City set to approve grants for Barnett Bank, Laura Street Trio

[marcuscnelson]

New renderings just dropped.

New Laura Street Trio renderings show redevelopment in two phases

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/article/new-laura-street-trio-renderings-show-redevelopment-in-two-phases

[Steve]

Aside from the new building on Forsyth that's "conceptual" for Residential, it doesn't look much different than we saw. That is okay by me.

Now...here's the interesting thing: If you look at the Forsyth Street garage that VyStar is now building, the vehicle entrances are up against the retail bay at Forsyth and Main, leaving a lot of Garage frontage at ground level on Forsyth. The reason for that was to accommodate cars from the hotel. They'd pull out onto Forsyth (from next to the Bisbee building) and then have a little distance to cross across the road and turn into garage.

If they're going to build on top of that Forsyth Street vehicle exit, then presumably cars for the hotel would enter and exit onto Adams, make a left on Laura, and another left onto Forsyth. This completely negates the reason for the garage frontage on Forsyth, and the vehicle entrance for the Garage should be as close to Forsyth and Laura as possible.

[thelakelander]

What stands out to me is cost. I'd take this adaptive reuse larger hotel (131 rooms) estimated at $69 million over what was proposed at Lot J (120 rooms) for +$100 million, any day. I understand new construction has gotten more expensive as construction materials have risen in cost. I also understand that this will probably end up being more than $69 million too. However, if we're in the world where adaptive reuse is now comparable in cost to new construction, then we should be trying to get as many of the Northbank's historic vacant structures up and running as possible.

[heights unknown]

Looks good to me. If I become a multi-millionaire, I'm going to get with you guys in this forum, and I will donate a very tall tower, with residential, office, etc., to Jacksonville. I know very little about construction and development of buildings, properties, etc., so I would need y'all's help in planning, design, etc. It would be on the Northbank, it would have to be, especially for me, to complement the skyscrapers already there. Alright Heights wake up; it's good to dream though. Isn't it? LOL

[Fallen Buckeye]

I understand new construction has gotten more expensive as construction materials have risen in cost.

Do you know why construction materials have gotten more expensive? Is it a disruption in the supply chain due to Covid or is it more of an increase in demand due to low housing inventory? Maybe both?

[acme54321]

I understand new construction has gotten more expensive as construction materials have risen in cost.

Do you know why construction materials have gotten more expensive? Is it a disruption in the supply chain due to Covid or is it more of an increase in demand due to low housing inventory? Maybe both?

COVID

[fieldafm]

Trump's failed tariffs vastly inflated lumber, steel, fiberboard, gypsum, asphalt and cement prices well before the pandemic. The pandemic just added fuel to a fire that was already burning incredibly hot. Before the pandemic and before the tariffs, there were already global supply chain issues related to lumber. Supply was gradually decreasing... and then the lumber tariffs came in on top of the that. US lumber production did not grow to fill the supply chain gap. The steel tariffs outright killed demand, resulting in even worse US steel job-flows. Supply chain issues with the production of gypsum and mortar have creeped up this year due to pandemic-related plant closures.  The production of bricks also had supply-chain issues at least two-years before the pandemic.

The pandemic has had an undeniable effect, but the issues with construction material costs were starting to show in 2017. The tariffs then pumped up prices even higher. Then already strained global supply chain issues, with prices artificially spiking due to tariffs, were further impacted by pandemic-related shutdowns.

Ironically, the amount of stimulus being pumped into the economy within the past year, fueled by foreign debt, only exasperated how bad the tariffs were at closing the trade gap (the trade gap skyrocketed over the past year). The tariffs were an abject failure any way you examine them.

I'm a registered and fairly reliable Republican voter.  Biden's presidency would get a B+ from me right now, if Trump's tariffs were removed tomorrow. He'd get an A if an infrastructure plan was introduced (guess we can stop waiting for Trump's promises of a $1 trillion infrastructure plan), and he keeps 1031 exchanges within the tax code (which seems less likely by the day unfrotunately).

[Josh]

Last January we started a renovation (I know, great timing) and our GC warned us that in the ~2 years since we had last discussed the project, Trump's tariff war had brought the price of a lot of materials (he mentioned drywall specifically) up pretty significantly. The total project cost increased ~15%.

We didn't start active construction until August/September, and by then the cost of lumber was beginning to skyrocket due to mills being shutdown during COVID, and some large builders stockpiling what was available at the time. Thankfully we didn't need that much lumber, so our material cost hasn't been much higher, but he said that on one new construction project the lumber cost for him that would have been ~$6500 pre-COVID was now about $18,000.

[vicupstate]

Trump's failed tariffs vastly inflated lumber, steel, fiberboard, gypsum, asphalt and cement prices well before the pandemic. The pandemic just added fuel to a fire that was already burning incredibly hot. Before the pandemic and before the tariffs, there were already global supply chain issues related to lumber. Supply was gradually decreasing... and then the lumber tariffs came in on top of the that. US lumber production did not grow to fill the supply chain gap. The steel tariffs outright killed demand, resulting in even worse US steel job-flows. Supply chain issues with the production of gypsum and mortar have creeped up this year due to pandemic-related plant closures.  The production of bricks also had supply-chain issues at least two-years before the pandemic.

Sounds like you got tired of #winning