Southside Construction Update - February 2014

What is an Edge City?


Over the Southside's Blue Cross Blue Shield campus.

The term, Edge City, was popularized in the 1991 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau, who established its current meaning while working as a reporter for the Washington Post. Garreau argues that the edge city has become the standard form of urban growth worldwide, representing a 20th-century urban form unlike that of the 19th-century central downtown.

Edge Cities typically consist of mid-rise office towers surrounded by massive surface parking lots and manicured lawns. Instead of a traditional street grid, their infrastructure networks consist of winding parkways (often lacking sidewalks) that feed into arterial roads and freeway ramps. They develop at or near freeway intersections and airports and they rarely include heavy industry.  They are large geographically because they are built at automobile scale.

Edge Cities are impossible without the automobile. In Jacksonville, the Southside, specifically the JTB corridor, has developed into our first true Edge City. Because the Southside is our only emerging Edge City in the midst of a development boom, we have decided to expand our monthly construction updates to include this area of Jacksonville.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city


January 2014 Construction Update





1. The Hacienda

Perimeter Realty's The Hacienda, on Baymeadows Road East will bring 300 multifamily units to the area.  Perimeter recently completed the 252-unit Cabana Club multifamily development on a site across the street.







2.Spyglass

With the construction of The Hacienda nearing completion, Perimeter Realty has moved forward with the land clearing for another multi-family development across the street. Called Spyglass, this project will bring an additional 220 apartments to the area.







3. Vistakon Inc.

Contact lense manufacturer Vistakon Inc. is expanding its distribution center from its current 661,174 square-foot building to 765,401 square feet, an addition of 104,227 square feet. The expansion will add 100 jobs to the 1,800 the company currently employees.





For more information: http://www.visionmonday.com/latest-news/article/vistakon-218-million-expansion-will-increase-acuvue-contact-lens-production-and-add-100-jobs/