Downtown Parks: Bay and Ocean Pocket Park

[904Scars]

I saw (heard actually) him two weekends ago on Saturday afternoon.  I have actually talked to him at length once or twice.  He and the rapping/bike trick homeless man are my two favorite outdoorsmen downtown.

The rapping homeless man I have encountered many a time on Bay St. Saturday nights. I've even seen him down at the beach on 1st Street, I think last weekend actually. He must make good use of the transient system or his collection of bikes, which I have seen him with multiple ones.

As for the park, like some said, take it with a grain of salt, it's just a small walkway more or less. There has been a need for better navigation around that area.

[tufsu1]

the road needed to go away in order to make Bay Street function as a 2-way street....is this a bad thing?

[jaxlore]

As long as there are not knocking down a building to make this i am cool with it. What else could be done with space?

[904Scars]

Im down for anything that makes Bay Street more nighttime friendly, of course I'm biased because I spend 2-3 of my nights a week down there. It's a shame Bay St doesn't have the room to have attractions on both sides of the road.

[Fallen Buckeye]

Personally, I'm a country boy (living in the city by necessity) and one of the things that would deter me from living in an urban area is a the concrete jungle effect and lack of green space. If you want to make downtown attractive to suburbanites in order to reduce on sprawl, green space is one of many essential elements. 

[shanshan1218]

Green is always nice, imo.

I last saw the sax guy under the bridge as always, he started playing scooby doo for my kid. Was quite entertaining.

I have made the jaunt from bay st to the landing like twice in the two years since I started going there. I'm sure there are people out there that do it quite often, I'm just not sure they are here with us on mj forums.

[Charles Hunter]

The street connection is closed, as tufsu said, as part of the 2-waying of Bay Street (which I thought this forum supported).  Why not make the abandon area a park, with a little more green?  What should the City have done? Just leave the little stub of a road going nowhere?*  It's not like they said, "Let's make a pocket park - hey I've got an idea, lets close that road by the Main Street Bridge ramp - and to make it work, we'll make Bay Street 2 ways." 


* everyone who uses "road going nowhere" as a straight line for a joke owes me a royalty fee! 

[thelakelander]

I really don't see it as a negative, like the Main Street pocket park.  The site makes it a completely different situation.  Its a better use than the ramp it will replace and it will provide for a better connection between Bay Street and the Landing.  However, I also don't really see it as a park.  Its more like a sidewalk replacing the ramp.  Most of the landscaping and vegetation is already existing.  Imo, its a non-issue.  There are bigger fish to fry in this city.

[geauxtigers31]

I think any initiatives like this are good ones and it is being placed in a potentially higher traffice area then the Main Street Pocket Park. In response about the Sax player, and being relatively new here, why is there no designated areas downtown for street performers? Are there ordinances in place that discourage it? Being from Louisiana I use New Orleans as my reference point for what a big city can be, and to be honest I find MANY similarities between the two places except that Jacksonville lacks an identity. But to be fair, New Orleans is one of te best in terms of identity. But anyway, my point is why are there no street performers anywhere down town???

[DavidWilliams]

I know St Augustine has had their issues with street performers (urrr vagrants) for many years.

[geauxtigers31]

When I'm jogging along the riverwalk from the Y to the landing I could easily forget that I am in Jacksonville and not New Orleans...except theres no saxophones or worn out acoustic guitars sounding through the air. You wanna take care of the vagrant problem put an instrument in their hands and make them an asset to downtown. And don't act like they don't have time to learn to play it...what else are they gonna do? Plus they will make more money than by just begging. It's win win, if the city could somehow encourage it.

[urbanlibertarian]

There are plenty of out of work actors downtown pretending to be stranded travelers, lost children of God, commuters without bus fare and solitary conversationalists. 

[geauxtigers31]

To answer one of the earlier threads, when me and my friends go barhopping downtown we frequently make the trip from the landing to Bay St. Someone needs to do something with that building with Jaguars painted in the windows...Bostwick Building I think its called. It is in a perfect location to serve as the hub to connect the two areas, plus very visible to everyone passing through downtown via the Main St. bridge. A nice live music, chill out bar/pub would be a sure success. Downtown has enough loud Hip-hop/martini/night club places. It will never be a viable contender until it diversifies the night life options, like the Beaches locally or any other successful night life destination in the country. When inside Mark's or Dive I could forget which one I'm in they're so similar.

[urbanlibertarian]

Here's the MJ feature article on the Bostwick building:

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-oct-inside-the-bostwick-building

[JaxNole]

A little late to this thread, but I think this carries more value than what we have on Main.  It was nice to come across some green spaces in other cities where pedestrian traffic is the norm.  New York, Boston and even New Orleans come to mind.

Walking between TSI and its neighbors and The Landing, in my opinion, is an enhancement.