Fine, let's compare Jacksonville to Topeka (or Corpus Christi for waterfront). Jax wins! Yay
Jokes aside, SF is a fantastically comparable city to Jacksonville (and it has the exact same city limits population...so that does make it similar from that important perpective). While SF is a major world class city and Jax is a little podunk, SF has a lot of similarities and has provided a clear pathway to take advantage of what are really a bunch of comparable/similar traits and historical attributes. Jax hasn't taken advantage of anything yet, but it has a good example in SF. Whether it wants to look to such a good example, hoping to scale successful actions taken by SF to a Jax size/goal, or not, is really up to city leaders and locals (ULI's fall meeting is in SF and I see 4-5 people from Jax going - Peter Rummell, who will be here in SF in a few months, and Regency Centers leadership...which means nothing for urban development in Jax - they will meet other REIT and capital markets guys). Austin TX has about 20-30 people signed up so far. Just to give a picture of the difference.
Also, the *best* examples for the Shipyards as a whole are in the Bay Area, mainly SF.
SF is a city where the waterfront is really the last frontier of revitalization. As such, it's filled with major projects of similar scope (the below are not near the "wharves" pictured in today's article, but are the industrial waterfronts to the south of the city).
Hunters Point (Lennar Urban as master developer)
Candlestick Point (Lennar Urban as master developer)
Pier 70 (Forest City as master developer)
India Basin (Build, Inc as developer)
Mission Rock (SF Giants as master developer)
China Basin (City of SF as master developer)
Mission Bay (City of SF in partnership with UCSF as master developer)
Potrero Power Plant (District Development as developer)
Treasure Island (Lennar Urban as master developer)
Brooklyn Basin (Signature Development as developer)...this one is in Oakland near Jack London Square, which is itself an in-place example of what Jax Shipyards could look like. JLS was developed in Oakland and is still being developed. Oakland is a depressed city in many ways, and is actively developing its own downtown. A PERFECT example right there. Many people compare Oakland to Brooklyn - in my mind it's probably the best comparison to Brooklyn in the country relative to all the Brooklyn comparisons out there.
And Brooklyn has its own Shipyardsesque projects, like the massive Atlantic Yards development! Very complex arrangement similar to Hunters Point/Candlestick Point in SF, where lots of hedge funds and equity groups are involved, city agencies, wars with NIMBY backlashes, similar development structure, etc etc.
All of the above are Shipyards style projects in various phases of their development. All are done using different kinds of developers/development schemes, with different sources of financing, on different types of waterfront land (physically and legally).
No other city I can think of in the US has that level of waterfront development actively ongoing - perhaps Brooklyn/NYC, but those are two king/queen cities of this country yet still provide the best current ongoing examples for Jax to develop its own waterfront. The waterfronts of these cities are quite similar to the waterfront by the Shipyards, as they are all former Shipyards and power plants there too! Truth be told, if Jacksonville/Khan/anybody else are serious about doing the Shipyards, then they need to take a 1-2 month field trip to meet with the City of SF and its agencies (or NYC and its agencies), as well as the developers there, as well as investment banks that are helping to arrange the equity and the debt for these $1Bn++++ deals. One stop shop - NYC/SF's financial districts have all the players one needs - government, development, finance, architects.
Jax money alone won't finance the Shipyards. Probably not even 1% of it. At some point, someone will need to make a trek to the financial centers anyway.
Sitting around Jacksonville, a city that has no history of such development and very obviously can't even get a fucking restaurant built downtown let alone massively overhauling its waterfront, is clearly not a strategy that's working (since clearly nobody agrees on anything, and nobody knows how to do anything). It needs to quit going to Kansas City or Charlotte (to learn what these landlocked cities are doing and then not actually do anything they are doing in them), and it needs to get its butt over to NYC/SF to learn from two cities that very obviously can get things done, **even despite the kind of NIMBYism you wouldn't even be able to comprehend in FL**.
The widespread attitude that Jax should only look to Orlando or Mobile for examples or comparatives is why Jax will continue to be one of the suckiest cities in the country (from my standpoint...I mean it joins Phoenix, so it's all about what one considers sucky and what others consider heaven).
Seattle is a new city, but chose to look to SF to its south and Boston back East, and instead of being another Phoenix or Houston is more in line with SF and Boston. It's about where one sets sights.
Jax follows Orlando closely. But why? Jax is older and has an open waterfront. It should look to the SFs of the world.