I have lived in Jax all my life and have sadly watched gradually as one by one many of these outstanding buildings have been destroyed. Many of these buildings would likely be national landmarks today with their distinctive designs. Not only is this a great loss to Jax, but to the state of Florida as, for many of the past decades, much of Florida's history was Jax, not Miami, Orlando, or Tampa.
As continues today, Jax leaders have lacked an appreciation for what is and what could be. "Vision", "planning", "backbone", and "creative thinking" are little known concepts here. Qualitative factors are dispensed with to just get things done now without consequences for tomorrow (just like the grand jury saying get the courthouse started without delay - with no comment about its shortcomings).
Jax has mostly lived with an insecurity complex - always trying to be the next "big city". In the process to fast track growth at any expense, it has lost site of its character and has become a near soulless city having cast aside its ancestry and history. That Jax has treated many of its assets as disposable has had the effect of often making the City itself disposable. Its hard to feel attached to a physical environment that is plain, plastic, artificial, devoid of character, cold, incoherent, and absent of rooted history.
