Retail-less parking garage proposed for Downtown

[Metro Jacksonville]

Retail-less parking garage proposed for Downtown



Jacksonville's desire to revitalize downtown is about to be put to the test. The design of a proposed parking garage by Parador Partners threatens to create another permanent dead zone in the heart of downtown.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2012-jun-retail-less-parking-garage-proposed-for-downtown

[acme54321]

I don't think that design could get much worse.  How many more nasty concrete boxes can downtown take?

[JeffreyS]

We need to carpet bomb the city council with emails, phone calls and meeting requests. This project needs more pedestrian integration than the standard requirements not less if the city is putting in money.

[riverside planner]

Such an awful idea!

[Actionville]

Horrible. Looks like there was zero thought or effort into designing a properly integrated and complementary structure. Amazing someone actually got paid to slap this one size fits all box into a square space

[thelakelander]

Great point Riverside Planner.  If a project is getting city money, it should go above and beyond the standard requirements instead of below them.

Actionville, now that you mention it, it does looks like kit selection out of a product magazine.

It really is hard for me to figure out why we keep getting this style of product designed in this manner.  What's the difference between placing this box in a suburban office park verses the HEART of downtown?  It's out of scale and context on so many levels.  I'm perplexed to how something like this actually makes the list for consideration of  design approval.

Here is a garage that recently opened in downtown Winter Haven, a city with a population of less than 35,000.  It has no retail but still appears to at least create a facade to fit that particular environment.



What we have here is bad for any part of downtown but especially the epicenter of its historic heart.

[fsujax]

I really hope DDRB rejects this thing!

[Steve_Lovett]

The Hogan Street corridor should receive greater care and study. It's one of the only streets downtown that terminates unencumbered directly to the river.

If this is built as-is, it will kill the potential street-level viability of probably the most important stretch of this road.

While this solution does address one aspect of The Landing's parking issue, it creates multiple more problems that are much larger and more difficult to solve once it's built.

[simms3]

This garage will be part of the skyline and will be on every postcard.  As it stands now, many riverfront views of  the city manage to conceal all the ugly garages, but that will be impossible if this is built.

If this is allowed to be built so the city can be "done" with its agreement with the Landing, I am permanently giving up on the place.  Is this even serious?  This literally would not even be proposed in any other city I can think of.

It's not only about street level retail.  This is the kind of garage construction that goes in the middle of a suburban hybrid apartment complex (well Jax's example would be St. Johns Villas).  This is not the kind of garage construction that goes in a city's most prominent development block and would be in every postcard view of the city.  In fact, NO garage should go there unless it provided a lower parking ratio and was part of a concealed pedestal of a larger, more architecturally pleasing development.  Patience is worth it...but I guess the Landing issues won't die and people don't know how to walk one extra block from the plethora of empty garages in the area.

For $3.5M I would think the city could arrange deals with current garages and then ultra-streetscape paths to the Landing for pedestrians so that the way is obvious and the walk pleasant with shade and nice sidewalks and perhaps vendor kiosks along the way.

[thelakelander]

While this solution does address one aspect of The Landing's parking issue, it creates multiple more problems that are much larger and more difficult to solve once it's built.

It doesn't even do that.  The Landing's parking situation deals with dedicated parking.  We really don't need extra free for all spaces to resolve that issue.  Just better utilization of the supply we already have.

For $3.5M I would think the city could arrange deals with current garages and then ultra-streetscape paths to the Landing for pedestrians so that the way is obvious and the walk pleasant with shade and nice sidewalks and perhaps vendor kiosks along the way.

Definitely something to consider.  This garage is more for SunTrust Tower, which I believe Parador owns, than anything else.

[JeffreyS]

Great point Riverside Planner.  If a project is getting city money, it should go above and beyond the standard requirements instead of below them.

I think you mean JeffreyS 

Seriously I will contact every member of the city council and the Mayor and I expect the same from everyone here. Do they really expect the tax payer to pony up 3.5mil so they can give us less.  Pay them to be detrimental to our city no way.  Be pissed about this people.

[thelakelander]

^My bad.  I haven't had my morning coffee yet.

[thelakelander]

How five years changes....

[simms3]

While we're on the topic of parking I just want to announce that I will be joining the elite few south of DC who live in buildings with underground parking.  My new underground garage supports a 27 story and a 35 story condo tower and a 5 floor office building.    Not even a pedestal.  Of course when my car lease ends I'm also choosing to go carless (just bought a new Electra hybrid bike and explored some urban jogging/bike paths this weekend with a nice sized group)

I feel so sorry for you guys down there.  Your most prime development site may become a garage whose design is literally illegal in every other city unless it's in the middle of some suburban apt complex or way off to the side.  I think downtown Jacksonville already offers more parking or about the same as the much larger Midtown Atlanta, with a quarter the office space and 1/12 the residents and 1/3 the hotel rooms.

Many developers I am familiar with are playing the patient waiting game until they can put up their dream mixed-use developments on the most prime spots of land up here (and these are land-locked non-postcard spots unlike the land down there).  Dewberry, who everyone in Atlanta strongly dislikes for waiting to do anything, is putting nothing less than 60 stories and heavy hitting retail with underground/concealed parking at 10th/Peachtree.  It may be another 5+ years, but in the meantime a Birmingham based urban grocer is occupying a temporary structure on the site to provide some sort of use/activation.

My firm has a piece of land on the fringe of Midtown near the John Marshall School of Law on W. Peachtree, and we've contemplated high-rise apartments/mixed-use and underground parking, but without a market in that particular area for $2.50++/SF rental rates to make it feasible we are putting a park on the site to benefit nearby students and residents.  And this is by no means even close to prime real estate.

[copperfiend]

Ugly