You've suggested this a number of times before, and personally it's getting a little confusing when we are already attempting to spend quite an amount of money on park space, and clearly struggling to gather all of the needed funds and operational ability to do so. Between Metro Park, Shipyards West Park (including the Naval Museum), the new MOSH and the park space next to that, the expansion of the Northbank Riverwalk, the Riverfront Plaza Park, the Music Commons Park, the McCoys Creek Park, Gefen Park next to FIS, the Riverside Arts Market Park, the Artist Walk Park, the St. Johns River Park where MOSH currently is, and the new park at RiversEdge, and the Southbank Riverwalk extension, we are building or upgrading a lot of parks.
That's before you even start talking about the Emerald Trail or Hogan's Creek or Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing or any of the other major park projects in the urban core, and that all comes on top of already having the largest urban park system in the country, much of which needs improvement anyway. You've treated this for some time like we're somehow not doing anything to create or improve park space in Jacksonville, which seems pretty contrary to the facts on the ground. Heck, we already did pretty much what you asked for by tearing down the Landing and rededicating most of it to signature park space, something we are still struggling to actually bring to completion after 4 years since starting to do so! Or McCoys Creek Park, where we're even relocating the mouth of the creek to better serve as a central point for the park. Lori Boyer is pretty open if you ask that the former City Hall Annex site is going to be park space for events pretty much indefinitely.
There's a lot of work that a lot of public money is already trying to satisfy your vision with and you don't seem to have any sense of satisfaction about it. I can't seem to figure out what is actually an acceptable amount of urban park space for you, especially in the context that this is still ultimately supposed to be an urban neighborhood with offices and restaurants and amenities and housing and infrastructure.
Here are some of my points on why we need to preserve as much river frontage and depth for parks as we can, now:
1. A lot of "smaller" parks, as listed in your post, is not the same as contiguous acreage making up one larger park with more wide open/natural/passive use spaces uninterrupted by substantial buildings/development. The Emerald Trail is fantastic but it is a different type of green space, more of a green connector/pathway.
2. Compared to many cities our largest contiguous acreage for any green space Downtown is a mere pittance. 20 to 40 acres at the Shipyards doesn't compare to a hundred to hundreds of acres many cities have at their heart.
3. We are only the largest urban park system in the country because we have the largest City limits in the mainland US and the Timucuan Preserve single handedly accounts for a disproportionate part of our park system acreage.
4. I don't know many citizens who think there is ever too much green space other than developers who never saw land they didn't want to build on. Green space is a critical component to quality of life for many.
5. Green space also is needed to exploit the value of our natural environment including the river and flora and fauna. It is what gives our corner of the world its character.
6. If Jacksonville continues on its growth trajectory, we will have millions more people here over the next decades and green space to support those numbers will be ever harder to obtain or retrieve, if at all. Further, a larger population will expect the City to host ever larger events/gatherings that will rival past events such as the Super Bowl where public space (over half of that slated for development) was required to host outdoor events for hundreds of thousands at once. We will be hard pressed to do so with broken up parcels and lesser acreage of the larger parcels.
7. There are plenty of successful urban districts with green space at their heart. Look no further than Central Park in Manhattan. With the view expressed in the quoted post, no one would have approved the creation of Central Park. Who would want to live in much of Manhattan without Central Park? Is that enough for NYC? No, they are now building out a greenbelt around the entire island of Manhattan along their waterfront. It demonstrates that green space is an economic development driver, not the opposite.
8. Large parks are needed to promote more Downtown living. If you want a pickup football, basketball, soccer, volleyball or softball game, you need bigger parks. The same for a dog park or to fly a kite or drone. And, the same if you want to jog or bike a few miles close to where you live while also hosting a nice sized marina, riverwalk, gardens, public art, a water feature, food venues, bathrooms, passive spaces amongst an urban forest, etc.
9. Green space along the river is an entirely different and more pleasing aesthetic than buildings, especially multistory ones.
10. Green space provides a resiliency buffer as it is all-but-certain the river is going to be flooding is banks going forward. Building in this flood plain is insanity. It is also a heat-sink and helps purify/oxygenate the urban air.
11. As long as there is an ROI that exceeds other project ROI's, there should be no shortage of investable funds in parks. This City has, or is, spending over $400 million on AV's, $50 million on tearing down the Hart Bridge Ramp, $20 to $50 million with no claw back on UF's mystery project, $25 million to create Lenny's Lawn (that's on the Mayor's incompetence, not on parks), hundreds of millions for a Four Seasons that few expect to benefit much of the urban core, millions more for developments that never seem to come out of the ground, perhaps $750 million to over a billion on the future stadium improvements, tens of millions for the stadium's previous improvements including scoreboards, millions on legal fees fighting the school board referendum and dealing with JEA's sale, millions or tens of millions kicking the pension fund down the road for the Mayor's political expediency, giving millions away to City Council's favored non-profits and business friends from Federal COVID dollars, forfeiting tens of millions not raising the garbage fee, forfeiting hundreds of millions with a too-low property tax rate, etc. And, many of these projects were never in a long range plan and often are funded on an ad hoc basis.
12. This isn't about today, tomorrow or even 5 years out. This is thinking far beyond, decades and even a hundred years out. The #1 issue with this City is it has no coherent, well thought-out long term plan for land use that is adhered to over such long periods. Such a plan would address my concerns, most certainly. As the adage does, the trees we enjoy today were planted long before we were born. It is up to us to plant such trees for the people of tomorrow.
Bottom line, urban parks are critical to the future success of Downtown and we remain well short of what we need to do. And, if we want parks, we can find the dollars. It's about priorities, the will, planning, visioning and execution based on robust leadership. Jacksonville is in short supply on every count.
