Encore Tampa: A Lesson for Urban Jacksonville

[Metro Jacksonville]

Encore Tampa: A Lesson for Urban Jacksonville



While LaVilla, Brooklyn, and the Shipyards remain in ruins, a major urban infill project, partially funded with federal stimulus dollars as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, recently broke ground in downtown Tampa. What can Jacksonville learn and apply from our neighbor to the South?

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2010-may-encore-tampa-a-lesson-for-urban-jacksonville

[tufsu1]

The Encore project is quite well designed...but make no mistake, it has had many false starts

This site used to be the Central Park public housing complex....first, there was a proposal for redevelopment of the site for athlete's housing with the 2012 Tampa-Orlando Olympics bid....then there was an even larger redevelopoment plan called Civitas, which  was killed by the Hillsborough County Commission in 2004 (they were asked to approve something with 2 days notice)....all of which prompted the 2006 plan changes discussed in the article.

Also, as stated in the article, the current opportunity was jump-started through stimulus funds for affordable housing.

[thelakelander]

More reason to take note with the product in where it is today.  The lesson would be to attempt to avoid the mistakes and take advantage of the successes.  What has been developed at this point and the method of finally moving it forward should be paid attention to.

[tufsu1]

agreed Lake.

One other thing to note from the article....in terms of stimulus, Jacksonville did apply for and receive funding for many urban projects (just like Tampa).

On the transportation front, our high profile stimulus projects are 9B and US 301 in Nassau County.....Tampa also pooled their transportation stimulus dollars to build a new highway....a $400 million one-mile expressway connecting I-4 and the Crosstown ($100 million comes from stimuls)....just think how much rail that would build!

[thelakelander]

^Thanks for reminding me.  I meant to include 9B as an example of a local project that received stimulus dollars.  I wonder if Brooklyn's proposed grid/park or any of the neighborhood town center streetscape projects would have been eligible?

[Jason]

Also, this the what happens when the mega-development project pays off.  Ours (the Shipyards, Jea Site, Bay Street Station, Brooklyn Park, etc.) faced the same fate as Encore's predesessors.

IMO, if this thing gets built out as planned it will merely be a lucky break for Tampa.  We need to stop focusing on the mega-sites and worry about a few smaller ones at a time.

[thelakelander]

^It looks like that is the best lesson from Encore.  Outside of public infrastructure, What's moving forward is smaller development, yet its being done to fit within an overall vision/scale for that area.

[Jason]

Brooklyn Park (if used as a master plan) would be a fantastic smaller scale version of this.  Building our BP one block at a time, starting with the Hallmark Partners development, would be a much larger sucess versus expecting one developer to throw in all their chips for the long shot.

Was the BP plan created in such a way to allow multiple parties in on the buil-out one building or block at a time and still dictate the manner in which it is developed?

[DemocraticNole]

The difference is leadership.

Jacksonville mayor = John Peyton
Tampa mayor = Pam Iorio

Pam is a real believer in mass transit and urban redevelopment. She is an outstanding public servant and has staked her reputation and career on getting mass transit. Even the Republicans I know in Jacksonville think John Peyton is an incompetent moron who has spent his time trying to help family friends instead of doing what's best for the city of Jacksonville. Hopefully one day Jax gets good leadership, because it is sad to see a city with so much potential let it go to waste.

[Keith-N-Jax]

^^^ This

[fieldafm]

Lake, what's a realistic configuration of parcels that could be split up at the Shipyards?
Are there any zoning restrictions on setbacks, lot sizes, etc in that area?
I'm just not as familiar with the dimensions of the Shipyards site.

[Ted Pappas]

La Villa is doing quite well, thank you. In the last decade, more has been constructed in La Villa than the rest of Northbank. Like all districts in Jacksonville, La Villa has had a delay in construction projects because of the tight credit environment and  low real estate demand. But quite to the contrary, La Villa does not "lay in ruin".

[thelakelander]

Its not about the tight credit environment and real estate demand.  A complete neighbohrood and important part of Jacksonville's history was simply eradicated from existence.  So what was known as LaVilla does not lay in ruin.  LaVilla doesn't exist anymore.

[thelakelander]

In addition, the development that replaced the community has been piecemeal and not constructed to pedestrian scale.  This has converted a district that was once mixed-use and architecturally unique into a place that feels more like a quiet office park.

[Keith-N-Jax]

Yep and everything is fenced in or appears to be. Looks very boring over there.