^Good piece, but I do find it interesting that we want to market study private developments like Lot J and Four Seasons to death, but we just blindly assume that there's a market for a 40+ acre uninterrupted urban park, in the shadow of the sports complex, in an area that we all pretty much agree is on the periphery of downtown Jacksonville. And I think before the Jags expressed interest in Met Park, most agreed that locating Metro Park where we originally did was a mistake in retrospect, spurned by a need to spend federal dollars before they were revoked.
To me, the difference between Jacksonville and some of the other river cities routinely cited as doing it right (Greenville, Louisville, Chattanooga) is scarcity of waterfront access. We've got 22 miles of beaches, 40 miles of Intracoastal waterline, and the longest stretch of the St. Johns River in the state. Feels like private development is a bigger problem for downtown Jacksonville than lack of riverfront access (though it will always be a chicken/egg scenario, obviously).
If you look at all of the available riverfront land in downtown Jacksonville (including parks already in planning or construction at the Times-Union Center, Friendship Fountain/St. Johns Park, RiversEdge, the Landing, etc.) compared to actual population and business density downtown, I have a hard time blindly advocating for reserving all riverfront space for public use. Strategically, I'd rather see us focus all of our efforts in terms of investment and maintenance dollars into maybe four signature or five signature downtown parks with adjacent/integrated private development rather than trying to stretch our attention across the entire riverfront.
One needs to think decades out when allocating land for riverfront parks, not just based on today's or tomorrow's developments.
Breaking land up into smaller parks prevents many larger "city wide" activities such as for celebrations, events like the Super Bowl, outdoor concerts, large festivals, etc. It also prevents a longer bike ride or jogging run. The riverfront aesthetics are also not nearly as nice.
And, while we may have lots of waterfront, only a very tiny portion of it is available to public access other than along Heckshcer Drive where the population remains relatively sparse.
By the way, a 40+ acre park is not all that big compared to many city/urban parks so it is certainly not an unreasonable goal.
Don't have a clue if developing Kids Campus will result in a net loss of ROI for the city over the next 100 years versus turning it into a park and hoping someone remediates and develops Lot J on the periphery instead, but I do feel like having a five-star hotel with public riverwalk access on the site and public parks flanking it will produce two great parks and the opportunity for additional private development in the area that wouldn't otherwise happen in the absence of said Four Seasons.
No doubt, the Four Seasons will bring along other projects. But that will just increase the temptation to turn over more public riverfront to developers. If the Four Seasons was back a couple of hundred feet, that might bring more inland development and support a greater range of downtown acreage as a result.
And, yes, we should be looking 100 years out ideally. On that basis and assuming continued growth trends of the local population, we could be on par with current day Tampa or Orlando or even much of South Florida. I can assure you the demand for downtown park space at that point will be off the charts. However, if we don't provide for it now, it likely will be forever unobtainable in the future. Imagine if NYC had waited until the 1900's to establish Central Park.