pub crawl. At the time, the goal was to provide an evening of entertainment that would generate revenue for struggling downtown nightlife venues while also exposing guests to other urban core activity centers such as Five Points, San Marco Square and Park & King.

Utilizing luxury shuttle buses to link these districts was viewed as a way to introduce "choice" riders to the idea of mass transit as well.

During the days of the initial pub crawls, many crawlers were exposed to urban districts outside of downtown for the first time.





In the three years since the initial pub crawls to King Street, the strip has transformed into the area’s latest nightlife district despite the economic recession.

No longer are there complaints about vacant storefronts. Today, some are seeking to slow down the proliferation of new businesses because the on-street parking spaces they were once accustomed to are now filled with patrons visiting the King Street strip.

In 2014, we'll be focusing on helping breathe excitement into other overlooked urban core districts such as Beaver Street in the vicinity of the farmers market and Murray Hill's Edgewood Avenue.





Despite the national-wide popularity of food trucks, the industry struggled to survive locally due to antiquated anti-industry regulations and opposition by influential political forces.

In an effort to showcase economic benefits of this industry and the best of Jacksonville's local street food culture in a single location, members of the Metro Jacksonville community organized Jax Truckies, The Jacksonville Food Truck Championship in early 2012.

Fresh off the heels of that successful event, a second rally was hosted in a downtown surface parking lot to demonstrate how food trucks could activate a dead block and create small business growth opportunities at an affordable cost.