Author Topic: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing  (Read 17680 times)

Metro Jacksonville

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Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« on: December 10, 2009, 06:07:52 AM »
Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing



The Landing was built in 1987 by The Rouse Company as a festival marketplace.  The 125,000 square foot center was purchased by Sleiman Enterprises in 2003, and they have positioned The Landing as a dining and entertainment destination for the area.  While the center is a hub of activity during special events, it has limited foot traffic on a day-to-day basis.  Attracting and retaining retailers has been difficult as there is limited on-site parking.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2009-dec-re-imagining-the-jacksonville-landing

vicupstate

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2009, 08:03:02 AM »
I agree that the roof should stay, and that it is iconic to a degree, but some serious thought needs to be given to changing the color motif.  That orange is looking awfully '80's and tired.

I am hesitant to change traffic patterns otherwise, but the Main St. ramp needs to go.

I was glad to see the Chamber building included. It is bland and the site is underutilized IMO.  Put the Chamber in the office space that these plans call for.
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Overstreet

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #2 on: December 10, 2009, 08:04:46 AM »


The marina looks nice, but presents some operational problems. It was probably not drawn by a boater.

Marinas are usually in a quiet water area.  Quiet water provides safety for the boats and occupants when docking and boarding operations. The Landing is on the outside of a turn.  The water is not quiet at the Landing. The current rips through there at 5mph. The directions changes every six hours with the tide.  Current and tide often collide and the water gets confused. The sunburst finger pier pattern does not line up with the current.  Boaters would have to fight the current to get into those oblique slips. Once in the slip you tie up for current coming from quarter and go eat. When you come out the tide has changed and the current is coming from the opposite bow creating docking challenges.  
It also gets into the deepest part of the river. The channel comes close to that side of the river and you wouldn’t want to encroach on the channel causing a hazard to the commercial traffic navigating the river.    Then too there would be engineering challenges in the 50 to 75 foot deep water.
This would also limit the dockage space for the tall ships festival.

Hurricane

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #3 on: December 10, 2009, 08:34:48 AM »
I like most of the ideas from the charette.  I would love to see this happen. 

buckethead

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #4 on: December 10, 2009, 09:00:05 AM »
I agree that the roof should stay, and that it is iconic to a degree, but some serious thought needs to be given to changing the color motif.  That orange is looking awfully '80's and tired.

I am hesitant to change traffic patterns otherwise, but the Main St. ramp needs to go.

I was glad to see the Chamber building included. It is bland and the site is underutilized IMO.  Put the Chamber in the office space that these plans call for.
I think the motif should remain. While it's true, there was much trajic architecture put into play in the eighties, it is what we did. The landing, IMO is actually tastefully designed. Let it be what it is, while opening to the city and inviting her in.

In the eighties-early nineties, architecture from the seventies was reviled. Just a few short years later, many would come to reminisce seventies stylings.

TheProfessor

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #5 on: December 10, 2009, 09:30:28 AM »
I would not go crazy knocking buildings down along the river, but definitely opening up the interior courtyard to Laura Street would be a great start.

hiddentrack

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #6 on: December 10, 2009, 09:35:28 AM »
I like most of the ideas, though I agree they don't needs to be as extreme to improve the current layout. Smaller changes are more affordable and more likely. Tearing a lot (most?) of the Landing down would take too much time and money.

The model they had at the session was very nice as well, though I think that's a few years old at this point. If they were to ever add on to the existing structure, they'd need to tie in the roof style of the current Landing to match the new buildings. The difference isn't extreme, but it stands out when I look at those pictures.

Speaking of the roof, it would actually be nice to see the orange/coral-colored roof change. It reminds me too much of the Miami Dolphins. I say go with a plain silver color, or if you want to get all team-spirity, go with teal!

thelakelander

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #7 on: December 10, 2009, 09:40:53 AM »
Quote
It reminds me too much of the Miami Dolphins.

What's wrong with that! ;)

btw, teal would be a nice feature and at least tie in with something locally.
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Captain Zissou

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #8 on: December 10, 2009, 09:50:38 AM »
I like the ideas, but they aren't practical.  Their plan calls for tearing out the portion of the Landing that houses most of their best tenants (Chicago Pizza, Cinco de Mayo, Golds Gym, Hooters (how redneck of a lineup is that?)).  I like the idea of creating a super-block on the West side.  The aquarium to the east would be a great idea, especially if they moved the convention center to the courthouse site.  I think they should keep as much of the original structure intact as possible, but enhance how it interacts with the street around it.

Questions:  What is with doing first floor parking and second floor retail??? Shouldn't they reverse that? 
Also, I was interested in the group that was against the roundabout out front.  Any thoughts???

finehoe

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #9 on: December 10, 2009, 10:25:46 AM »
concepts that would allow The Landing to once again flourish.

"Once again"?  Did it ever actually flourish once the initial novelty wore off?

Jth

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #10 on: December 10, 2009, 10:42:18 AM »
I was apart of the charrette and was in group 1. Most of the people at the session were from out of town and thus did not have a full understanding of the Landing and how it relates to downtown. As Steve Zissou noted many of the ideas are not practical or feasible. Also the people that run the Landing simply wanted to see what a group of urban planners would ideally do with the space, so they didn't really ask us to think practically.

There were a lot of good ideas and suggestions thrown out in the session, especially when you consider that it was only about an hour or so of brainstorming and visioning.

My ideas were:

-To cut the building in the middle so that the river is visible from Laura Street -the cut would be parallel to Laura

-move the food court to the new gap in the building that parallels Laura-you could move all the existing food court tenants to the ground floor fronting the cut between the Landing and also have street vendors along the walkway. This would make The Landing much more accessible to people downtown that don't have time to sit and eat.  Being able to get quick street food and eat outdoors (as opposed to a food court) would bring many more people into the Landing and make it much more vibrant.

-Put the stage on a floating dock/barge in the river. This would free up space in the courtyard and allow the Landing to host larger events/concerts. When we presented this, The Landing people told us that Sleiman has been wanting to do this.

-Adding a bigger marina was obvious. I think every group proposed that.

-My group as a whole felt the space between the Landing and TU Center was wasted and should be turned into green space

-I tossed out the idea of a permanent floating maritime museum, which I'm pretty sure is MetroJacksonville's original idea. I know I heard it somewhere.

-We felt as a group that the parking lot east of the Main Street Bridge was wasted space and should be turned into a mid rise hotel/apartment building over a parking garage. I really liked the idea of having a strip of restaurants fronting green space along the riverwalk.


Also, a lot of the things you see on the slides are not as cut and dry as they are presented. I for one think the orange roof is tacky and suggested a new roof as did a few others in my group. Yet it shows on our slide that we don't want to change the roof. So there were a lot of dissenting opinions within the groups.

The session was just to get the people at The Landing to think big, hopefully some of that was accomplished.

Captain Zissou

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #11 on: December 10, 2009, 10:46:56 AM »
Quote
-move the food court to the new gap in the building that parallels Laura-you could move all the existing food court tenants to the ground floor fronting the cut between the Landing and also have street vendors along the walkway. This would make The Landing much more accessible to people downtown that don't have time to sit and eat.  Being able to get quick street food and eat outdoors (as opposed to a food court) would bring many more people into the Landing and make it much more vibrant.

-Put the stage on a floating dock/barge in the river. This would free up space in the courtyard and allow the Landing to host larger events/concerts. When we presented this, The Landing people told us that Sleiman has been wanting to do this.

Great ideas.  This would make it much more of an urban space, rather than a shopping mall downtown.

Jth

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #12 on: December 10, 2009, 11:11:21 AM »
The additional green space was proposed mostly for aesthetics, but also to get patrons from the TU Center to meander over towards the Landing. There was talk of relocating the dumpsters that are located between the Landing and TU Center and turning that whole slab of concrete into a nice green space. It would be a good place to eat on a lunch break, hang out on a nice day, or relax at intermission of a show. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there aren't many nice green spaces along the river in the CBD are there? The space between the Landing and TU would be the perfect place for a "pocket park". Certainly better than the one Peyton just built.

The green space along the building east of the Main Street bridge isn't necessary, but my thought was that it would provide a small buffer between the outdoor seating at restaurants and the riverwalk. People that are eating romantic dinners aren't going to want to be right next to people jogging on the riverwalk like you get at Hooters or the other places at the Landing. So it would be aesthetically pleasing and practical.

vicupstate

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #13 on: December 10, 2009, 11:33:56 AM »


Quote
I think the motif should remain. While it's true, there was much trajic architecture put into play in the eighties, it is what we did. The landing, IMO is actually tastefully designed. Let it be what it is, while opening to the city and inviting her in.

In the eighties-early nineties, architecture from the seventies was reviled. Just a few short years later, many would come to reminisce seventies stylings.

I don't know too many people that fondly reminise about '70's architecture or the clothing either.

The building is going to change significantly regardless (Laura St. opening, new buildings,etc.)  I do support seriously considering keeping the 'horseshoe' roof, but the general color/motiff needs to change.  It looks terribly dated and out of style.  Someone I spoke with who had just moved to Jax stated the same sentiment, and I couldn't argue with them.

The Landing needs to not just be tweeked, it needs a new birth.  A new color/motif will help create that perception.  Teal sounds good to me. Silver paint is too run of the mill.     

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Jth

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Re: Re-Imagining the Jacksonville Landing
« Reply #14 on: December 10, 2009, 12:32:19 PM »
I forget to mention something that was in our presentation, but not visible on the slides. We recommended the Landing attempt to break out of the mold of being a retail shopping center and converting the former retail spaces to hotel, residential, or entertainment. The way the building flows as it is currently designed and even more so in the future design, pushes people through the front doors and into the courtyard. Thus the retail spaces on the ground floor are often ignored and do poorly. When we took the tour a significant amount of those spaces weren't even occupied.

We recommended that the Landing focus solely on being an entertainment/restaurant venue and convert the retail spaces into residential, hotel, or entertainment spaces.

Another thing I forgot to mention. Pretty much every planner there wanted to tear the whole structure down and start from scratch.