I believe the swap would be for two development pads....east and west of the Main Street Bridge. I'm not opposed to a land swap but can see how someone else who wants the land or a deal would be against it.
Totally see how other developers could be against it, but still seems like a reasonably fair proposal to me.
I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that the East development pad would almost be treated like an incentive/completion grant for the West pad, versus an outright gift.
From my understanding:
1) Once development of the West pad is complete, Gateway would have an exclusive option to acquire the East pad at market or reduced rate. The option would have an expiration date, and if the pad wasn't developed within five years, they'd lose it.
2) What is also interesting to me is that, in the agreement, Gateway would assume the costs of demolition for the Main Street Bridge ramps going over the East property.
A few other notes:
- Gateway estimates that room taxes and HOA fees rendered for the tower could pump
$300,000 a year into a programming and maintenance fund for Riverfront Plaza park. Assuming that NOT choosing Gateway Jax pushes the project back five years, which feels like it might even be conservative given our track record with riverfront RFPs, that's $1.5 million in cost savings alone right there.
- Further, I'd LOVE for someone to do an economic impact study laying out the cost of building out Phase 2 of Riverfront Plaza & the private development simultaneously vs. building out Phase 2 of the park, and then closing the east end of the park for two years for construction of the private development.
