As those of us paying attention know, the
2024 DVI State of Downtown Report has officially arrived.
Link is here, for those interested:
https://dtjax.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/DVI-24002_StateOfDowntown_Report_2024_Digital_6.pdfPositioned as an "an 18-month recap of progress and development in Downtown," the report is intended to chart downtown's progress against a series of key KPIs and benchmarks having to do with residential, retail, office, and transportation growth.
If you don't have the time to read the whole thing, here's the executive summary:
I've said in the past with the 2023 (and 2022, and 2021) DVI report, and I'll say it again:
We are absolutely DOOMED as a city if key leaders in the agencies tasked to make our downtown better don't recognize and acknowledge (or refuse to recognize and knowledge) the very real, very dire problems on the streets and the empirical, irrefutable regression our downtown has made since 2020 under their watch.
As someone who is on the streets at least four days a week in the CBD, 2024 has been the worst year I have ever seen for downtown Jacksonville. Projects have been abandoned. All of my favorite lunch spots have closed. The central core has become overrun by homeless, many of them completely unhinged. And at a time when urban areas throughout the country are THRIVING, numerous businesses - including the one I work at - are considering a move from Downtown Jacksonville.
As someone who loves Jacksonville and believes that our lack of a healthy, vibrant urban core is the biggest issue standing in our way of attracting more economic development to Jacksonville and creating a better quality of life for our citizens, it's just so disheartening to me to see the DVI continuing to gaslight the city, year after year, into thinking that everything is fantastic and that downtown's future has never been brighter.
At a time when downtown business owners, many of whom are having to escort employees past crumbling buildings back to their cars out of concern for their safety, are actively paying incremental taxes to the DVI, no one wants to read this nonsense year after year after year when their eyeballs tell them a very different story:
If the end result of an exhaustive, expensive study paid for by the hard work and tax dollars of downtown business owners is "Downtown has never had more momentum! We're up across the board!",
everyone needs to be sent packing and replaced by people who are actually dedicated to fixing the problem. You don't need to be doom and gloom, just honest, to acknowledge the reality of where we're currently at, particularly when you're playing with DT business's money. Definition of insanity is pumping out these bullshit reports year after year after year, with imaginary pipelines growing from $4 billion to $6 billion to $8 billion while nothing actually comes out of the ground, and calling it a constructive use of our limited resources as a city.
Even the name is wildly inaccurate.
It is completely inaccurate to position this as a "State of Downtown Report."Per the literal definition of the word, "A thing's state refers to its condition or way of being at
a particular time."
In the Jax Daily Record, Jake Gordon plainly stated,
“This is not supposed to be an advocacy document. It’s supposed to be a look at what’s happening,” he said, noting that DVI doesn’t withhold warts-and-all information such as the rise in office vacancy rate.
Despite these qualifiers and assurances by the DVI, throughout this 40-page document, every effort seems to have been made to ignore what is actually happening on the streets in Downtown Jacksonville, right outside of the DVI's office, in terms of retail closures, businesses leaving or threatening to leave, an increase in violent incidents involving the CBD's growing vagrant population, stalled or abandoned projects, etc. Instead, the DVI spends the majority of their time patting themselves and their sister organizations on the back for the same old projects that have been stuck in the "pipeline" since 2019.
As a data scientist by trade, I thought it'd be worthwhile to start a new topic slowly going through this report over the coming week or two, section by section, and pointing out the spin vs. the reality, and how the numbers have been twisted, starting with the section on Residential Growth.
Residential Growth:Observation #1. Residential Growth stats are arbitrarily positioned to obscure the lack of growth in recent years.So, the section of the DVI 2024 report focused on residential growth leads with this little tidbit.
Ignoring the bit about residential growth in the last five years being bolstered by modern high-rises (making it plural doesn't make it any more true), it's a misleading stat to lead with in a report intended to honestly document residential growth over the last 12-18 months.
A more accurate, less gaslighty headline actually backed by data would be closer to:
"Downtown Residential Growth Flat for Third Consecutive Year."If you look at the actual annual growth in housing units and downtown residents, it's blatantly clear that despite the "upward trend across the board" that the DVI alludes to, almost no progress has been made in actually growing downtown's resident and residential unit pool since 2021. Keep in mind, this is at a time of historic growth for the city of Jacksonville, meaning that it's actually a bit of an accomplishment to have NOT made more progress as new residents continue to flood into our city.
Another good alternate headline might be:
"Only 36 residential units built in downtown Jacksonville since 2022. WTF?"If you look at the actual units that have come online over the last 24 months, it's almost unfahtomably small.
We might also consider:
Another Year has Come and Gone, and all downtown's multiple investment and development authorities have to show for it is this:"Really, great job by all. Congratulations. We've done it.
You never want to accuse anyone of intentionally misleading the public, but I also just don't buy that there's a universe where this 50% stat over five years wasn't consciously cherry-picked to obscure the fact that almost NOTHING has come out of the ground and online in the last two years.
Observation #2: The Residential Pipeline is [once again] wildly inflated.So, here's the language that the DVI uses in an attempt to accurately portray the real, honest, current state of Downtown Jacksonville.
2,000+ units under construction, 3,000+ under review.
In terms of what's currently listed as "under construction":
First, and most obviously, it's patently insane (and wildly dishonest) to pad the numbers using RiversEdge. For the 2,000 units under construction, nearly HALF OF THEM fall under RiversEdge (950 units). Has anyone at the DVI driven by RiversEdge in the last five years that this project has been "in the pipeline." Do you see, with your eyeballs, 950 units under construction? Are they being built underground? Are they permitted? Have final plans been submitted? Has a final development agreement been worked out? It's genuinely just a blatant, egregious lie. Which is unfortunate, because there are a few solid developments genuinely under construction. Why discredit the entire section?
For the 3,000+ units "being planned."
In describing how the DVI scientifically determines what to include in their study, here's the methodology:
Wait, what? "Tie goes to the runner?" "If it's been announced in the media it's going into our pipeline?"
There's a saying in the data science community - garbage in, garbage out. The effectiveness, usefulness, and validity of this report is only as good as the data that goes into it, and if you're criteria is this (sensitively) fucking stupid, really, why even bother? Just use the money on a Christmas party for the staff or something.
It's how you end up with a fictitious mega-skyscraper, at the Jacksonville Landing, over a JEA utility conduit, on land the proposed developer doesn't even own, as part of your "pipeline." Or a Laura Street Trio redevelopment that has been dormant for decades. Or a laundry list of other projects that haven't broken ground and have been stuck in the pipeline for years. At what point do you pull them out until there's some actual movement?
There's just nothing honest or actionable about including everything that has ever been mentioned as though it's coming to fruition.
Funny that the DVI says "Tie goes to the runner in terms of how they decide what to include." I'm genuinely curious, has ANYTHING been excluded? ANYTHING AT ALL?
More to come, curious to get everyone's thoughts on the collective report now that it's out, but even just looking at the residential section, the DVI's positioning just isn't true. There's no way around it. It paints a misleading picture about what's happened over the last 18 months, while leaning on the same security blanket of projects that they've leaned on for years and years and years that may or may not ever actually happen.
Have some integrity guys, come with some solutions, and use these reports to gut check and concretely report on whether your contributions to downtown's growth have been worth the investment we as a city make in the DVI.
No one wants to be gaslit. It gets us nowhere.
