This tells me that Downtown is going nowhere fast. Why would investors invest in opportunities that depreciate like this? What does Downtown have going for it today that it didn't have 20 years ago to change this perspective? Where is the realistic, disciplined and thoughtful plan to move Downtown to a point where investors see so much potential to make dollars that they no longer have to request ridiculous amounts of incentives from the taxpayers to move a project forward? I hear crickets.
Hate to say it, but I 100% agree with this.
I've been hoping for downtown Jacksonville to become a hot market since I moved to the city 15 years ago.
But just looking at the existing landscape, I can't bring myself to waste another 15 years hoping for a change that has never looked further off.
As a city, we experienced the greatest period of economic prosperity and urban renewal of our lifetimes, and against all out odds, we actually came out on the other side worse for the wear. We tore down the Landing and drove 30 businesses out of the CBD. We tore down the Courthouse and Annex for another lawn, and fucked up our convention center plans. Almost FIFTEEN YEARS LATER, we're still looking at the half-finished shell of the Berkman II, and even now, city meddling is standing in the way of progress at the site. We had a seat at the table with a Forbes billionaire and an international developer to bring more life and residual development to the northbank, and poor leadership just totally soured what could have been a mutually beneficial relationship.
Shipyards isn't remediated. District is a brownfield. No USS Adams. No Orlock.
A laundry list of historic rehabs we've talking about for a half decade that are either stalled out or require millions of dollars in subsidies to be viable because we're literally just about the only comparable city in the country that can't get our shit together.
The DIA is completely impotent, botching the Ford on Bay RFP, screwing up the LaVilla townhouses, letting the old Greyhound station be illegally converted to a parking lot with no consequence, RAISING parking prices when downtown businesses are struggling, and steadfastly sticking to Curry's plan for the Landing, right down to the stupid Riverfront Plaza name. I respect Lori Boyer, but she moves at a glacial pace and nothing ever comes of her plans. I've been hearing about two-way streets, and Friendship Fountain, and the Times-Union center, etc. for YEARS with no action.
The JTA is full-steam ahead on a clown car idea destined to gimp downtown transportation for years, only stopping to block scooters and bikes from the streets.
I've always felt like the homeless issue was overstated in downtown Jacksonville, but I've never seen more people just laying on the sidewalks zonked out of their minds.
And when the dustle settles, leases come up, and we see where the pandemic left the downtown workforce, I genuinely think it's going to take a decade just to get back to where we were pre-pandemic.
Zodiac was the tipping point for me where I had to emotionally de-invest.
That was a hard one, and so utterly preventable if the city had any idea what it was doing.
As was hearing about some other nonsense that's going on behind the scenes and seeing what's got to be like five different competing groups working in vacuums on radically different plans for downtown.
I go to our offices in places like Atlanta and Nashville and see how vibrant those cities are, and I just don't see a path for Jacksonville to get there in the next 20 years with all the mistakes we've made, and continue to make.
For every positive step forward the private sector makes downtown in good faith, the city finds a way to take two backwards.
Still working downtown five days a week.
Still supporting downtown businesses every lunch and coffee break (check out Back to the Grind on Hogan next to Happy Grilled Cheese; FANTASTIC place, nice dude who runs it, always a line out the door).
Still pestering my local respresentatives and the Council at large about downtown issues.
Hope to be proven wrong, but it doesn't seem like we've got the leadership, cohesive plan, economic climate, or public will to turn this around in the foreseeable future.
When those in charge of revitalizing downtown are patting themselves on the back because fucking Sugar Ray is performing on an empty lawn, in front of a failed hotel, on the ruins of our iconic downtown mall, in 2021, I just can't.
