Surface Parking Lots: A Downtown Vibrancy Killer

[Metro Jacksonville]

Surface Parking Lots: A Downtown Vibrancy Killer



According to Downtown Vision (DVI), more than 50% of downtown Jacksonville's streetscape consists of "dead space" - either parking lots, garages, vacant buildings, or buildings less than 25% occupied.  This collection of aerials visually highlight the impact dead spaces (surface parking and underutilized vacant property) in downtown Jacksonville and a number of cities across North America.  Naturally, those with the least amount of surface lots tend to be the most vibrant pedestrian scale environments.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2011-jul-surface-parking-lots-a-downtown-vibrancy-killer

[tg]

I couldn't agree more with this article, the amount of surface parking is ridiculous. Previous suggestions on the site about bringing in food trucks is one of my favorite short term and easy solutions for correcting this problem in the core. However, there are still a lot of people that are out of touch with reality, as I saw a story on the morning news about how an Art Walk vendor was complaining about the lack of downtown parking. There doesn't seem to be a link to the story just yet, but if there is one later I'll post it.

[Bativac]

Wait, are you suggesting that tearing down historic buildings (and homes in some cases) and leaving vacant lots in their place was BAD for downtown? The very idea --!

TG, as far as the guy complaining about parking, I was out last night at 6 and again at 8:30 and easily found parking right on the street both times. Yeah I had to parallel park, God forbid. I know that at least one of the parking garages was open 'cause a friend parked there.

[tg]

http://www.actionnewsjax.com/mediacenter/local.aspx

Look for the "Parking Problems" video on the left side.

[fsujax]

those aerials are impressive. Really puts it into perspective.

[avs]

We rode our bike downtown last night, so parking is not an issue for those who choose to live in the core.  People in dense urban cities really DO walk and ride their bikes more because it IS easier than parking and what is wrong with forcing people into a little fresh air and exercise???  When we lived in Philly we walked everywhere!  And we weren't walking by a bunch of empty lots, we were walking on sidewalks adjacent to businesses, interesting things to look at as we got to where we needed to go.  I daresay some of the healthiest cities in the US are denser built than JAX and their citizens live closer to the urban core and walk and bike much more.

Not to mention the waste of water running off these lots that could be used for so many other things.

[duvaldude08]

It was very interesting to see other cities in comparsion. Great read!

[jcjohnpaint]

I was always curious how hard it would be to get some of this land off of parking agencies to use for some kind of dense housing or something a lot more public and interactive?  Areas like the lot between Prudential and Kipp in San Marco for instance.  That lot would be a great spot for a dense condominium project/ across from Treaty Oak Park.  I am also thinking of the riverfront lot next to the Pittsburgh Convention Center.  You can come up with a million other examples.  This lot has to be prime reality, but continues to be a surface lot.  Seems like such a pitiful bang for a city's bucks.  I know Jacksonville has done a poor job of letting such property become surface lots and sometimes unmaintained surface lots, but how hard would it be to regain the land for something better? 

[iMarvin]

I remember when you said you were doing this article. It's kind of surprising seeing some of those big cities with so many surface lots like Houston, San Diego, Denver, Dallas, and Austin. Wonder how Atlanta looks...

[Overstreet]

I'm thinking tearing down the old southside generation station leaving a blank lot with soils issues or the ship yard  would be preferencial to an abandoned industrial facility in downtown.

As a property owner I'd rather pay taxes on a vacant lot than a vacant building. Especially if the lot brought in some parking revenue in deference to a vacant building bringing only maintenance cost.

I'm thinking too that the view of NY and San Franscisco was too narrow when comparing to smaller population cities.

[thelakelander]

^ I disagree.  Demolition for the sake of demolition is always a bad idea in an urbanized environment.  Old industrial facilities make ideal adaptive reuse projects, primarily because of their unique architecture and historical ties to the cities they are located in.  Here are a few that have found new uses in or near downtowns of some peer cities.  All of these sat vacant for a period of time before being renovated.

Sloss Furnances - Birmingham (a steel industry history museum)


Pratt Street Power Plant - Baltimore Inner Harbor (mixed use)


Gas Works Park - Seattle


Savannah's riverfront (all old warehouse buildings)



Jacksonville Shipyards - Those old brick machine shop and office buildings along Bay would have been great facilities for uses like nightclubs, bars, public markets, etc.  A few of those old cranes could have been preserved as public art as a part of a riverfront park space.


A basic warehouse along a wharf like this one at the mouth of Hogans Creek could have easily been reused as market, event space, etc. and complemented with a public marina.


Inside one of those old warehouses.


Southside Generation Station - It would have been interesting and unique to see a few elements of the old plant, preserved and integrated into a redevelopment project.

[thelakelander]

As a property owner I'd rather pay taxes on a vacant lot than a vacant building. Especially if the lot brought in some parking revenue in deference to a vacant building bringing only maintenance cost.

This is where public policy should be modified in areas of significant history.  Perhaps a tax abatement model that Philly uses would be suitable for DT Jacksonville to eliminate this issue?

[avs]

This is where public policy should be modified in areas of significant history.  Perhaps a tax abatement model that Philly uses would be suitable for DT Jacksonville to eliminate this issue?

+1 Exactly.  I have always said there are not enough incentives offered here to stimulate development in our urban core.  The city has to offer incentives as enticements to get it started.

[Tacachale]

I agree that demolition for the sake of demolition is a waste. But demolition to make way for new development is something different, and can be a good thing. There are plenty of cases (particularly in other cities) of positive new developments. One in Jacksonville, I'd argue, is the current Main Library.

In the case of the Shipyards, they didn't just tear it all down for the hell of it, it was going to be a new development. That just didn't happen. But even still, it's not as if they tore down the buildings and just left it there. The developers did a considerable amount of work cleaning up the environmental contamination and bulkheading the property, to the tune of over $30 million, IIRC. That's money any developer would have had to spend, whether adapting the old buildings or adding something new.

At any rate I think that's the bigger issue in Jacksonville - allowing demolitions to make way for new developments that are never completed, or for projects that don't make adequate use of the space (like parking lots).

[thelakelander]

I agree that demolition for the sake of demolition is a waste. But demolition to make way for new development is something different, and can be a good thing. There are plenty of cases (particularly in other cities) of positive new developments. One in Jacksonville, I'd argue, is the current Main Library.

I'd argue the exact opposite.  The new library took out the loft district and Jacksonville's last 1920s era highrise.  It replaced four street frontage blocks of retail frontage with full block dead spaces along Monroe and Duval Streets (Main is borderline dead, imo).  We could have easily put the new library on a surface lot and keep the businesses evicted and the buildings they were housed in.  Such a move would have made the area more vibrant than it is today and saved millions in demolition costs.

In the case of the Shipyards, they didn't just tear it all down for the hell of it, it was going to be a new development. That just didn't happen. But even still, it's not as if they tore down the buildings and just left it there.

That's the case of nearly every surface lot's history in downtown since the 1970s.  The result is a dead downtown and the complete elimination of LaVilla and half of Brooklyn.

The developers did a considerable amount of work cleaning up the environmental contamination and bulkheading the property, to the tune of over $30 million, IIRC. That's money any developer would have had to spend, whether adapting the old buildings or adding something new.

Not really.  You could have probably gotten away with continuing to use the site as an industrial related maritime use integrated with other uses in areas where environmental contamination didn't exist.  How the contamination/bulkheading issue would be handled varies depending on the use of the site.  In any event, you don't have to demolish buildings to clean sites.

At any rate I think that's the bigger issue in Jacksonville - allowing demolitions to make way for new developments that are never completed, or for projects that don't make adequate use of the space (like parking lots).

There's several reasons for surface lots.  However, at the end of the day, they all combine to kill the type of environment that everyone would like to see happen in DT Jax.  Ultimately, how we handle our pedestrian level connectivity issue will have a significant impact on determining DT's future as success or failure.