^^^And frankly there is really not that much private money either. Kudos to the folks who stepped up for Balis, Stockton, and Baker parks. However, not to downplay their charity, these parks are also next to their houses, essentially, so it was in the interest of their "backyard" so to speak.
I'd like to see people contribute to more central parks like they contribute to the zoo. The zoo is great, but can we try to replicate that fundraising effort and attention level with public parks? Pointing to Atlanta as a sunbelt example, of course the city has a much larger per capita budget for parks/public space/recreation, but it's not as if Piedmont Park and Centennial Park, Chastain, and any of the great parks there are due to public funds. Piedmont Park runs on a foundation, an endowment so to speak, and has raised something like $120M in private/corporate money over the past 10 years to get it to the point it's at today.
Jax certainly doesn't have the 8 billionaires Atlanta does (as a matter of fact, it's one of the largest cities without a single billionaire!), and it doesn't have the ~14 or 15 F500 HQs and other corporate presence Atlanta has to maintain multitudes of enviable parks, but it DOES have enough citizen/corporate wealth to create just one or two large, central public parks the city can be proud of (parks that will bring people to the center of town, potentially spurring significant economic development).
