Fall 2019

THE MAGAZINE OF THE REBIRTH OF JACKSONVILLE’S DOWNTOWN
WOMEN’S
I S S U E
GROWTH
VYSTAR GOES all in
with ‘INNOvATIVE’
Downtown HQ
P42
EMERALD TRAIL
34-MILE GREENWAY
project INCHING
closer to reality
P50
AUDREY
MORAN,
LAUREN
HAWKINS
and KEAGAN
ANFUSO
(clockwise
from top)
are three of
the women
we asked for
opinions on
Downtown.
DISPLAY THROUGH NOVEMBER 2019
$6.50
What DO womEn want IN THE URBAN CORE?
WE ASKED THEM.
DOWNTOWN
& WOMEN
P20
FALL 2019

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THE MAGAZINE OF THE REBIRTH
OF JACKSONVILLE’S DOWNTOWN
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TOGETHER
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THE MAGAZINE OF
THE REBIRTH OF
JACKSONVILLE’S
DOWNTOWN
H
PUBLISHER
Bill Offill
GENERAL MANAGER/
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Jeff Davis
EDITOR
Frank Denton
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WRITERS
Michael P. Clark
Roger Brown
CONTRIBUTORS
Carole Hawkins, Shelton Hull,
Dan Macdonald,
Charlie Patton,
Denise M. Reagan,
Lilla Ross
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contents
Issue 3 // Volume 3 // FALL 2019
The
Women’s
Issue
14 - Designing a Downtown that will attract women
20 - How does Downtown rate with women? We asked.
28 - Lori Boyer’s next act might be her biggest one yet
26 - Closing the gender gap in Jacksonville leadership
42 50 56 66
VYSTAR GOES ALL
IN ON DOWNTOWN
BY MIKE CLARK
EMERALD TRAIL
BLAZING
BY RON LITTLEPAGE
WHAT’S NEXT FOR
1 RIVERSIDE AVE.?
BY FRANK DENTON
THE HOUSING
GROWTH SPURT
BY LILLA ROSS
72 78 82 86
SAVING OUR
GOTHIC FORTRESS
BY ROGER BROWN
THE GREAT
SPACE ChASE
BY CAROLE HAWKINS
RIDE & SHINE
WITh GO TUK’N
BY DAN MACDONALD
DIGITAL
DIRECTIONS
BY SHELTON HULL
JEFF DAVIS
6
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

J MAGAZINE
PARTNERS
DEPARTMENTS
9 FROM THE EDITOR
10 RATING DOWNTOWN
11 BRIEFING
12 PROGRESS REPORT
48 THE BIG PICTURE
88 CORE EYESORE
90 A NEW VISION FOR MOCA
92 QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
98 THE FINAL WORD
THE MAGAZINE OF THE REBIRTH OF JACKSONVILLE’S DOWNTOWN
WOMEN’S
I S S U E
GROWTH
VYSTAR GOES ALL IN
WITH ‘INNOVATIVE’
DOWNTOWN HQ
P42
EMERALD TRAIL
34-MILE GREENWAY
PROJECT INCHING
CLOSER TO REALITY
P50
AUDREY
MORAN,
LAUREN
HAWKINS
and KEAGAN
ANFUSO
(clockwise
from top)
are three of
the women
we asked for
opinions on
Downtown.
DISPLAY THROUGH NOVEMBER 2019
$6.50
WHAT DO WOMEN WANT IN THE URBAN CORE?
WE ASKED THEM.
DOWNTOWN
& WOMEN
P20
FALL 2019
ON THE COVER
If you design a downtown for women,
they will come. All of them. What will
it take to create an urban core that
appeals to women? We decided to find
out. // PAGE 20
STORY BY DENISE M. REAGAN
ILLUSTRATION BY JEFF DAVIS

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FROM THE EDITOR
Is McUrbanism
starting to choke
our Downtown?
FRANK
DENTON
PHONE
(904) 359-4268
EMAIL
frankmdenton@
gmail.com
e’re all appreciating the boom in
W apartment construction that is
bringing more and more people
living in the urban core, toward the critical
resident population that will jump-start the
reactivated Downtown.
But as you watch those massive complexes arise
across Brooklyn and LaVilla and on the Southbank (see
story page 66), aren’t you feeling a sort of weirdness,
grating on your aesthetic senses?
The apartment buildings pretty much all look alike,
with boxy designs, monotonous facades and colored
panels added in an apparent attempt to make them
more interesting.
A Twitter query to name the architectural style quickly
fell into sarcasm: McUrbanism, fast-casual architecture,
Simcityism, Minecraftsman, Contemporary Contempt
and (my personal favorite) Spongebuild Squareparts.
Of course, there are reasons for the spiritless sameness.
Patrick Sisson, a reporter on Curbed.com (a blog
once described by its founder as “Architectural Digest
after a three-martini lunch”), said the reasons are
“code, costs and craft:” Building and zoning codes
demand efficiency on tight sites. The style is cheapest;
variation and originality are expensive. Computer-aided
design, pushing aside architects, squeezes every bit
of value out of a site.
But if you have to look at them, you might as well be
at St. Johns Town Center, which also is spawning acres
and acres of the structures, or in about any other city, as
the style has metastasized nationally.
On page 92, you’ll read a passionate plea by Downtown
pioneer Sherry Magill to save what’s left of our
historic buildings and, where appropriate, adapt them
into modern residences.
“Architectural history gives us a sense of place,” she
said. “Places that tear it down and build something
new, you don’t have a sense of the past and a collective
past.” You don’t have the authenticity and character
that make the city unique and interesting.
You might think Jacksonville has a paucity of historic
buildings, given the Great Fire of 1901 and the ravages
of “urban renewal” a half century later, but when
Magill was president of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, it
produced a study in 2017 that found Downtown has
“abundant redevelopment opportunities in its rich inventory
of vacant land and vacant buildings.” The study
pointed out that 62 percent of Northbank buildings are
more than 50 years old.
“The true strength of a downtown lies in the small
projects — the shops and restaurants and residential
projects that nurture everyday engagement from
residents and visitors. These smaller projects come
alive in neighborhoods that have distinct character and
personality.”
Kay Ehas, who did the research, points out that we
have made progress, with the Barnett Bank, the Ambassador
Hotel project, the Jones Bros. Furniture store,
Brewster Hospital and more. And before that, Vestcor
revitalized 11 E. Forsyth and The Carling.
Another study by the fund with the National Trust
for Historic Preservation delved deeper into the opportunities
with older buildings and blocks and concluded:
“Unlocking this potential requires stronger incentives,
innovative new policies and increased awareness and
capacity in the nonprofit, government and private
sectors.”
In her Q&A with J, DIA CEO Lori Boyer agreed with
Magill on the value of putting new life into historic
buildings but pointed out: “It’s hard and expensive to
do adaptive reuse of older buildings … A lot of the folks
who have done historic renovations have really lost
their shirts on it.”
For extreme example, Jacques Klempf invested three
years and, according to building permits, almost $10
million to turn the Bostwick Building into the Cowford
Chophouse.
Even with city incentives, Boyer doesn’t think “that
it’s a value proposition at the moment ...
“How can we make it economically viable for somebody?”
Boyer’s one request of City Council is to appropriate
some money into the Downtown Historic Preservation
and Revitalization Trust Fund, which now is “completely
encumbered.”
Whether the money would come from that fund or
direct, per-project appropriation from City Council,
think about that value proposition for your tax money.
After all, where would you rather live, or even just
hang out, in McUrbanism or in a Downtown with Jacksonville
character?
This is my last From the Editor column, as I continue
to pursue the meaning of “retirement.” The estimable
Mike Clark will be the editor of future issues.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 9

POWER
RATING DOWNTOWN
By The Florida Times-Union Editorial Board
Optimism abounds as people
continue moving Downtown
7 7
8
6
MIN
MAX
MIN
MAX
MIN
MAX
MIN
MAX
PUBLIC SAFETY
LEADERSHIP
HOUSING
INVESTMENT
Serious crime remains low,
and the new Urban Rest Stop
may be drawing the transients
and panhandlers and lowering
the negative perception they
cause. More apartments will put
more citizens on the streets.
Lori Boyer brings her experience,
leadership and commitment as
the new CEO of DIA.
Mayor Curry keeps the heat
on projects like the Landing,
Lot J and others, though maddenly
and unnecessarily opaque.
The new State of Downtown
report says 5,200 people now live
Downtown, up 8% from last year.
With more apartments and now
townhomes, we’re anticipating
the critical mass of 10,000 we
need living Downtown.
When she moved into her
new office, DIA CEO Lori Boyer
already began fielding “lots” of
queries from moneybags: “I’ve had
folks from New York and Detroit,
and Atlanta, and … I mean, in just
in the last two weeks.”
PREVIOUS: 7
PREVIOUS: 8
PREVIOUS: 6
PREVIOUS: 6
6 5 5
4
MIN
MAX
MIN
MAX
MIN
MAX
MIN
MAX
DEVELOPMENT
EVENTS & CULTURE
TRANSPORTATION
CONVENTION CENTER
All around the core, developers
are hopping. The old Times-
Union site is now joining the
party. Finally, there’s a Lot J
development, but its public price
tag may be a red flag to City
Council and the public.
Lot J, if it happens, will add a
new dimension to Downtown
activities. New directors at the
Cummer and MOCA are causing
creative stirs. New tuk tuk tours
are exploring Downtown’s
history and oddities.
Riverplace Boulevard is slowly
transforming and soon will
provide a showpiece for road
diets, to be followed by Park
Street humanizing Brooklyn.
Why are the two-way streets
in the core taking so long?
This likely will remain lower
priority, because the consultants
tell us we are not yet ready to
compete with other cities with
more vibrant and interesting
downtowns. Too bad — we
have some great sites available.
PREVIOUS: 5
PREVIOUS: 5
PREVIOUS: 5
PREVIOUS: 4
OVERALL RATING
Edging up. If you’re John Q. Cynic, invest a half hour in a
driving tour of Downtown’s transforming districts. If you
can muster some optimism, drive by the empty Landing
and grassed old courthouse and city hall annex sites and
imagine the possibilities — then speak truth to power!
PREVIOUS: 6
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
JEFF DAVIS
10
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

«««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
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»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
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»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
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»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
55,392 1,931 3
«««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
«««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««
DIGITS
The number of
employees working
in Downtown
Jacksonville.
The number of
businesses located
in Downtown
Jacksonville.
The number
of Fortune
500 corporate
headquarters
located in
Downtown
Jacksonville
SOURCE:
Downtown Vision’s
2018-2019 State of
Downtown report
BRIEFING
By The Florida Times-Union Editorial Board
Thumbs down to Gov.
Ron DeSantis for
vetoing $8 million in
state funding for workforce
housing at Lofts at
Cathedral, a worthwhile
project that deserved to
be backed.
Thumbs up for the
North Florida
Transportation
Planning Organization’s
study that
shows traffic congestion
is increasing in Jacksonville.
It could spur
more people to live
Downtown or use mass
transit.
Thumbs up to the huge
impact VyStar will
make when it officially
moves its headquarters
Downtown. VyStar
already has more than
300 jobs Downtown,
and hundreds more are
on the way.
Thumbs up to the Bay
Street innovation
corridor
project, which
recently won praise from
two renowned national
experts who study what
“smart cities” are doing
to transform their downtown
areas.
HITS & MISSES
Thumbs up to JAX
Chamber for going
full speed ahead with
LiveDowntownJax, the
online platform for
its efforts to ensure
Downtown has at least
10,000 residents in the
next two years.
Thumbs down to the
lack of any visible
improvement
to Main Street
Park. Yes, the city was
right to temporarily
close the park; it had
become an unsanitary
magnet for vagrants. But
what’s next?
Thumbs down to the
closing of 20
West Café, the
restaurant operated by
Florida State College
at Jacksonville on the
ground floor of its student
dormitory at 20 W.
Adams St.
Thumbs up to Visit
Jacksonville,
the city’s tourism arm,
for drawing more and
more major conferences,
including the annual
gathering of the influential
Florida Society of
Association Executives.
FIRST PERSON
«««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
«««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Thumbs up to Cathedral
District-Jax
Inc. for installing banners
to promote the rich
heritage of the Cathedral
District, a Downtown
neighborhood undergoing
dynamic revitalization.
Thumbs up to Downtown
Vision Inc.,
which is in the process of
overhauling and updating
its website for the first
time in six years.
Thumbs up to the potential
of 527 Duval
Street, an ambitious
Downtown project
that would combine
residential units with art
studios and more.
Thumbs down to no
shade on Riverside
Avenue. If you walk along
the stretch near Brooklyn,
you’ll find useless
palm trees that provide
no cover from heat or
rain. Ban the palms!
Thumbs up to the
city for issuing 40
percent more tickets
for Downtown parking
meter violations than it
did this time last year. It’s
time to end meter-squatting
in Downtown.
“We have gotten to a place now where we all say we
hear this momentum and everything. It’s real in terms of
numbers, it’s real in terms of investment.”
DOWNTOWN INVESTMENT AUTHORITY CEO LORI BOYER (PAGE 28)
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 11

FORSYTH
J MAGAZINE’S
PROGRESS REPORT
LAVILLA
PRIME OSBORN
CONVENTION
CENTER
BROOKLYN
JACKSON
ADAMS
HOUSTON
STATUS: UNITY DDRB approved. Next
is permitting PLAZAand construction.
FOREST
JOHNSON
PARK
MONROE
OAK
LEE
Lofts at
Brooklyn
Vestcor is planning
a $30 million, 133-
unit workforce and affordable
apartment complex on the block
among Spruce, Chelsea, Stonewall
and Jackson streets.
MAGNOLIA
DAVIS
WATER
RIVERSIDE AVE.
LaVilla
Townhomes
Vestcor plans to build 70 market-rate
townhomes in LaVilla valued around
$250,000 each. Two others bid on the property, but
the DIA chose Vestcor. As part of the deal, Vestcor will
donate $100,000 to Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing Park.
STATUS: Vestcor hopes to close with the city this year,
with groundbreaking no later than nine months later.
MADISON
JEFFERSON
JEA Headquarters
JEA chose the Ryan Companies to build its new $72
million headquarters at 325 W. Adams St., next to the
courthouse, with an 850-space parking garage nearby.
STATUS: The city approved sale of the land to Ryan, and JEA agreed to
a lease with Ryan. JEA is studying privatization, and its board said any
deal must include the new Downtown HQ. Construction could start
in April and take about 18 months.
BROAD
CLAY
PEARL
STATUS: Barnett is open, with the 107 Residences TIMES- at
Barnett apartments leasing. The UNF space is open. UNION Chase
CENTER
Bank will move into the grand first floor and put its sign on
top. Planned garage is expanding to accommodate VyStar,
and construction should start by the end of the year, with
Trio work starting soon after.
ACOSTA
BRIDGE
JULIA
Laura St. Trio and
Barnett Bank Building
A $79 million project is renovating the iconic
buildings into residences, offices, a Courtyard
by Marriott, commercial/retail and a UNF campus.
McCoys Creek
The city’s capital improvement plan calls for
$15 million over five years to restore and
improve 2.8 miles of the creek ending at
the St. Johns, with greenways, kayak launches and a new
pedestrian bridge.
STATUS: The first Model Mile is in design, funded in the
city budget. Construction is to be in the 2020-21 budget.
HEMMING
PARK
HOGAN
BAY
LAURA
JACKSONVILLE
LANDING
MAIN STREET
BRIDGE
BEAVER
ASHLEY
CHURCH
DUVAL
MAIN
FRIENDSHIP
FOUNTAIN
RIVERPLACE
MARY
OCEAN
SAN MARCO BLVD.
OAK
Brooklyn STation
Jacksonville Landing
The removal of the “jug handle” that allowed
big trucks access to the old Times-Union
building and a land swap with the city at Leila
and May streets will allow expansion of the shopping center
anchored by The Fresh Market.
STATUS: Redevelopment agreement approved. Street closure
passed Council. The jug handle is gone and property excavated.
12 J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019
N
MAY
RIVERSIDE
FULLER WARREN BRIDGE
The city paid Sleiman Enterprises $15 million to
give up its long-term lease, and City Council approved
another $3 million to buy out tenants’
subleases then raze the structure.
STATUS: The last tenant will be out by October, but some
demolition was to start before that, with completion by May 28.
The city has a plethora of studies and ideas for what comes next,
and the DIA board will specify some parameters in what it wants
on the site before soliciting proposals. The mayor expects green
space for public gatherings as part of a mixed-use development.
PRUDENTIAL DR.

NEWNAN
FLAGLER
SPRINGFIELD
MARKET
NORTHBANK
WASHINGTON
ST. JOHNS
RIVER
SOUTHBANK
KIPP
LIBERTY
KINGS
CATHERINE
ONYX
Lofts at the Cathedral
Cathedral District-Jax is working with
Vestcor on a $20 million project to transform
the old Community Connections
(YWCA) property at 325 E. Duval St. into about 115
workforce and low-income apartments.
STATUS: Gov. DeSantis vetoed the $8 million state portion
of the cost, and Vestcor is seeking other city and state
assistance. The district hopes to close in October.
Main Street Park
Transients moved here after being made to
feel unwelcome at Hemming Park, so it was
fenced and some of the transients went to
Sulzbacher’s new Urban Rest Stop. The park remains closed.
STATUS: The city says it is: “working with the Cultural Council,
Art in Public Places, to design an art installation ... that will
be a public-interactive installation much like the concept of
Wynwood walls in Miami. It is still in the design phase.”
MONTANA
PALMETTO
VETERANS
MEMORIAL
ARENA
A. PHILIP RANDOLPH
Cathedral apartment/
art complex
Developer Rafael Caldera proposed a $5.6
million mixed-use, 45-unit apartment complex
with a ground-level art gallery and studio space plus a possible
rooftop dog park at Duval and Washington streets in the
Cathedral District, according to the Daily Record.
STATUS: The DDRB gave conceptual approval.
Berkman Plaza II
The 23-story structure has been an eyesore
since it collapsed under construction
in 2007. The new owners backed out of a
planned hotel and “family entertainment center” and said
they would downscale to a smaller hotel and residences.
STATUS: Several other prospective developers have approached
DIA, which referred them to the owners. Mayor
Curry says his team is working with the owners.
Shipping-container
apartments
JWB Real Estate Capital plans to build
an 18-unit studio-apartment complex
using repurposed shipping containers on a tiny plot at
412 E. Ashley St. in the Cathedral District.
STATUS: Approved by DDRB. No application for city
incentives yet.
BASEBALL
GROUNDS
GEORGIA
FRANKLIN
SPORTS
COMPLEX
ADAMS
GATOR BOWL BLVD.
TIAA
BANK FIELD
DAILY’S
PLACE
Parking Lot J
and Shipyards
Shad Khan’s proposed Shipyards
development is to begin on Lot
J next to the stadium and Daily’s Place, with an
entertainment complex, an office tower, a 200-
room hotel and a 300-residence tower.
STATUS: Razing expressway ramps to make
room was delayed until after football season.
The $450 million Lot J construction could be
simultaneous. Mayor Curry and the developers
agreed the city would contribute up to
$233.3 million, which must be approved by
the DIA and City Council. The deadline for a
redevelopment agreement with the city for
the Shipyards was extended to June 30, 2020.
The District
Peter Rummell’s healthy-community concept will have
up to 1,170 residences, 200 Marriott hotel rooms and
285,500 square feet of office space, with a marina and
public spaces along an extended Southbank Riverwalk.
STATUS: Bonds are clear to be issued; a buyer is on tap. Haskell
was hired as construction manager. A “60 percent” horizontal
infrastructure design has gone to the city, and at “80 percent,” the
shovels get to work. The hotel is in final design. The “green grocer”
will be a new brand for Jacksonville.
HENDRICKS
Riverplace road diet
A road diet slims down the number of driving lanes and
makes a street friendlier to pedestrians and bicyclists. The
city budget includes $4.6 million for Riverplace Boulevard
on the Southbank and $2.2 million for Park Street in Brooklyn.
STATUS: Riverplace is well under way, with the street reconfigured
and shade trees planted. Completion extended to November.
SAN MARCO
DOWNTOWN
JACKSONVILLE
TRACKING DEVELOPMENT IN THE URBAN CORE
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 13

}
The
Women’s
Issue
Designing a
Downtown
that will
attract
women
According to some
experts, if women
were in charge,
downtowns would
be more welcoming,
more successful
and more safe.
By MIKE CLARK
Illustration by
RETRO ROCKET
14
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 15

We’ll know Downtown
Jacksonville has
arrived when women
perceive it to be safe.
That’s what Anna Lopez Brosche told
the Times-Union Editorial Board when she
was running for mayor.
That was a deep statement, and it’s
more than safety. Women are more influential
than ever in American commercial
life:
• In 2010, for the first time in U.S. history,
American women controlled more than
half of U.S. private wealth, Time magazine
reported.
• Women make or influence more than
80 percent of retail decisions, such as 91
percent of home sales, 92 percent of vacations,
89 percent of bank accounts and 80
percent of health care.
A new book, based on a solid academic
research, makes the powerful case that
if downtowns are designed with women
in mind, everyone will benefit. Women
in many cases act and think differently
enough from men to influence whether
downtowns are successful.
The book is “Design Downtown for
Women: Men Will Follow” by Carol Becker,
Sheila Grant, David Feehan and Drew
McLellan.
It’s based on the premise that if women
were in charge, downtowns would be
more welcoming, more successful and
more safe.
“Designing for women doesn’t mean
excluding anyone else, just adding to the
appeal of the place,” the authors wrote.
The fact that there is little serious crime
in Downtown Jacksonville isn’t enough for
women. The following list illustrates the
top safety issues keeping women out:
• Unpredictable strangers, especially
aggressive panhandlers.
• Parking garages, especially if poorly lit.
• Groups of uncivil youth.
• Getting lost due to odd street layouts
and poor signage.
• Dirty buildings, sidewalks, trash and
graffiti.
Women voice a greater concern for a
sense of security, author William Whyte
(“The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”)
wrote. The personal “space bubbles” of
women tend to be smaller and their tolerance
for density greater, so they are often
more attracted to densely occupied places.
Some of the research also suggests that
differences between men and women
explain some of the fundamental problems
for all downtowns, but especially in
Jacksonville.
For instance, research shows that
women feel safer in crowds. Men often are
satisfied being alone. So an empty downtown
feels threatening to women, but not
so much to men.
16
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

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Women are about creating
experiences. Market your
downtown in that context and it
will be easier for her to imagine
herself in the settings to which
you’re trying to entice her. “
“Design Downtown for
‘Women: Men Will Follow”
More technology isn’t the answer.
Instead, positive cues are an open door, a
display or a sale table set up on the sidewalk,
café tables and flowers.
A park should give people choices
regarding space.
“Some places offer a quiet space for one
or two people who want to be alone while a
cluster of seats invites conversations, and a
wide walkway provides places to be anonymous
within the crowd,” the authors state.
Now consider something as simple as
color.
“In many ways, downtowns have the
color palates of men’s closets,” the authors
wrote. “We need to admit that our visual
environment is limited to one gender’s
perspective.”
There’s science involved here, too.
About 1 in 12 Northern European men
have red-green color blindness but less
than 1 in 100 women do. So bland downtowns
make a statement to women that
many men may not even recognize.
These two principles are put into play —
fear of empty spaces and bland colors — in
parking garages.
“Parking is not a car storage business.
It’s a people business,” the authors wrote.
Garages typically are gray and empty.
And at night, it’s even worse.
So why not add color to parking garages?
Color could be more than artistic flourishes,
but colors could become memory
aids. Paint every floor of a parking garage
a different color. You may be able to better
remember your car is on the red floor than
on either the third or fourth floor.
“Everything from lighting to landscaping
to nearby housing and the design
of bus stops and shelters can create a
place-avoidance factor that keeps women
and their spending away,” the authors
wrote. That includes having to drive
through a neighborhood perceived as
threatening to get downtown.
Possible solutions involve female-friendly
parking: free or low-cost
valet parking, special locations for women,
reserved parking for female employees.
Get rid of dead ends and dark corners in
parking garages. Add ground-level retail.
Walking past a long gray wall of a parking
garage is not inviting.
Having a range of services makes parking
more inviting for women: dead-battery
jumps, flat-tire assistance, help for customers
who lock their keys in the car. This helps
everyone, especially women.
Height matters
Here’s another metric that men are not
likely to notice. Seating often is designed
with an average male height in mind. In the
United States, the average man is 6 inches
taller than the average women. Older
women and foreign women are shorter
still.
There can be a 14-inch variation in eye
level. It becomes a 28-inch variation for
people in wheelchairs.
So what do you do? Whyte pointed out
that one of the most popular places to sit in
New York City is on a long sloping wall on
a hill where the changing height provides a
wide variation of seating heights.
Uneven pavement is a great hazard and
hindrance for women. Uneven pavement
and steps without railings are issues for
many women. Women, especially in heels,
have less tolerance for pavement that has
cracks, holes or cobblestones.
“Poorly maintained sidewalks make it
difficult to push a stroller, safely maneuver
a walker or scooter or pull a suitcase on
wheels,” the authors noted.
Signage is part of it. Bright, creative,
information signage sends a message.
Shopping
Understand the science of how men
and women buy.
“Men tend to be hunters. They seek
out what they need, which is probably the
same brand they’ve always worn. Once
they find it, they call it a day,” the authors
wrote.
“Women are gatherers. They want to
gather up all the possibilities and don’t really
want to make a purchase until they feel
like they’ve exposed themselves to enough
options. Women are about creating experiences
and those experiences are meant to
be shared. Market your downtown in that
context and it will be easier for her to imagine
herself in the settings to which you’re
trying to entice her. Women generate seven
times more referrals than men.”
Cleanliness matters to women.
“For many women, a dirty restroom
is like no restroom at all,” the authors
wrote. “Lack of toilet paper or empty soap
dispensers and odor are closely related
to uncleanliness in people’s minds.
Touchless controls and easily operated
hardware add to both functionality and
cleanliness.”
This matters for shopping.
“Ask women where they will shop and
they will tell you: on streets that are clean,
with ample trash receptacles, benches,
bike racks, tidy news boxes, trees, flowers,
handsome window displays, wide
sidewalks, adequate lighting with no dark
zones and no panhandlers,” the authors
wrote.
“One of the most important indicators
of a secure place is its good upkeep: the
paving is swept, windows and tabletops
are polished clean, plants are healthy and
there’s no litter.”
Bicycles
About 60 percent of adults are “interested
but concerned” when it comes to
bicycling in cities
“They would ride more often if they felt
safer, if cars were slower and less frequent
18
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

and if bicycle facilities were separated from
vehicles,” the authors wrote.
“In 2011, a protected lane was installed
on Columbus Avenue in New York City and
bicycling increased 56 percent on weekdays.”
Women generally demand more from
public spaces than men. Whyte observed
that, for this reason, women are a good
bellwether of public space: “If there is a
noticeable dip in the number of women
present, there is a good reason to believe
something is wrong. Conversely, if there is
a high concentration of women, the plaza
is working well as a public space.”
Jacksonville has made strides in adding
color to its Downtown. Major events like
ArtWalk and the jazz festival are winners.
Parking, though, is still an issue. A
poorly lit Downtown adds to a sense of
insecurity at night.
With Lori Boyer heading the Downtown
Investment Authority, we can expect to see
an appreciation for these issues.
Let’s give women an influential voice in
Downtown. We’ll all benefit.
Mike Clark has been a reporter and
editor for The Florida Times-Union and its
predecessors since 1973 and editorial page
editor since 2005. He lives in Nocatee.
EIGHT WAYS TO DESIGN
A DOWNTOWN FOR WOMEN
To design places that are more attractive to women, include these features:
1. Design in choices.
Provide surfaces,
signs and
other amenities
at a range
of heights
and sizes.
2. Provide protection
from harsh weather.
Include sheltered spaces.
3. Offer both sunny
and shady seating.
4. Install good and
durable paving.
5. Include public restrooms,
unisex if possible, that
can be cleaned well.
6. Use high quality
natural materials.
7. Connect to
surroundings with
safe, walkable streets.
8. Create a
welcoming
ambience.
SOURCE: “DESIGN DOWNTOWN FOR WOMEN: MEN WILL FOLLOW”
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FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 19

GOING TO THE SOURCE:
(L-R) Issis Alvarez, Audrey
Moran, Michelle Barth,
Keagan Anfuso, Annette
Anderson and Lauren
Hawkins
20
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

}
The
Women’s
Issue
How does
Downtown
rate with
women?
We asked.
While the urban core
might be trending in
the right direction,
there is still a need for
improvement to make
it appealing to women.
By DENISE M. REAGAN
Illustration by JEFF DAVIS
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 21

What will it take to
transform Downtown
Jacksonville into
a place for women?
Six women who currently live, work or
play in Downtown Jacksonville envision a
future destination that attracts both visitors
and hometown Jaxsons to lively streets
bustling with activities, restaurants, shops
and amenities.
Although there are several positive
signals that Downtown is moving in that
direction, most say we have a way to go to
create a district where they look forward to
spending their time and can convince family
and friends to join them.
We asked these women about their
Downtown experiences:
Annette Anderson is a seamstress
who moved to The Carling apartments on
Adams Street between Laura and Main in
2017 after living at the Beaches for 15 years.
Keagan Anfuso is a filmmaker
whose production company, Enfocus Media,
works out of the Novel Coworking space at
the corner of Market and Forsyth streets. She
lives with her girlfriend and two elementary
school-aged children in Riverside.
Michelle Barth is the associate
vice president of advancement and external
affairs at the Jacksonville Symphony and
previously served as deputy chief of staff for
Mayor Alvin Brown. After living at the Plaza
Condominium at Berkman Plaza and Marina
since 2008, she knows Downtown like the
back of her hand.
Issis Alvarez is the program manager
for the Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida
and works in the Jessie Ball duPont Center
at the corner of Adams and Main streets.
She and her husband live with two teenage
children near St. Augustine.
Lauren Hawkins recently took on
the role of resident director for 20West, the
Adams Street residences for Florida State
College at Jacksonville students. Over the last
few months, she’s been exploring Downtown
and said she loves the convenience of
being close to school, work and home.
Audrey Moran is president of the
Baptist Health Foundation, where she works
on the Southbank. She previously served as
chief of staff for Mayor John Delaney, director
of legislative affairs for Mayor Ed Austin,
and president and CEO of the Sulzbacher
Center for the Homeless. Her numerous
appointments regularly take her to meetings
throughout the urban core.
All of the women compared Downtown
Jacksonville to other cities they’ve visited
and pointed out two major differences:
density and mobility. When reminiscing
about memorable trips to other downtowns,
they all had one thing in common: They
could park once and go to all the places they
wanted to visit.
When Anfuso visits other cities like
Chattanooga, Tenn., the downtown is a huge
draw. She finds it’s easy to park once and
spend a whole weekend without moving her
car.
“Everything pushes you toward downtown,”
she said. “I want to eat. Great, go
downtown … I want to try something new.
Great, go downtown … We don’t seem to
have that here.”
BOB SELF
22
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

‘‘
I feel
completely
safe, and I
have walked
through
Downtown
at all times
of day and
night.”
MICHELLE BARTH
‘‘
“As somebody
who grew up
here and lives
here, there
isn’t a reason
for me to go
Downtown
on a regular
basis.”
KEAGAN ANFUSO

‘‘
The spooky
thing for me
about being
Downtown is
you can walk
outside, and
you see no one.
There’s not a
car, there’s
not a person.”
ANNETTE ANDERSON
Anderson longs for a concentrated and
connected Downtown, so she doesn’t need
a car and “can just go from one experience
to the next.”
Barth pointed to the longtime undeveloped
Shipyards property as key to creating
those connections between the Sports
Complex and Bay Street bars and clubs.
She mentioned that one big impediment is
the Maxwell House plant, although she was
quick to point out she loves “the smell of
coffee Downtown.”
“I feel there’s no exploration or adventure
here in Downtown,” Alvarez said. “I feel like
until that happens, I don’t see me talking
anyone into coming and hanging out for a
day here.”
Perception
So how do we get there? One thing is
addressing the perception people have of
Downtown Jacksonville.
When asked about Downtown’s reputation,
the answers tended to start on the
negative end of the spectrum: Deserted.
Dead. Depressing. Apocalyptic. Scary.
“As somebody who grew up here and
lives here,” Anfuso said, “there isn’t a
reason for me to go Downtown on a regular
basis.”
Barth pushed back on the narrative that
there’s nothing going on Downtown. She
rattled off the number of Jaguars games,
concerts at the VyStar Veterans Memorial
Arena, shows at The Florida Theatre and
the Times-Union Center for the Performing
Arts and Jacksonville Symphony events.
“I can watch fireworks every Friday
night from my place,” Barth said of the
displays following Jumbo Shrimp games.
“Where I live at Berkman Plaza, I see the
line for some of those clubs wrap around
the block on a Thursday. Those are things
you don’t see because that’s not happening
until 10 or 11 o’clock at night.”
Hawkins said Downtown is on the
“come up.” “It will take the right team of
people — some traditional, some innovative
and open-minded — to help it become
more city-like. We have to be willing to tap
into the potential and strengthen the weak
areas.”
“It’s going to take some serious consideration
to be able to draw people away
from that main draw, which is the beaches,
to Downtown,” Anderson said. “It certainly
isn’t there yet.”
Anfuso said there is an upside — in the
reaction producers have when they see
all the unused spaces that could serve as
film sets. Even though it might sound a bit
negative.
“‘What a great blank canvas!’” Anfuso
said. “We do have a Downtown that has this
really beautiful layout and architecture that
people creatively freak out about.”
Safety
In comparison to other metropolitan
centers, Jacksonville often lags behind, but
there is one area where Downtown benefits
by comparison: safety.
“I feel completely safe, and I have
walked through Downtown at all times of
day and night,” Barth said.
“As a resident of Downtown, I feel safe
a majority of the time,” Hawkins said. She
added that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office
should do more outreach beyond just acting
as security at events.
Alvarez said when she has traveled to
BOB SELF
24
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

‘‘
I wouldn’t
move my
family where
I couldn’t
have access
to a grocery
store quickly.”
Issis Alvarez
BOB SELF
denser metropolitan areas, such as San
Francisco, she experienced what it’s like to
feel real danger. But she’s never really felt
that way in Downtown Jacksonville. She
said 99.9 percent of the time she feels safe,
but “it is the lack of density that freaks me
out. It’s when I’m working late and I go outside
and I see no one … It’s just weird.”
Alvarez said if someone is walking
behind her in the dark for more than three
seconds, it’s difficult to find refuge because
there are so many long stretches of empty
store fronts. “I’m like, OK, where is my next
safe haven?”
Anderson agreed: “The spooky thing for
me about being Downtown is you can walk
outside, and you see no one. There’s not a
car, there’s not a person.”
However, she said the perception of
Downtown from those living in the far corners
of the city is skewed. “I’ve had clients
from Ponte Vedra come down here and say,
‘How do you live here?’” Anderson said.
“Do you know what? It’s real life. It’s life. It’s
not clean and tidy and whitewashed.”
Anfuso recalled when friends from New
York or San Diego visited. They couldn’t
wrap their heads around the idea that
Jacksonville residents were afraid to go
Downtown.
“This is a joke to them,” she said, “the
idea of being afraid on these streets.”
Anfuso said realistically people aren’t
afraid of getting shot, assaulted, robbed or
snatched. “They’re afraid some homeless
person is going to ask them for money in a
mean way,” Anfuso said. “That’s the worst
thing that they actually think is going to
happen.”
Maybe we just need to arm people with
a strong “no.”
Anderson said in reality, there are only
a handful of people who might be drug-addicted
or mentally ill. “I’ve seen some
things that are disturbing and sad.”
Alvarez agreed: “You definitely see a
lot of the same faces of folks that are very
publicly going through this time and time
again.”
“We have shelters and services for our
homeless citizens on all four corners of
Downtown and smack dab in the middle,”
Moran said. “We need a master plan to consolidate
these services in an appropriate
location. That will free up a lot more opportunities
for development of Downtown.”
She added that relocating the John E.
Goode Pre-trial Detention Facility away
from Bay Street is critically important. “And
when the jail moves, Sulzbacher will need
to move as well.”
Parking
Any discussion of Downtown Jacksonville
almost always brings up parking.
Moran insisted parking is not a problem
Downtown and says the urban core has way
too many surface lots.
“I often joke that our city suffers from a
‘motel parking’ culture,” Moran said. “We
expect to pull right up to the door of our
destination, instead of parking and walking,
which is the norm in most other downtowns.”
But some of the women tied parking to a
sense of safety. Barth said she knows some
people look for parking that is near their
destination so they can feel more secure.
Everyone agreed that upgrading parking
meters to use apps and payment options
beyond quarters is essential.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 25

‘‘
I often joke
that our city
suffers from a
‘motel parking’
culture. We
expect to pull
right up to the
door of our
destination.”
AUDREY MORAN
Barth said installing signage that clearly
indicates where parking is available is key.
She applauded the installation of new signs
pointing to the Northbank Riverwalk.
Mobility
Hawkins, who walks about four miles
a day, said one of the impediments to
walking in Downtown is the heat, particularly
because there are so many stretches of
unshaded sidewalks.
“Walking has been beneficial to my
overall health; it’s honestly very therapeutic,”
Hawkins said. “I get a chance to ‘smell
the roses,’ meet new people, and stumble
across new places.”
Barth shared anecdotes of women
dressed to the nines to hit the clubs on
Bay Street. She often fears for them as
they teeter on the heels of their gorgeous
shoes while trying to navigate gratings and
uneven sidewalks.
Other ways of navigating Downtown
led to discussion of the Skyway, which was
never really finished.
While Barth related stories of packed
Skyway cars during lunch hour, Anfuso
described the Skyway as a great location for
a film set in a dystopian future because it
often seems so deserted. However, Anfuso
related her mother’s experience on the Skyway
during One Spark. She described her
mom as a Mandarin resident who’s never
traveled outside of Florida.
“I put her on it, and she thought she was
having like a sci-fi film experience,” Anfuso
said. “It blew her mind.”
The river
Alvarez said one of the most important
aspects of mobility in Downtown is
the activation of the waterfront. “From
my experience, it doesn’t feel like there’s
one cohesive identity between both of the
banks.”
Anfuso shared her experience with waterfronts
in Tampa, San Diego, Chattanooga
and Cleveland where you can find people
regularly paddle boarding, kayaking and
jet skiing. “This is what Jacksonville could
look like.”
But she said she thinks Jacksonville
residents are afraid of the river. “They have
an idea in their brains that our river is just
so horribly dirty and contaminated.”
Historically the St. Johns River has had
horrible pollution problems, but that’s no
longer the case. However, the river still deals
with high nitrogen levels, and dredging
could introduce other environmental
stresses.
Barth fondly remembered eating within
feet of the water at The Jacksonville Landing.
Hawkins agreed that more river-view
dining options are needed.
Downtown living
Living Downtown is becoming more
and more attractive, especially as businesses
relocate to the urban core. Moran said
Debbie Buckland’s leadership as chair of
the JAX Chamber has put more focus on
residential development in the city center.
“We need lots of housing options to
get more folks Downtown,” Moran said,
“affordable apartments, like the Vestcor
projects that are very popular, to high-end
condos.” The Vestcor Companies have built
the Lofts at LaVilla and the Lofts at Monroe,
and are finishing construction of the Lofts
at Jefferson Station.
WILL DICKEY
26
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

‘‘
I love the
convenience
of being close
to school, work
and home.
You can meet
so many
people with the
same interests,
hobbies, etc.”
LAUREN HAWKINS
DEDE SMITH
The three women who live Downtown
said the benefits far outweigh the deficits.
“I don’t want to be anywhere else,” Barth
said, “because it is easy to live Downtown.”
“I love the convenience of being close
to school, work and home,” Hawkins said.
“You save time and money on gas, mileage,
wear and tear on your car and the hassle of
finding parking. Networking is the cherry
on top! You can meet so many people with
the same interests, hobbies, etc.”
Anderson described her Downtown
experience as rich in culture with all the
places she loves — MOCA Jacksonville,
Hemming Park, food trucks, The Florida
Theatre, The 5 & Dime. And she doesn’t
have to add the hassle of figuring out where
to park.
“In five minutes, I can be to all of those
places, and that’s joyous,” she said.
“I like it because it’s grittier,” Anderson
said. “I like an urban experience. I feel that
it reflects life in a more realistic way, which
I like. It’s not just homogeneous.”
But the downside is that a large swath of
Downtown is still empty. She wants to see
more businesses — dry cleaners, bodegas,
shoe repair, drug stores, restaurants. In an
age where you can have almost anything
delivered right to your door, Anderson
wants to get to know the people who work
at the stores in her neighborhood.
“I like that sense of community,” she said.
Wish lists
Alvarez listed the joys of shopping at
several locally owned businesses, such
as Wolf & Cub, Chamblin’s Uptown and
Vagabond Coffee Bodega. But one big thing
is missing.
“I wouldn’t move my family where I
couldn’t have access to a grocery store
quickly,” Alvarez said.
Barth said the Downtown Harvey’s
Supermarket is an acceptable option in a
pinch. She can easily drive to Fresh Market
in Brooklyn or Publix in Riverside, although
increased traffic has made those drives a bit
longer. Plans reported in 2014 for the Laura
Street Trio included an urban grocery.
“I don’t even want to get in a car,” Anderson
lamented.
In addition to a high-quality grocery
store, Barth listed several items on her
Downtown wish list: a fish market, a general
store and a liquor store where she can
buy supplies to enjoy a gin and tonic on
her balcony. Hawkins longs for a few more
clothing boutiques and a store specializing
in healthy food.
Anfuso said the people she works with in
the film industry complain that Downtown
Jacksonville is missing a destination hotel.
“There’s no impressive, breathtaking,
you-have-to-stay-at-this-hotel Downtown,”
Anfuso said.
One of the biggest items on everyone’s
wish list is a robust calendar that helps visitors
and hometown folks alike know what’s
going on in Downtown, although event listings
from Visit Jacksonville and Downtown
Vision are doing a good job.
“They have no idea where to go, so they
drive through Downtown,” Anfuso said.
“They don’t know where to go or what
to do, and then they end up at the Town
Center.”
Denise M. Reagan is the executive
director of the Garden Club of Jacksonville.
She lives in Arlington.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 27

LISTENING TO CONSTITUENTS:
DIA CEO Lori Boyer talks with
Stanley Scott, the managing director
of the African American Economic
Recovery Think Tank about his
concerns with condominium
development plans incorporating “Lift
Ev’ry Voice and Sing” park in LaVilla.
28
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

}
The
Women’s
Issue
Lori Boyer’s
next act just
might be her
biggest one yet
An advocate for
numerous Downtown
initiatives, the former
city councilwoman
is now at the helm
of the Downtown
Investment Authority.
By FRANK DENTON
Photos by BOB SELF
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 29

Downtown and
Lori Boyer may be
reaching critical
mass together.
Boyer might tell you she already has,
with her new job as chief executive officer
of the Downtown Investment Authority,
after earlier careers and activities that
almost seem like designed preparation
for her to be the leader of Downtown
redevelopment.
She is finding that our groggily awakening
Downtown may be reaching the
point of having its own energy in attracting
and driving activity and investment
and new life.
Boyer came here 41 years ago, having
transcended a humble upbringing in rural
South Dakota — famously working at the
Dairy Queen through high school — by
graduating from Georgetown University
and the University of Florida Law School.
She launched her career as a lawyer
practicing in land use and environmental
law then, in the early ’90s, ended up working
for, then running several real estate
investment and management companies.
And on her own time, she plunged
into community service through a raft of
neighborhood and civic organizations and
finally as a member of the City Council for
two terms, distinguished by major Downtown
initiatives, notably simplifying the
arcane zoning system and creating a plan,
now being implemented, for humanizing
the St. Johns River through people-oriented
nodes of access and activity.
Amid the political squabbles, lawsuits
over the Landing and fizzles like Berkman
II, Boyer was quietly putting ideas and
pieces together, organizing support and
getting things done, without all the criticism,
arguments and excuses.
Frankly, Boyer’s critical mass for the
DIA job came because her first careers
made it financially feasible. “Both in my
legal practice, and eventually in the real
estate development and property management
fields, those were income-producing
years,” she said. “And I got to the
point where I didn’t have to work solely
for income.
“It was a choice when my youngest
child, my son, went to college. That’s when
I decided to run for public office. It was
one of those moments in one’s life where
you reflect and regroup and say, what do
I want to do now? And it really was an
opportunity to use skills and background
that I had in a way that would benefit the
city that I loved and had been home to me
for a long time.
“So I do find this fun. I wouldn’t be
doing it, frankly, if I didn’t, but I think it’s
30
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

BOYER
also meaningful. And to me, those two
blend a little bit.”
Critical mass
Downtown
Only two weeks into the job in July,
Boyer already could feel Downtown
approaching its own critical mass. “I have
lots of individual developers and investors
at the moment that are reaching out and
scheduling meetings that have an interest
in Jacksonville,” she said in an interview
then. “I’ve had folks from New York and
Detroit, and Atlanta, and … I mean, in just
in the last two weeks.”
J magazine has been among those
pointing out that most of the new investment
in Downtown has been local people,
sometimes out of loyalty, not out-of-town
investors seeing an opportunity to get
involved in a valid economic opportunity.
Boyer acknowledged that DIA has not
really been marketing Jacksonville beyond
Jacksonville much. “Most of the projects
tend to be local developers and people
that have invested. I think that was a fact
of the market at the time, because you had
to be local and really know what-was-what
in order to be able to make money. We
just weren’t there yet.”
But critical mass is forming, she said.
“We have gotten to a place now where we
all say we hear this momentum and everything.
It’s real in terms of numbers, it’s real
in terms of investment. The market rent
on residential, the multifamily units, is
now above $2 a square foot. That seems to
be the magic number that everyone uses
from an investment perspective, to say I
can pay current construction costs and
Boyer takes calls in her office after her first meeting
as CEO of the Downtown Investment Authority.
still get enough return on my investment
to make this worthwhile, which is generating
all this external interest.”
There are always
the suburbs
That’s a real turnaround from the past
few decades, when hardly anyone lived
Downtown or even played Downtown
and people used it only as a place to work.
That was not only because of the lure of
the beach, the suburbs and the shopping
malls but also because there wasn’t much
going on Downtown.
“I think the successful downtowns now
obviously have offices and jobs,” Boyer
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 31

BOYER
As chief executive officer of the Downtown Investment Authority, Boyer hit the ground running during her first DIA board meeting in August.
said. “But the critical pillar for a successful
Downtown today is that 10,000 or maybe
it’s 11 or 12,000 people live there. It is
having residents Downtown who seek and
bring a certain lifestyle and a certain energy.
Yes, they want to live there because
it’s convenient for work, but for some of
them, they commute out.
“What they really want to live there for
is the lifestyle and the proximity to the
Performing Arts Center and the proximity
to the stadium and the proximity to
districts like the Elbow. And the opportunities
that being in that urban environment
provides for interaction with other
people, where you’re not going into your
apartment or your yard and closing your
front door and not seeing anybody else.
People are on the street, and there’s a
different opportunity to interact. It’s the
energy from that which drives, I think,
both the younger folks who want to live in
Downtown and the retirees who want to
live in town. I think they’re both coming
for the same reason — looking for that
lifestyle.
“So there is this migration to urban
areas,” Boyer said. “And when you get
that critical mass of people that have that
lifestyle desire, then the businesses that
support that lifestyle, the entertainment
venues, the restaurants, the attractions,
all can thrive, and it becomes this domino
effect.
“That is the vision, coupled with the
fact that we have this magnificent river.
We’ve been going around the country,
in Toronto, nationally, internationally,
looking at what other people have done
Boyer served two terms as a Jacksonville city
council member before taking over as CEO of the
Downtown Investment Authority.

‘‘
was adopted under the then-new DIA in
with their waterfront, and how can the
waterfront activation feed into and create
that lifestyle and that energy for the people
who are moving Downtown and draw
other people Downtown because they
want to come visit. So, it becomes maybe
not the only central focus of Jacksonville
— there are going to be people who
prefer the beach, and there are going to be
people who want to go to (St. Johns) Town
Center. But Downtown should be on a
par with those in terms of competing for:
What do I do this weekend?”
A master plan?
Skeptics, especially John Q. Cynic, still
dismiss Downtown plans and progress by
arguing that nothing much will happen
until we get a master plan.
They’re overlooking the fact that we do
have a master plan. Unfortunately, it is not
called the “Downtown Master Plan.” It has
the catchy title “Downtown Northbank and
Southside Community Redevelopment
Area Plan” and “Business Investment and
Development Strategy” and consists of 381
pages of data, background, studies, explanations,
recommendations and, finally,
projects as specific as “free Wi-Fi system”
(done) and “Hemming Park Re-Design and
Programming” (done), as complicated as
“Riverplace Boulevard Road Diet” (under
construction) and as big as “Reintroduce
Two-Way Streets” (not done yet). When it
There are going to be people who
prefer the beach, and there are
going to be people who want to
go to (St. Johns) Town Center. But
Downtown should be on a par
with those in terms of competing
for: What do I do this weekend?”
2014, it set near-term goals for 2014-2015,
mid-term goals for 2017-2021 and longterm
goals for 2021-2025, the last including
the long-dreamed-of Emerald Trail.
Boyer said, “We have more of a master
plan than people think or acknowledge.
But what we have is a 300-page document
of text. Most people don’t relate to that.
They want to see drawings, they want to
see some bullet-point graphics.
“So what we really need to do is synthesize
what’s in that document and present it
in a way that is more visual and easily understandable.
So we are required this year
to update the CRA plan and the BID plan,
and we have professional service dollars in
next year’s budget to do that.
“Frankly, there’s not much in it that I
disagree with. I just think we need to elaborate
and to refine it. The things like the
LaVilla strategy, which has become a more
specific, more refined element for La Villa.
“Brooklyn is so far along in its development,
I think it would be not a great investment
to do some kind of an overlaid more
detailed master plan for Brooklyn because
most of Brooklyn is pretty clear. You’ve got
the office towers and kind of this commercial
corridor along Riverside Avenue.
You’ve got the residential developing next
to it. There are plans for McCoys Creek and
the area between Park Street and McCoys.
Brooklyn’s a long way along in its master
plan design already.
“Cathedral District has done its own
plan. What’s going to happen at the
Shipyards and Lot J is largely being master-planned
by the master developer.
“So I think we have that master plan, I
just don’t think we’ve done a good job of
presenting it to the world.”
LORI BOYER
Boyer said she’s gone through the plan
and found that most of the early goals have
been accomplished. “But there are a number
of things we haven’t done, and I have
them all in my list for next year. It’s like OK,
how do we start doing this?”
She will have more firepower than her
predecessor Aundra Wallace, as the DIA is
now searching for a new redevelopment
coordinator, a communications coordinator
and a real estate development director.
At the moment, Boyer has only two staff
members.
What about those
two-way streets?
“We’re starting on that this summer,”
Boyer said. “We’re doing turning-radius
Boyer visits with DIA board members Braxton
Gillam and Todd Froats after wrapping up her first
meeting as CEO.

‘
counts to figure out, from an intersection
standpoint, how trucks would turn and
things like that if we converted to two-way
and whether we have to make curve modifications.
We have some funding in the
Downtown tax-increment district. Could
we implement one street next year or three
blocks of one street? Or how do you do it?
How do you phase it? So we’re trying to
figure out the if-I-do-this-street-do-I-haveto-do-the-cross-street-too?”
The DIA is analyzing such practical
issues this year, she said, “so that hopefully
next year in the budget, we can incorporate
at least several streets and start
working our way through them.”
The vibrancy that you’re seeing
in Brooklyn, or that you’re
seeing on the Southbank, or if
the entertainment zone happens
by the stadium and some energy
I’m seeing down there about
other developments in that area.
They’re all wonderful. But we
need this core area to have that.”
LORI BOYER
A need for city
money Downtown
One issue facing Downtown revitalization
is, of course, money. Most of the
investment is coming, and should and
must come, from private investors who
see a way to earn a profitable return or
make a commitment to Downtown. But
it also will require some public money to
jump-start some projects and to provide
public infrastructure and amenities.
What is the funding role of the DIA, as
the Downtown ringmaster?
Boyer says the city’s Historic Preservation
Trust could use an infusion of cash,
since it is entirely committed now. So
some important projects that would be eligible
for such money — the Ambassador
Hotel, for example, and Jones Brothers
Furniture project — will have to get their
public contributions from specific City
Council appropriations.
As a recent and longtime council
member, she didn’t seem to have a problem
with that, but she does see a need for
a funding source for Downtown capital
projects that are part of the master plan
but not funded. “Implementing the twoway
streets,” she gave as an example.
“We’re going to be doing a park study
implementing Downtown parks that
serve residents Downtown. Whether it’s a
dog park or tot lot or implementing some
of the activation things along the waterfront,
some of that will be that public
infrastructure that serves the Downtown
community we are building. Those will
need to be funded. And that will be something
where that would be very helpful if
we had funds that we could just use for
that.”
Those could be individual appropriations,
or the council could entrust the DIA
with general Downtown funding.
“Could be either way,” she said. “If the
funds were allocated to the Downtown
Investment Authority and the board had
the authority to pick and choose specifically
which project made more sense and
whatever development activity was going
on there, it’s a streamlined process and
probably a more strategic process.”
As an example, she talked about the
competing proposals to develop townhouses
in LaVilla on city-owned land
between the Jacksonville Regional Transportation
Center and Lift Ev’ry Voice and
Sing Park. The proposals differed on what
would be in the developments, how the
developers would pay for the land, how
they would integrate into LaVilla’s plan
and their commitments to the park.
“But that’s a parks department issue,”
Boyer said. “And they both go right along
Lee Street where the Model Mile of the
Emerald Trail is proposed. And the
LaVilla strategy suggests moving the curb
on Lee Street. Well, we really don’t want
Development A constructed until we fund
and work with the public side of this so
that the things all work together. So the
curb line, the Model Mile location where
the trail is and how it interfaces with the
park all need to be decided before you
have somebody build you in and confine
that space.
“And so that’s one of those things
that if the DIA had funds for Downtown
infrastructure projects they could then
use, you could solve this problem. I mean,
without having to go through three or
four pieces of legislation and figure it out,
we could solve that problem. We need to
make all of those happen together.”
Money to facilitate
adaptive reuse
In the Q&A on page 92, Downtown
pioneer Sherry Magill argues for adaptive
reuse of historic or old buildings
over the proliferating and often lookalike
modern buildings, such as the apartment
complexes in Brooklyn, LaVilla and the
Southbank. Putting new life into historic
buildings creates character and authenticity
that many people, especially millennials,
seek in deciding where to live and
play.
“It’s largely the economics of it,” Boyer
said. “It’s hard and expensive to do adaptive
reuse of older buildings. The DIA supported
the FSCJ (student apartments on
Adams Street), we’ve got the Ambassador
Hotel, we’ve got the Jones Brothers building.
The Ambassador’s moving forward,
Jones Brothers is working to find tenants
and make the numbers work. We’ve got
34
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

Barnett coming online. I sure hope we get
ground broken on the Laura Street Trio
behind it.
“But I do think that one of the things in
our plan update that merits consideration
is whether there is some other incentive
we can provide for adaptive reuse. I think
I agree with her there’s a value in it. I don’t
want to see the building demolished. But
how can we make it economically viable
for somebody? And I will tell you that a
lot of the folks who have done historic
renovations have really lost their shirts on
it. And don’t feel that it’s … even with the
incentives that we provide for it, that it’s a
value proposition at the moment.
“Even when Clara White (Mission) was
doing some veterans housing units in an
old facility, they had to come back for a
couple of additional appropriations … it
doesn’t even matter the magnitude or the
scale of the project or how luxury it is or
not. They all seem to be really challenged
to make the numbers work.
Boyer talks with a member of the media as she
arrives for a DIA board meeting in Jacksonville’s
City Hall building.
“So the question is what else can we
do to make that happen? Because I would
agree with Sherry that this core area,
and having significant vacancies in it, is
a challenge for Downtown overall. It’s
important to us … the vibrancy that you’re
seeing in Brooklyn, or that you’re seeing
on the Southbank, or if the entertainment
zone happens by the stadium and some
energy I’m seeing down there about other
developments in that area. They’re all
wonderful. But we need this core area to
have that.”
A passion for
Downtown
Boyer’s driving motivation will be her
personal passion for Downtown.
“Absolutely,” she said. “I lived in
Avondale and then I lived in San Marco.
So I’ve always lived close to Downtown.
And back in the day, I worked Downtown,
I worked in the Barnett Bank building,
and I worked in Independent Life when
it was Independent Life. So I remember
Downtown when the department stores
were still Downtown and the streets were
bustling. It’s not like I moved here and
lived in the suburbs and didn’t have that
relationship with Downtown.
“I remember when bands used to play
at the park around Friendship Fountain
and we would go on the weekend and
take our kids and sit on a blanket and
watch that. I mean, I remember lots of
things we used to have Downtown that,
over the years, we don’t anymore, that
we’ve lost.
“But I didn’t become passionate about
the opportunities that we have Downtown
now, really, until my work on City
Council. What I started to see was this
momentum building in this opportunity.
And then I became a real Downtown
advocate.
“It’s different, it won’t be the same,”
she said, “but there is a new downtown
era across the nation. We have an opportunity
to create what the new Downtown
Jacksonville is. And we’re getting very
close to having the critical mass that will
make it the vibrant place that everybody’s
been looking for.”
Frank Denton, retired editor of
The Florida Times-Union, is editor of J.
He lives in Riverside.

}
The
Women’s
Issue
Closing the
gender gap in
Jacksonville
leadership
Women in power in
Jacksonville isn’t unheard of,
but it’s more the exception
than the rule. From 1999 to
2003, 10 women, including
Elaine Brown, served on
City Council. Brown is now
mayor of Neptune Beach.
By MIKE CLARK
Photo by BOB SELF
36
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

WOMEN IN CHARGE:
Elaine Brown was part
of a historic Jacksonville
City Council class.
From 1999 to 2003, 10
female members – a
majority – were elected
to the council.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 37

Inertia can be
incredibly powerful.
Even bad decisions are
difficult to overturn
once they have the power of precedent.
When it comes to the role of women in
Jacksonville, precedent is that they have
limited power with some major exceptions.
So a group of influential women and a
few men have been working in recent years
to change that precedent, to help Jacksonville
take full advantage of all of its great
leaders, and that includes women.
But as philanthropist Cynthia Edelman
told me, emotion in her voice, “This is hard
work.”
That is the tragedy and the injustice.
How long has Jacksonville lost the
contributions of outstanding women? How
many of them have left the city because they
could find opportunities elsewhere? It’s a
particular issue for Downtown revitalization
because Downtown is the locus of power,
as the center of government, business and
leadership.
How do you change this narrative?
The Jacksonville Women’s Leadership
Coalition, which represents about 13
women’s groups, has hired the Institute for
Women’s Policy Research of Washington
to conduct a report on the status of women
in Jacksonville’s leadership positions. It will
reveal progress and the lack of it. The report
is expected in October.
The Institute for Women’s Policy
Research was founded in 1987 to “inspire
public dialogue, shape policy and improve
the lives and opportunities of women.” The
group is independent and does not lobby.
The Community Foundation for Northeast
Florida is providing much of the fundraising
and organizational support.
The study emerged from a summit
sponsored by the EVE Awards of the Times-
Union. Edelman said a three-part action list
was developed:
Produce data for a scorecard that will
reveal the status of women in key Jacksonville
areas such as business, government
and nonprofits.
Foster a leadership pipeline. Many
young women want to know about mentors.
Where do you find them? How does mentorship
work?
How can men be encouraged to be more
engaged in this work? Jacksonville University
President Tim Cost and retired CSX CEO
Michael Ward lead this effort.
While we don’t have the Jacksonville
findings, the Institute for Women’s Policy
Research in 2018 produced a report on the
economic status of women in Florida.
“Women in Florida have made considerable
advances in recent years but still face
inequities that often prevent them from
reaching their full potential,” the report
states.
Since 2004, the gender wage gap has
narrowed, a higher percentage of women
have bachelor’s degrees but a larger share of
women live in poverty.
“If employed women in Florida were
paid the same as comparable men, their
poverty rate would be reduced by more than
half and poverty among employed single
mothers would also drop by more than half,”
the report stated.
A major issue is that the community
remains largely unaware of inequities
faced by women. Take City Council. There
currently are five women on the 19-member
group, 26 percent. That’s actually
38
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

etter than most years.
When I took over as editorial page editor of the Times-Union in
2005, I was surprised by what I saw in City Council chambers. Not
only were there many women on City Council, but at times most of
the staff members at committee meetings were women — city attorneys,
auditors and so forth.
I thought that was progress, the new normal. Sadly, it was an
exception.
The City Council’s website lists all the members of each four-year
term since consolidation. It shows Jacksonville has made almost no
progress in the representation of women on the council in the over
50 years since consolidation.
For instance, the first two classes of City Council — 1967-1971 and
1971-1975 — included just two women in the 19 members. Sallye
Mathis and Mary Singleton were giants, but they were definitely
exceptions in a male-dominated group.
Most often there have been either three women (four times) or
four women (four times) on City Council.
Has there ever been a majority of women on City Council? Yes,
once. In 1999-2003, there were 10 women, including four of five atlarge
female members elected countywide.
Matt Carlucci was in a unique position in that 1999 City Council
class. He was a white male in the minority.
“That was a historic council, and I knew it even then,” he said in an
email. “I was extremely proud to be part of it.”
He recalls Alberta Hipps as council president playing an important
role in splitting the Jacksonville Aviation Authority from the Port Authority
as well as leading City Council on the Better Jacksonville Plan.
Carlucci said this majority-female council made Jacksonville a
better place because “it was a council of unity and caring.”
Elaine Brown was one of the 10 female trailblazers of the 1999 City
Council class. That class included a female president, Ginger Soud,
followed the next year by another female president, Alberta Hipps.
Brown’s campaign platform highlighted her “experience, leadership
and commitment” along with the proven ability to bring projects
to fruition. She had to defend her candidacy as separate from her
husband Dick Brown’s political career.
“We shocked everyone in the city because they expected a lot
of infighting,” Brown said. “That never happened.There was good
debate and then we went about our business.”
A reading of news stories of the time showed Brown’s involvement
in Downtown, children’s issues and redevelopment. She and Councilwoman
Suzanne Jenkins persuaded Mayor John Delaney and
Sheriff Nat Glover to tour several neglected neighborhoods.
In Brown’s second term with eight women on the council she was
president in the 2004-2005 year. That term was marked by four major
storms and a Super Bowl.
At a youth football game for the Super Bowl coached by Snoop
Dogg she even rapped to cheers from the crowd.Suddenly, slippage
occurred with just three women in the next two classes.
What happened? It’s difficult to say.
Edelman said she intends that the study produced by the Institute
for Women’s Policy Research will not sit on a shelf but will be used to
spur progress. A business, for instance, could be publicly recognized
as being a leader in providing opportunities for women.
“To have a document that is respected as a standard would be a
very positive step for the community,” she said. “Women have been
undervalued, and it’s time for women to step up and use their voices
to help those who don’t have one.
Debbie Buckland, the chair of the JAX Chamber board and a leader
in the Women’s Leadership Coalition, said that the report is going
to be relentlessly data-driven. It will identify areas of “best in class”
in Jacksonville that are “doing it right” when it comes to including
women as key leaders.
As CEO of CSX, Ward had seven people reporting to him. There
were four women, including the operations head. For Ward, it just
made good business sense to have that diversity.
“If you get two or three smart people together you probably come
up with a good answer to a problem or situation,” he said. “If you
have four or five you do even better, especially if you have some
diversity of views.
“The plain old fact is that men and women think differently. I’m
sorry, it’s just reality. So having different points of view and different
life experiences helps an organization come up with different
answers.”
Ward was asked why this is so difficult.
“It’s an issue in Jacksonville,” he said, “but it’s not a Jacksonville-only
issue.”
How can more men be encouraged to mentor women?
“There are people who do that naturally,” Ward said. “But the
Me-Too movement may be making that a little bit harder. People who
are not strongly inclined to mentor can use it as a great excuse not to
do it.”
Which brings us back to pushing against inertia. The effort is
worth it.
For those who want a better quality of life in Jacksonville, talented
women are needed.
Mike Clark has been a reporter and editor for The Florida Times-Union
and the Jacksonville Journal since 1973 and editorial page editor since 2005.
He lives in Nocatee.
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FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 39

Q:
CHECKING
More than 4,000 readers of
The Florida Times-Union have
volunteered to be part of the
Email Interactive Group. They
respond to occasional questions
about public issues in our
community.
Linda Segall,
Jacksonville
Several years ago before GPS,
my sister-in-law was in Jacksonville
for business. I found
the streets confusing. I had
difficulty finding the Omni!
Although I have GPS now, I
still find navigating Downtown
extremely difficult.
Patricia A. Kidd,
Jacksonville
If we are speaking of current
experiences, it would definitely
be going to events in
the beautiful Main Library,
from the Makerspace to
weddings. The worst experience
involves parks filled with
trash and loiterers.
Mary Bolin,
Jacksonville Beach
I always enjoyed the lighting
of the Christmas tree at the
Landing. The music and entertainment
was a great way to
celebrate the season.
THE PULSE
Terri Quint,
Ponte Vedra
The least alluring aspect of
going Downtown is finding
a parking space that doesn’t
cost $20. There should be
several parking garages with
a $5 maximum charge and
more parking meters.
Barbara Link,
Jacksonville
The worst is having someone
panhandle you every time
you get out of your car. Then
there’s the smell of the urine
on the streets, the food trash
that goes into the river when
we get a rainstorm. Take old
military barracks and require
the homeless to take care of
them. Do the right thing to
save the city.
Lisa Elwell,
Ponte Vedra Beach
Our best: Back in the early
‘90s, we used to bring our
boat Downtown, tie up at
the Landing or at River City
Brewery and go to the restaurants
and shop at the Landing.
I used to love watching fudge
being made at the Landing.
Our worst: Going to the Florida
Theatre and being harassed by
homeless people.
By Mike Clark
What were your best
and worst experiences in
Downtown Jacksonville?
Linda Willson,
Southside
My best experiences have
involved seeing singers and
dancers I admire at the Florida
Theatre. Just visiting the theatre
itself is a treat. My worst
experiences Downtown have
involved trouble finding parking,
getting lost because of the
troublesome one-way streets,
the exhausting heat during the
eight months of summer and
no shade.
Bonnie Sinatro,
Jacksonville
My best Downtown experience
by far? One Spark! It highlighted
everything wonderful
about Jacksonville — the arts,
the music, the fun. So many
young businesses got their
start at this event, and so much
cutting-edge creativity was
showcased. Bring it back!
Karen Bound,
Jacksonville
Best experiences are good
shows at the Florida Theatre
and the Times-Union Center.
Worst experiences involve
horrendous parking for handicapped
people. I would be
enticed to come Downtown
with a block or two of ethnic
restaurants.
Harriet Pruette,
Neptune Beach
While driving near the city bus
terminal, I see people sleeping
and sprawled along the sidewalks
with plastic bags and
garbage and filth. It’s absolutely
disgusting and certainly
shows the ugliness of Jacksonville.
The city should definitely
clean up the public areas.
Pat Cassidy,
Jacksonville
My best experience is going
to Jaguars games via bus. It’s
easy and the price is great.
The worst is going to the
Times-Union Center for my
granddaughter’s dance recital.
Parking was $20 and it took
40 minutes to get out. Downtown
has too many one-way
streets, overpriced parking
and too few attractions.
Probably my best experience Downtown involves
walking across the Main Street Bridge and
watching the fireworks for the Christmas boat
parade. I really liked the waterfalls of fireworks
off the bridges. The worst? I am uncomfortable
when homeless people panhandle me.
Linda Vacca, Jacksonville
40
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

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URBAN DESIGN:
VyStar CEO Brian
Wolfburg stands in front
of the Downtown parking
garage he had painted
with murals. The credit
union is in the process of
moving its headquarters
into the former Sun Trust
building at 76 S. Laura St.
42
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

VYSTAR’S
DOWNTOWN
AFFINITY
by MIKE CLARK photo by BOB SELF
VyStar Credit Union and
CEO BRIAN WOLFBURG literally
changed Downtown. Not only
did they move their corporate
headquarters to the urban core,
they also proudly branded
a Downtown skyscraper
with their name.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 43

VyStar employees work in one of the new office areas at the credit union’s headquarters in the 23-story tower at 76 S. Laura St.
commitment to Downtown was nothing new
for VyStar CEO Brian Wolfburg.
He had regularly invested in downtown
buildings in his hometown of Buffalo, N.Y.
But the decision to move VyStar’s
corporate headquarters to Downtown
Jacksonville made sense on several levels,
Wolfburg explained in an interview with
J magazine.
“Downtown cores are the center
of a region,” he explained. “From the
outside, people talk about going to
Jacksonville, not Northeast Florida.”
So putting the VyStar name
on a Downtown skyscraper, the former
SunTrust building, made a statement that VyStar is in the same
league locally with other major financial institutions.
Similarly, adding the VyStar name to
the Veterans Memorial Arena makes a
branding statement.
Financially, the Downtown move
made sense. VyStar looked at building a
suburban campus at a cost of about $250
million. Yet the entire cost of the renovation
of the SunTrust building will be about
$100 million. And they’re running well
ahead of the budget.
All of this is being done without city
incentives. There are two reasons for that,
Wolfburg explained.
“We had an opportunity we wanted to
move on, we worked with all the entities in
the city, helping to facilitate the deal,” he
said. City agencies and the JAX Chamber
were helpful. Acquiring incentives would
have slowed the process.
According to VyStar officials, the main goal in
designing the credit union’s new Downtown
headquarters was to make the space “a place
where (employees) can be creative and strategic
and innovative in their thoughts.”
BOB SELF (3); WILL DICKEY (4)A
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J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

XXXXXXXXX

There is the realization that VyStar is
owned by its members. Having Duval
taxpayers subsidize VyStar didn’t make
sense, though incentives are fine for some
situations, Wolfburg said.
V
yStar’s strength locally is not
well known. Who knows that
one-third or more of all the
households in Duval, St. Johns
and Clay counties are VyStar
customers?
“We’ve been around for 67
years, but those who did know us didn’t
know how big we are or how sophisticated
we are. We can both compete
with the large regional and national and
international banks while still having the
hometown feel,” Wolfburg said.
“Also with the number of people
moving into the Jacksonville area, we
found that they weren’t aware of us. It
takes some time to understand how big a
financial organization we are.”
How big is VyStar? It’s in 49 Florida counties
and four Southeast Georgia counties
with aggressive expansion plans. Wolfburg
envisions VyStar as a Florida institution with
its corporate home in Downtown Jacksonville.
“Geographically, the location is amazing,”
Wolfburg said. “You can’t argue with
having a river running through the city and
the beauty that brings. We talked to our
board and our employees about the impact
of seeing water on a daily basis, your mindset,
how you approach your day and the
work load that you can accomplish.”
Many workers in the new building will
have a river view rather than just a cubicle
view.
To Wolfburg, this is all about the VyStar
In July, VyStar Credit Union’s name went up on its
23-story Downtown tower at 76 S. Laura St.
team. He doesn’t want this story to be all
about him. Author Jim Collins writes about
that attitude in his book “Good to Great.”
“When you have a celebrity, the company
turns into ‘one genius with 1,000 helpers,’”
Collins wrote. “It creates a sense that
the whole thing is really about the CEO. At
a deeper level, we found that for leaders to
make something great, their ambition has
to be for the greatness of the work and the
company, rather than for themselves.”
This is illustrated by the top two floors of
the new VyStar building being reserved for
employees, not top executives. Wolfburg
borrowed the idea, but it also fits his ideal
business culture, one in which everyone is
pulling together. In fact, all bonuses in the
company are based on the same metrics.
WILL DICKEY
46
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

“It is our responsibility as a
corporate citizen to invest in the
city, to help revive the city.”
Brian Wolfburg, CEO of VyStar
The Downtown move was largely led by
Chad Meadows, chief operations officer.
Judy Walz, chief marketing and planning
officer, also played an important role.
Walz has been with VyStar for 18 years and
Meadows, 16 months.
Every detail in the move was important.
In selecting colors, for instance, the decision
was to make the headquarters building
“vibrant and high energy,” Meadows said,
while still using the company’s color palette.
“The goal was 100 percent focused on
the best place to work for our employees,
a place where they can be creative and
strategic and innovative in their thoughts,”
Meadows said.
He said the financial industry has
evolved; it’s not simply transactional.
“We’re definitely pushing the limits,
especially in the credit union arena,” he
said. “Our whole focus is on the member
experience. In order to do that, you’ve got
to have a best-in-class work force, a bestin-class
environment to work in to make
sure the experience for our customers is
first class. How do we become the best-ofthe-best
across the board?”
V
yStar’s new building reflects an
innovative culture.
The parking garage, for
instance, is highlighted with
the work of six artists selected
worldwide by partner ArtRepublic.
Colorful art can be found on the
outside walls, on the roof and in corners of
the second and third floors.
“People can say why did you spend the
money doing this?” Wolfburg said. “The
amount of money is a sliver of the payback
we will get, whether it’s the community’s
perception and feeling about us as an organization
or our own employees coming to
work every day and affecting how they start
their day.”
The alley between the parking garage and
the skyscraper could be activated with things
like popup retail, a coffee shop or a farmers
market, and it will be open to everyone
Downtown. Wolfburg wants VyStar to be a
good partner Downtown and will make sure
that its activities aren’t conflicting with other
Downtown activities.
“When we put them in an office where
they are looking at the river, we are seeing an
impact on our turnover ratio and also morale.
That means reduced errors, increased
productivity,” he said.
In fact, turnover has been cut in half from
about 20 percent to 10 percent. VyStar has
set a goal of becoming a highly rated business
for worker satisfaction.
For instance, there is paid family leave,
tuition that is paid upfront and not as reimbursement,
free premiums for certain health
insurance policies and regular bonuses.
So far as the customers go, growth has allowed
VyStar to slash its number of fees. And
VyStar’s financial performance is doing well.
“We want customers to have a great experience
with us, to tell people that this is a
local organization that has done well, that by
taking out loans you’re supporting Jacksonville,”
Wolfburg said.
Part of the local support involves the
military. VyStar was created in 1952 as Jax
Navy Federal Credit Union. Though VyStar
was born with a military base, only about 10
percent of its current customers are current
or retired military.
But VyStar continues to embrace the
military as a foundational value, illustrated by
military members on the board, philanthropic
work with the military and donations to
the military as part of its payment for naming
rights to the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena.
W
olfburg likes contributing
to the revival of Downtown.
“If we think of Jacksonville
as the city where VyStar
was born, where our roots
are, then it is our responsibility
as a corporate citizen to invest in the city,
to help revive the city. I don’t think we’re
singlehandedly doing anything, we’re playing
a part to help revitalize the city,” he said.
“A healthy Downtown, a healthy Jacksonville
and a healthy Northeast Florida
pays back to us as one of the major financial
institutions in the region.”
As for Downtown’s drawbacks, which
Wolfburg called “opportunities,” there aren’t
enough people living there. It still has a 9-to-
5 feel, he said.
“Most other cities our size don’t have so
many great micro markets right around it —
San Marco, Avondale, Riverside, Five Points
— amazing places to live, work and play. So
they have that Downtown feel without being
right Downtown. Downtown just needs to
come up with an identity all of its own and
then do a lot of infill residential.”
Wolfburg is doing his part by investing in
historic buildings Downtown with friends
and family, something he did in Buffalo. He
chooses buildings he would like to live in.
All of the buildings he owns in Buffalo were
built from about 1890 to 1920.
So far as speeding up the reuse of vacant
buildings and lots in the Central Business
District, Wolfburg says there is no magic
bullet. He noted good progress at the Barnett
Bank Building, Laura Street Trio, Jones
Bros. and Ambassador Hotel.
“Early on you have people picking up
different properties, one off, then all of a
sudden it heats up and goes faster than you
expect,” Wolfburg said.
The next phase of Downtown development
will have to deal with all the surface
parking lots and parking garages, he said.
For VyStar, the move Downtown makes
sense on just about every important level.
“This is not just a corporate move for us,
it’s a statement of who we are, it’s an investment
in progressive things that will help
move organization forward,” Wolfburg said.
Mike Clark has been a reporter and
editor for The Florida Times-Union and the
Jacksonville Journal since 1973 and editorial
page editor since 2005. He lives in Nocatee.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 47

THE BIG
PICTURE
48
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

JAGGER AND THE
ROLLING STONES
DAZZLE 50,000 AT
TIAA BANK FIELD
PHOTO BY BOB SELF
After a 30-year hiatus from playing in
Jacksonville, the Rolling Stones, along with
the band’s 75-year-old frontman Mick
Jagger, electrified more than 50,000 fans for
a solid two hours in the July heat at TIAA
Bank Field.
From the opening notes of “Street Fighting
Man” all the way through the fireworks
at the end of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,”
Jagger looked remarkably fit and was full-on
Jagger, strutting and swirling and getting the
stadium crowd to wiggle their fingers just by
doing so himself.
Jagger joked about how long it’s been
since the Stones last played Jacksonville.
“We’ve been sharing a room at the Seahorse
Motel, drinking at Pete’s Bar, went to see a
Jumbo Shrimp game and had two camel
riders washed down with a cherry limeade.”
The crowd, as it had all night, roared.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 49

CLEARING THE WAY:
Bertram Alford, 14, digs a hole for plants as he
and other members of the Green Team Youth
Corps work along a section of the S-Line, one
of the early segments of the Emerald Trail.
T r a i l
50
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

B l a z i n g
A century after architect Henry Klutho
had a vision to create a series of parks and
greenways that would ring Downtown. Now,
that idea may be closer to becoming a reality.
By RON LITTLEPAGE Photo by BOB SELF
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 51

A rendering from the proposal to build the Emerald Trail shows what a section of might look like along an existing elevated roadway on the east end of Downtown.
An idea
more than a century in the making
that is moving closer to reality — one
that is critical to fulfilling the promise
of Downtown — requires a look back
and a look forward.
Let’s begin with Henry Klutho, the architect who helped guide the rebuilding of Jacksonville after
much of the city was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1901.
Klutho’s idea was to create a series
of parks and greenways that would ring
Downtown and unite the city’s neighborhoods
with the central business district.
Two of the dominant features would
be McCoys Creek and Hogans Creek. The
concept became known as the Emerald
Necklace.
Remnants of Klutho’s grand vision are
still present today in the underutilized
parks along Hogans Creek in Springfield.
But for the most part, the vision went
unfulfilled, and the creeks that were to be its
centerpieces were abused and neglected.
The idea, however, was not forgotten.
In 2000, the Emerald Necklace was
included in a master plan the city adopted
called “Celebrating the River: A Plan for
Downtown Jacksonville.”
It was also a major part of another
master plan adopted in 2010: “Reuniting
the City with the River.”
The ideas in the plans were good, but as
often is the case in Jacksonville, implementation
proved to be a slow process.
That began to change in 2013 when
the administration of Mayor Alvin Brown
was successful in securing Groundwork
Jacksonville — a nonprofit that partners
with the U.S. National Park Service, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and
the City of Jacksonville.
As its website explains, Groundwork
“is the city’s primary nonprofit specifically
created to clean and redevelop Hogans
and McCoys creeks and convert contaminated
lands into parks, playgrounds, trails
and other public green spaces.”
Since 2013, Groundwork Jacksonville
through a steering committee and working
groups has made steady progress toward
achieving those goals.
A detailed master plan and implementation
strategy is in place, some grants and
other funding have been secured, the City
Council has approved the plan and the
administration is backing it.
Henry Klutho must be smiling.
KAIZEN COLLABORATIVE (ABOVE); BOB SELF (RIGHT)
52
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

ON THE TRAIL:
Kay Ehas, CEO of Groundwork
Jacksonville, stands along an already
converted stretch of the S-Line section
of the Emerald Trail in Springfield.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 53

“The Emerald Trail and creek restorations
are bigger than any single development
will ever be in terms of impact.”
Kay Ehas, CEO of Groundwork Jacksonville
The Emerald Necklace
First of all, it’s no longer the Emerald
Necklace. It’s the Emerald Trail.
Kay Ehas, the energetic CEO of Groundwork
Jacksonville, explained in an interview
that there are other trail systems in the country
with the name Emerald Necklace, and
one of them, the Boston Emerald Necklace
Conservancy, called to inform her the name
was trademarked.
She said that was no problem because
the name had already been changed to Emerald
Trail to better reflect the project.
As envisioned, the Emerald Trail will
include 34 miles of trails that will connect 16
historic neighborhoods, including Downtown,
to each other.
Of those trails, 19.7 miles will be new
ones that connect to trails already in place
like the S-Line, the Southbank and Northbank
riverwalks and the connection to San
Marco already under construction on the
Fuller Warren Bridge.
“One thing I really love about it,” Ehas
said, “is it connects lower income neighborhoods
to higher income neighborhoods,
which I think is important for both parties.”
What it will look like
The trails and greenways will be convenient
for pedestrians and bicyclists. McCoys
Creek will be restored as will Hogans Creek,
although that is a more challenging project.
The trails will touch on 20 schools and 22
city parks.
There will be trees, native plants and
public art.
Telling the history and stories of the
neighborhoods will be an important part of
the project.
“People are coming to us and saying let’s
figure out how we can help and work together,
which is why it needs to be a community
project,” Ehas said. “The more that happens,
the more likely it’s going to get done well.”
Construction on the new trails will begin
with a 1.3-mile segment that runs from
Stonewall Street near the Park Street viaduct
along Park and Lee streets until it connects
to the S-Line, a 4.8-mile trail built along a
stretch of an abandoned CSX railroad line, at
State Street.
“The reason we chose it is that it will connect
to the McCoys Creek trail segment and
to the existing S-Line segment,” Ehas said.
“What the residents said to us is they
want connections to get Downtown. That
solved that issue. We also thought it would
help spur LaVilla redevelopment.”
The model project is now scheduled
to be completed in September 2021 at an
estimated cost of $3.6 million.
“I think the jewel will be the Park Street
viaduct,” Ehas said. “We are taking one half
of that. It will be really landscaped so it will
be a destination as well as a trail.”
The design work is now being done on
the model project.
“There’s so much riding on this first trail
segment,” Ehas said, “because at the end of
it, the community has to say, ‘Oh, my god,
that is so fabulous we have to build more.’”
The hurdles ahead
Groundwork has been working with
neighbors and businesses that connect to
the trails to hear their concerns.
“We are closing most of McCoys Creek
Boulevard because it floods all the time,”
Ehas said. “The trail will be on the outer edge
of where that is now.
“There are some residents who are not
really happy about that. We get that.
“We had a visioning session with
residents. We had a visioning session with
developers.
“We did McCoys Creek Fest where we
closed off McCoys Creek Boulevard. We had
food, a DJ and different booths. It was a way
to share the design and get input but also to
talk about the history of the creek.”
Similar efforts will take place around the
model project once the design is complete.
“The residents and Groundwork are
concerned about gentrification like what
happened in Brooklyn,” Ehas said.
Renderings from the proposal to build the 34-mile
Emerald Trail include (L-R): an area along McCoys
Creek Blvd., a proposed walkway beneath a railway,
an area north of Chelsea Street and an abandoned
rail corridor near Liberty Street
KAIZEN COLLABORATIVE

Groundwork will “reach out to as many
residents as possible to listen to what their
concerns are, their fears, what they would
like to see, because it really has to be driven
by the residents.
“We already know that they are concerned
about being priced out. They would
like help getting their homes fixed up, and
they want jobs.”
KAIZEN COLLABORATIVE, BOB SELF
The cost
The estimated price tag for the 19 miles
of new trails is $31 million. The work along
McCoys and Hogans creeks will cost millions
more.
Much of the needed money is included
in the city’s Capital Improvement Plan
budget.
Grants are being awarded and money is
coming in to help with fundraising.
“I feel like ever since I got this job, the
universe has been with us,” Ehas said.
Why build the trail
Successful cities have trail systems that
connect neighborhoods and encourage
healthy lifestyles. The trails have also been
a boon for economic development in cities
like Atlanta, Greensboro, N.C., and Dallas.
“The Emerald Trail and creek restorations
are bigger than any single development
will ever be in terms of impact,” Ehas
said. “It should drive everything.”
The goal
For an idea that has lingered mostly on
the backburner for more than 100 years,
Groundwork has the audacious goal of
finishing the new trails in 10 years.
“That doesn’t mean everything is done,
but the big stuff is,” Ehas said. “I think a 100-
year vision getting done in 10 years is pretty
awesome.”
Jacksonville has a history of priorities
changing with administrations, and CIP
budgets aren’t chiseled in stone and can be
changed.
Will it be different with the Emerald Trail
this time around?
It will help that the project has the
support of people like veteran City Council
member Matt Carlucci, who has just returned
to the council as an at-large member.
He understands the value of the trail and
greenway system.
“In a way, it’s almost like a backyard to
people living Downtown,” Carlucci said. “It
will be a wonderful amenity as Downtown
continues to move forward.”
Another supporter is Randy DeFoor,
a new City Council member who has the
perspective of having served for six years on
the Jacksonville Economic Development
Commission.
“The Emerald Trail project will have a
strong impact on Downtown and the city
by promoting tourism and ecotourism,” she
said.
“Similar projects such as the Atlanta Beltline
support affordable workforce housing,
economic development, job creation, public
health, streetscapes, environmental cleanup
and historic preservation. I anticipate similar
results for Jacksonville.”
Developers are also excited about the
A garbage-strewn and graffiti-decorated homeless
camp under the Park Street viaduct which goes over
McCoys Creek along the proposed Emerald Trail.
Emerald Trail. One of them is John Rood,
who through his Vestcor Companies has
invested heavily in Downtown apartment
projects. He also is leading the development
of the Jacksonville Classical Academy charter
school that will produce a revived city
park near the McCoys Creek Greenway.
“Attractions are critical to developing our
urban area,” he said.
The Emerald Trail, he said, will be a
“tremendous addition to Downtown. It will
bring people from all over.”
Such support is critical to keep the Emerald
Trail moving forward.
Groundwork Jacksonville is another
important element to keep a focus on the
Emerald Trail when administrations and
councils change that wasn’t there before
when plans gathered dust on a shelf.
“That’s why it’s important that Groundwork
is here,” Ehas said, “to make sure it
continues.”
Ron Littlepage wrote for The
Florida Times-Union for 39 years, the last
28 as a columnist. He lives in Avondale.

Straddling McCoys Creek, the former Florida Times-Union property
is a parcel of land bordered by the St. Johns River, Riverside Avenue
and the Acosta Bridge. Turn the page to see what it might become.
BY FRANK DENTON
PHOTO BY BOB SELF
WATERWAY DEVELOPMENT:
McCoys Creek runs beneath the
former Florida Times-Union property
where it feeds into the St. Johns River.
56
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

WHAT’S NEXT FOR
1 RIVERSIDE AVE.?
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 57

t first glance, the old Times-Union building at 1 Riverside Ave. looks
like the perfect site for redevelopment: smack on the St. Johns and
literally over McCoys Creek with panoramic views of Downtown
and the Southbank and up and down the river.
On a second look, the 19–acre tract looks confined, boxed
in by busy Riverside Avenue, the Acosta and railroad bridges
and the Haskell Company campus. The site might be fine
A58
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

ACTIVATING 1 RIVERSIDE:
A conceptual rendering of a
possible design for the former
Florida Times-Union site.
RENDERINGS: Yves.Rathle ra studioYVESinc : conceptARCHITECTURE
for a condo or apartment or office building with limited access, but the isolation doesn’t feel like part of
a community, conjuring up images of yet another wasted opportunity for the Downtown riverfront.
Fortunately, the owners and probable developers of the site are taking a deep third look and trying
to use the 19 acres of precious land to connect and integrate with its contiguous neighbors — Brooklyn,
LaVilla, the Downtown core, the creek and the river. In fact, almost as a metaphor of the project, six of
those acres are underwater in the St. Johns.
But of course, the same factors that make the site so attractive make it equally complicated and
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 59

A conceptual rendering of a possible design for the former Florida Times-Union site at 1 Riverside Ave.
potentially controversial, as the owners’
goals and priorities are balanced with
public uses for the Emerald Trail, the
Northbank Riverwalk and the river — with
the city mediating and, if necessary, adjudicating.
The keys to connection are the hidden
creek and a dead-end street.
“Downtown Jacksonville has got an
enormous amount of potential as it relates
to some of the successes it has right now,”
said Allen Grinalds, director of real estate
for Morris Communications, which sold
the Times-Union in 2017 but retained the
property. “Specifically in the Brooklyn
neighborhood, you’ve got this energy, and I
think with that energy you’ve got opportunity
to be a part of something special.
“We recognize that the Times-Union
site has got a great location for redevelopment,
but we want to do it in concert with
the city and its vision for the city itself,”
Grinalds said. “We could do a good development
by ourselves. But we think with a
little more thoughtful planning and very
close collaboration with the city, we can
do something truly impactful as opposed
to just being another good development.
There’s nothing wrong with a good development,
but if we’re going to do it, we
want to do it right ...
“We’re fascinated with what’s going
on around us. So we have to pay attention
to what we’re going to do on the site, but
we also have to pay attention very, very
closely to what’s the long-term plan for our
neighbors so we can be a good neighbor.
And what are the long-term visioning plans
for the city. As an example, we think the activation
of McCoys Creek is a phenomenal
opportunity. And it’s not an easy process.
It’s fairly complex.”
A strategic property
Look at a map of greater Downtown,
and you can see that the western half of
Downtown actually centers on the T-U
property, which through history has made
it strategic as a commercial site. Over the
years, according to Times-Union company
records, it has been occupied by a fertilizer
company, a roller-skating facility, the Motor
Transit Co., Jacksonville Coach Co. and
Riverside Chevrolet.
Ultimately, the railroad companies that
merged into CSX owned both the land
and the Times-Union and, in 1967, built
the newspaper’s new home on the site,
just over the Acosta and railroad bridges
from CSX headquarters. Morris bought the
newspaper in 1983, then sold it to Gate-
House Media in 2017, retaining the land
for itself.
There are two large buildings, the
five-story administration building connected
by a walkway to the production
building, which housed operations —
the newsroom, advertising, circulation,
newsprint storage and the huge printing
presses.
Importantly, the complex sits directly
over, and obscures, McCoys Creek, from
Riverside Avenue to its mouth at the St.
Johns. It runs through a barrel-vault viaduct
underneath the walkway and parking
lots. People who worked in the buildings
for decades never saw the creek.
The site really wasn’t the perfect place
for a newspaper, as a transportation company
like the railroad might have noticed.
Its physical isolation near the urban core
made access very difficult for the inbound
trucks that delivered newsprint and ink
and the outbound bundles of newspapers
headed for delivery all over the region.
The city built the “jug handle” that
allowed southbound trucks to turn right off
Riverside and circle around for a straight
shot into the Times-Union. Now that the
newspaper itself has moved to core Down-
Yves.Rathle ra studioYVESinc : conceptARCHITECTURE
60
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

town offices and outsourced its printing,
the city is eliminating the jug handle and
trading that property to be an extension
of the shopping area anchored
McCoys Creek
STONEWALL ST.
JACKSON ST.
The Brooklyn
Riverside
apartments
Vista Brooklyn
apartments
220 Riverside
apartments
by Fresh Market and Brooklyn
Station.
That expansion of retailing
is just part of the remarkable
rebirth of Brooklyn, as reported
in the summer issue of J magazine
(www.jacksonville.com/
jmagazine/archive). In addition
to Brooklyn Station, more than
1,000 apartments have been built
or are under construction or
credibly planned. Park Street, the
main street of Brooklyn, is scheduled
for a “road diet,” which will
humanize it with slower traffic,
greenery and pedestrian and
bike paths. An innovative food
hall, with unique eateries and
food shops, is envisioned.
Just north, LaVilla similarly
is coming alive with development,
anchored by the Regional
Transportation Center under
construction and several new
apartment complexes, including
Lofts at LaVilla, Lofts at Jefferson
Station and Houston Street Manor.
The Downtown Investment Authority
is considering competing proposals for a
townhome project.
REVITALIZING 1 RIVERSIDE AVE.
The Brooklyn
Riverside
apartments
The Fresh Market
Winston
Family
YMCA
PARK ST.
MAGNOLIA ST.
RIVERSIDE AVE.
FORSYTH ST.
BAY ST.
WATER ST.
Prime F. Osborn III
Convention Center
Haskell
JEFFERSON ST.
1 Riverside Ave:
Former home
of The Florida
Times-Union
BROAD ST.
ACOSTA BRIDGE
St. Johns River
All that excitement would seem to stop
cold at the high-traffic Riverside Avenue.
But must it?
N
CONNECTING
People & places
As Grinalds and Robert Kuhar,
Morris vice president of property
and facilities, sat on the terrace of
BurgerFi across Riverside from the
T-U site, they talked only briefly
about the actual content of the
proposed development after razing
the existing buildings: maybe two
300-unit apartment buildings, a
200-room hotel, 300,000 square
feet of office space and “destination
retail and food and beverage”
along both sides of the creek.
What they mostly talked about,
with some passion, were the
development’s neighbors and how
to interconnect with them, to really
take advantage of the T-U site’s
potential.
“So from where we’re sitting
now, if you look to your left and to
your right, how do you get to the
river?” Grinalds asked.
Well, at the YMCA.
“For a casual visitor to Brook-
Excellence in motion.
yesterday
Dames Point Bridge
today
Jacksonville Regional Transportation Center at LaVilla
tomorrow
JEFF DAVIS
Ultimate Urban Circulator
autonomous vehicle
jtafla.com

lyn,” he said, “it should be clearly obvious
how you get to the river and enjoy it.
“Part of the development that we think
is critically important is not just our site
but circulation into our site and off our site.
Circulation from other parts of the Brooklyn
area so that folks can enjoy the amenities of
our site as well as other areas. In other words,
you need to be able to get from point A to
Just across from the former Florida Times-Union
property on the north side of Riverside Avenue,
the tree-lined McCoys Creek wanders along
through the Brooklyn neighborhood.
point B to point C in a path that’s easy, it’s
safe and it promotes circulation.
“If you only go to one place in Brooklyn
and you leave that place, we’ve lost our way
and we’ve lost an opportunity there.
“So the circulation within Brooklyn and
the connectivity to Downtown is a critically
important aspect of our development plans.
Circulation will drive really the enjoyment of
the entire neighborhood.”
Kuhar jumped in. “We need to really get
an in-depth understanding of the site and
how it works with the river, how it works with
the creek, how it works with Riverside Avenue,
Magnolia Street and circulation in and
out of the site … What is important for us to
figure out is the circulation, which is kind of
the unsexy part of this, the part about access
to the site — pedestrian, vehicular, bicycle,
how you get around, walkability.”
A field trip
For full appreciation of the
potential Grinalds and Kuhar
see, you need a field trip to
Brooklyn.
Park on Stonewall just off
Park, behind The Brooklyn
Riverside apartments, and walk
up onto the Park Street viaduct.
Stop where you see “I love you”
graffitied in blue onto the west
bridge barrier and “I love you
too!” graffitied in pink onto the
east barrier.
Look over the barrier — and
overlook the dumped trash and
probable homeless camp — and
you’ll see the hidden creek,
rushing fully after recent rains,
in a meandering path, amid lush
foliage. You can’t see where it
comes from or where it goes.
You’ll wonder: How could
we have let this wonderful
natural asset be so trashed and
forgotten?
Know that this is one end of
the fabled Emerald Necklace,
soon to undergo restoration, as
the Emerald Trail, by Groundwork
Jacksonville working
with the city. It loops all
around Downtown and ends
at the mouth of Hogans Creek
downriver.
Get back in your car, drive
south and east around the sprawling
Brooklyn Riverside complex, then turn
north on Magnolia, and you’ll find that it
dead-ends at the creek, again amid random
trash but with beautiful potential.
The magic that Kuhar and Grinalds
envision for the T-U site requires the liberation
of McCoys and Magnolia.
The big connection
Grinalds said the Morris vision hinges
on the “daylighting” of McCoys Creek, that
is, razing the T-U buildings and foundations
and letting the creek flow openly
into the St. Johns. “We recognize that as a
complex issue we need to work through in
cooperation with the city. It’s the biggest
complexity and the biggest opportunity.
“From an engineering perspective
and from a sustainability perspective, you
have to do it right. You can take down the
building, you can uncover the creek, but
if you don’t understand the hydrology of
the flood plains, if you don’t understand
the volumetrics of what’s coming down
the creek, you miss an opportunity to have
a positive impact on neighborhoods upstream.
So why wouldn’t you go through
the due diligence of really understanding
the engineering and the hydraulics of
uncovering it to everyone’s benefit?”
Kuhar said the city wants to open up
McCoys Creek to connect the river to the
Emerald Trail, and Grinalds added, “There
are a lot of details to be worked out, but
we’re in lockstep with the city in recognizing
the activation of McCoys Creek is a
great opportunity.”
To work through the needs and priorities,
the Morris team brought in the
Haskell Company, the design-build firm
that is also its neighbor to the south. Chris
Flagg of Haskell added Yves Rathle, a local
architect who has contributed design ideas
for riverfront projects from the Landing to
the Shipyards, the District and Lot J and
the Amazon proposal.
Rathle said the group has gone through
a long process of “thinking and creative
exploration. It could have been the most
creative exploration of solutions Jacksonville
has ever seen. Brainstorming and
design excellence like that happens on very
few projects.”
He said he submitted as many as 25
design options, one suggesting islands in
the river, some incorporating historical
images of the railroad bridge and newspaper
presses.
The design has changed about 30 times
and is still not final, Rathle said. “Truly, I
think anything still goes. Allen (Grinalds) is
really interested in exploring the art of the
possible.”
Exactly how
to connect
But before Morris can settle on a development
partner and a final design for the
property, it has to work through those details
Grinalds mentioned. That is not uncomplicated.
The Morris plan conflicts in several ways
with Groundwork Jacksonville’s vision for
the Emerald Trail.
For one thing, after daylighting the creek
by razing the buildings and parking lots, the
current development plan would put that
BOB SELF
62
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

A conceptual rendering of a possible design for the former Florida Times-Union site at 1 Riverside Ave.
Yves.Rathle ra studioYVESinc : conceptARCHITECTURE
new hotel astride the creek The conceptual
renderings have McCoys running underneath
the bridge ramps and the hotel,
then emptying into the St. Johns through a
riverfront plaza, the center of the entire development,
with green space on both sides,
backed by retail, food and beverage.
Rathle said the hotel covering the creek
is “a design opportunity” and could lead to
a unique feature, for example, by adding an
oculus, or circular window, in the hotel lobby
floor allowing people to look down on the
creek flow. Pedestrians still could walk along
both sides of the river under the hotel.
Another issue is how the Emerald Trail
might run through the property. Groundwork’s
plan is for an 18-foot-wide trail alongside
the creek all the way to the St. Johns.
Morris’s current plan for connecting to
Brooklyn and LaVilla activates Magnolia
Street, turning the dead end into a bridge
over the creek and, with a sweeping right
turn, running under the Acosta Bridge
ramps into the T-U site.
That design would have the pedestrian
and bicycle trail roughly following Magnolia,
crossing it twice, and running down
the north side of the site, along the railroad
tracks, to connect to the Riverwalk.
Groundwork and Morris seemingly also
disagree on the creek itself. Morris’s plan
shows the creek running straight through
what Groundwork understands to be a
42-foot-wide channel between bulkheads.
Groundwork wants a more natural 60-footwide
creek with a 30-foot “littoral shelf” on
each side.
“A littoral shelf is a shallow shelf … planted
with native aquatic vegetation,” said Kay
Ehas, Groundwork CEO. “Its purpose is to
help filter out the nutrients and minerals in
the water prior to reaching the river, provide
habitat and resting places for fish and also to
slow the flow of water.”
Ehas said Groundwork is looking at
possible ways to adapt its design closer to
the Morris concept while maintaining the
benefits of the littoral shelves.
Resolving those issues likely will fall to
the city, with the Downtown Investment Authority
mediating and maybe adjudicating.
Lori Boyer, DIA CEO, already has been
in meetings with Grinalds and Kuhar and
said their vision is “exciting … From our
perspective, both from a flood-control
standpoint and environmental standpoint
and everything else, we really want the creek
daylighted. And that also provides an attraction
and an amenity for the site, because you
can have tour boats or kayaks or whatever
enter the creek. It creates that energy for
the restaurants or the mixed-use facilities
and the hotel that they’re proposing. It’s an
important part of their development plan
that we execute on those parts.
“But by doing that, opening up the creek,
you also then don’t have access to the back
parcel or easy access to the back parcel
without creating this roadway under Acosta.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 63

So they’ve been spending a lot of time on the
logistics and the infrastructure design as to
how that would work to make sure that that
parcel between the creek and the railroad
track is viable as a development site too.”
Boyer said, “The types of uses they are
proposing, I think, are perfectly consistent
with our plan and the vision for the creek.
And the idea that it would connect both to
the Emerald Trail and to the Riverwalk is
amazing and would really, again, add some
of that excitement to the area.”
Common goals
Maybe those structural complications
are just details, because the parties seem to
agree on the essentials.
“We want to be a part of activating the St.
Johns River because it’s another phenomenal
water resource for the city of Jacksonville,”
Grinalds said. “And the Riverwalk is a great
linear feature, and it’s enjoyed by many of
Jacksonville’s finest. We think that can be
expanded by drawing people into various
entertainment alcoves, various residential
alcoves, various work alcoves so that the river
becomes more interactive.
“In other words, you don’t want to
interact with the river just when you’re on
the river. You want the river to be a part of the
sports spaces, the recreational spaces, dining,
entertainment, circulation, work, where you
live. That’s kind of the secret sauce, if you will:
to really activate the riverfront not in a linear
manner but in a three-dimensional manner
so you can get depth and it becomes much
more activated in terms of the different ways
you can enjoy a great natural resource.”
The Morris team seemed to understand
Jacksonville frustrations that so much of the
riverfront has been taken over by commercial
development at the expense of public
access and use. “Activating the green space
we recognize is very, very important,” Grinalds
said. “We could put in more leasable
square footage if we were just chasing the
bottom dollar. But we recognize that activating
the entire site with enjoyable green space
in concert with the activation of the river and
the creek is just a very important aspect.”
When will we see
shovels and cranes?
Kuhar and Grinalds were in town for
meetings with “senior city officials” about
common vision and ideas and possible city
incentives.
“We’re actively working with the city right
now to develop a timeline that works in conjunction
with the daylighting of the creek,”
Grinalds said.
Meanwhile, he said, Morris is looking for
a development partner. “We have had multiple
substantive discussions with various
development partners that have expressed
interest in the site. And those are ongoing.
What we’re essentially looking for is
someone who’s a great match for our vision
for the property. There are some local, some
national and even some international.”
Kuhar said demolition could start in the
second quarter of 2020.
“We need to complete a development
agreement with the city in the interim
prior to demolition,” Grinalds said. “We’re
working internally on our own to position
ourselves to move as quickly as possible
when that opportunity presents itself.
“The exciting thing is we feel that there’s
a great opportunity to do the entire site at
once, which is very unusual. We definitely
think that’s within the realm of the possible.
The reason that’s attractive is we’re not
interested in having a construction site for
10 years.
“We want to get this done is an expeditious
manner. We think there’s great opportunity
to do that.”
Most important, Grinalds said, is quality.
“In the aggregate, if we can’t do a first-class
development that’s our best effort, we don’t
want to do it. Frankly nor will we. It’s too
good of a site not to do it well.”
Frank Denton, retired editor of The Florida
Times-Union, is editor of J. He lives in Riverside.
Reporting the truth for more than 150 years.
#truthmatters
64 J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

Urban Living in Downtown Jacksonville
100%
occupied
100%
occupied
coming fall 2019
coming fall 2020

Growth
Spurt
With a goal of getting 10,000 residents
living Downtown, a recent housing boom
has some leaders thinking that number
will be eclipsed within the next five years
By LILLA ROSS Photo by BOB SELF
66
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

HOT PROPERTY:
The 10-story Vista Brooklyn
complex is well underway along
Riverside Ave. It will add another 300
apartments to the neighborhood.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 67

I
t’s a curious bit of Jacksonville history. The Great Fire of 1901 that
reduced to ashes what today is Downtown Jacksonville left 10,000 people
homeless. In the context of a major disaster, 10,000 is a staggering number.
But in the context of Downtown redevelopment, it’s the magic number
that will attract retail — including national chains — to the urban core.
And if Downtown had 10,000 residents in 1901, it can do it again.
Lori Boyer, the new CEO of the Downtown
Investment Authority, thinks the city
will achieve that goal in less than five years.
It’s halfway there. Downtown Vision’s
State of Downtown report issued in July
counted 5,220 residents in Downtown.
That’s 8 percent more than last year and
a whopping 52 percent increase since 2009
when the census was 2,704.
The demand for housing is there. The
occupancy rate Downtown is 96 percent.
Fortunately, four apartment buildings with
almost 1,000 units are under construction,
and several more, with about 3,000 units, are
in the wings.
Downtown Jacksonville is huge by most
metrics — almost 4 square miles. Its size
is turning out to be an advantage because
of its diversity of housing options: luxury
condos, affordable and workforce housing,
trendy lofts, subsidized housing for seniors,
market-rate townhomes and, coming soon,
micro housing in repurposed shipping
containers.
“We want a full spectrum of housing affordability,”
Boyer said. “We want something
for everybody.”
Many of the newest apartments such as
Vestcor’s Lofts are affordable and workforce
housing, which is available to low- and
moderate-income renters. It’s attractive to
developers because it comes with incentives.
“To build affordable workforce, there
has to be incentives like tax credits. That’s
true wherever you build it, in the suburbs
or Downtown,” said Vestcor President Steve
Moore.
“DIA and the Housing Finance Authority
are using the workforce model to help revitalize
Downtown, which is a great short-term
approach, good public policy that will have
long-term impact,” Moore said.
Vestcor’s Lofts at Jefferson Station, under
construction, and the proposed Lofts at the
Cathedral are mixed-income projects, which
Moore says “turns the corner” to market-rate
housing.
The current holy grail is market-rate rent
of $2 a square foot, about twice the rate of
TRACKING HOUSING GROWTH
IN DOWNTOWN JACKSONVILLE
27+73+l 15+85+l 58+42+l 100+0+l
Total
units
5,899
DOWNTOWN CORE
Open (520)
11 East 11 E. Forsyth St. 127 apartments
The Carling 31 W. Adams St. 100 apartments
Metropolitan Lofts 421 W. Church St. 116 apartments
Residences at City Place 311 W. Ashley St. 204 studio to 2 bedroom apartments
W.A. Knight Lofts 113 W. Adams St. 12 apartments
FSCJ Student Housing 20 W. Adams St. 58 apartments
The Residences at Barnett 112 W. Adams St. 107 units
Under construction (24)
225 Laura Street Apartments 225 Laura St. 4 apartments
Elena Flats 122 E. Duval St. 4 units
La Mesa Building 905 W. Forsyth St. 16 units
Proposed (228)
Ambassador Hotel church & Julia streets 200 units
Jones Brothers furniture building Hogan & Ashley streets 28 units
SOUTHBANK
Open (1,004)
The Strand 1401 Riverplace Blvd. 295 studio to 3 bedroom luxury apartments
San Marco Place 1478 Riverplace Blvd. 141 1 to 3 bedroom luxury condominiums
Peninsula 1431 Riverplace Blvd. 256 luxury condominiums
Broadstone River House 1655 Prudential Drive 300 studio-3 bedroom luxury apartments
Home Street Lofts 1050 Hendricks Ave. 12 for-sale units
Under construction (147)
SoBa 1444 Home Street 147 1 and 2 bedroom apartments
Planned (1,170)
The District
Units
open
3,413
UNITS Under
construction
840
Units
planned
1,646
1,170 residential units for sale or lease
Proposed
Kings Avenue Station
office and mixed-use residential
Old Florida Baptist building 1230 Hendricks Ave. office and mixed-use residential
Ventures Development Prudential Drive 185 apartments
JEFF DAVIS
68
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

a decade ago, when the average rent per
square foot ranged from 98 cents to $1.28.
Several new developments — Broadstone
River House on the Southbank and the Residences
at Barnett on Adams Street, both now
leasing, and Vista Brooklyn, 308-unit tower
under construction on Riverside Avenue —
hit that mark, according to a CBRE report.
“Once you’re over $2 a foot, then mid-rise
and high-rise developments are financially
viable,” Boyer said.
Although the city is just now reaching
NORTHBANK
that level, Boyer said developers in Charlotte
and Miami are making inquiries about
what’s available in Jacksonville.
And the answer is quite a lot.
One hotspot is the riverfront site of the old
courthouse and City Hall Annex. Boyer said
CBRE is marketing the property for the city.
She hopes to have proposals from
developers by the end of the year and says
construction could be underway before the
end of next year. Given the size and location
of the property, Boyer said it will be
Open (251)
Churchwell Lofts 301 E. Bay St. 21 apartments
Plaza Condominiums (Berkman) 400 E. Bay St. 210 luxury condominiums
Riverwalk Townhouses 141 N. Water St. 20 townhouses
BROOKLYN
Open (604)
220 Riverside 220 Riverside Ave. 294 apartments
Brooklyn Riverside 100 Magnolia St. 310 apartments
Under construction (308)
Vista Brooklyn 200 Riverside Ave. 308 apartments/retail mixed-use project
Planned (133)
Lofts at Brooklyn
LAVILLA
133 affordable and workforce apartments
Open (310)
Lofts at LaVilla 995 Water St. 130 studio to 3 bedroom apartments
Lofts at Monroe, 906 W. Monroe St. 108 affordable and workforce apartments
Houston Street Manor 130 Jefferson St. N. 72 apartments for seniors
Under construction (133)
Lofts at Jefferson Station 799 Water St. 133 studio to 3 bedroom affordable and
workforce apartments
PLANNED (70)
LaVilla Townhomes
CATHEDRAL DISTRICT
70 for-sale townhomes by Vestcor
Open (724)
Parks at the Cathedral 333 E. Church St. 51 townhomes
Cathedral Towers 601 N. Newnan St. 203 studio and 1 bedroom subsidized
senior apartments
Cathedral Townhouses 501 N. Ocean St. 177 1-bedroom subsidized senior apartments
Cathedral Terrace 701 N. Ocean St. 241 studio and 1-bedroom subsidized
senior apartments
Stevens Duval Apartments 601 N. Ocean St. 52 subsidized senior apartments
Planned (115)
Lofts at the Cathedral 325 E. Duval St. 115 affordable and workforce
apartments by Cathedral District-Jax
Proposed (173)
Ashley Square
110 one- and two-bedroom apartments for
working adults and seniors by Aging True
Container Apartments 412 Ashley St. 18 shipping containers converted
to apartments, by JWB Real Estate
Rafael Caldera
45 multifamily housing units with
ground-level art gallery and studio space
multi-use development expected to include
residential.
The success of the old courthouse/
City Hall project will determine the city’s
approach to finding a new use for the Jacksonville
Landing, which is expected to be
demolished this fall.
“The Landing will have more restrictions
and parameters,” Boyer said. “We know we
want public space and street-level engagement.
Bay Street needs a retail side, but
there’s leeway to be creative.”
And there’s the Berkman II, the partially
built high-rise abandoned in 2007. It’s a
prominent eyesore still awaiting a suitor. The
city says it is working on “viable options.”
But the success of Berkman II’s sibling,
which has been rebranded the Plaza, shows
that luxury condos, with its concierge and indoor
squash court, have a future Downtown.
As the level of market-rate housing rises,
expect to see more street-facing retail. Boyer
said Downtown has more retail than people
realize because some of it is inside office
buildings and not visible from the street. But
once Downtown reaches the magic numbers
of 10,000 residents and $2-a-square-foot
rent, expect to see national chains opening
stores Downtown, Boyer said.
LaVilla
A less obvious hotspot for development
is LaVilla. The historic black neighborhood
known for its blighted buildings is being
re-energized.
The Jacksonville Transportation Authority’s
new Regional Transportation Center is
scheduled to open next year, positioning the
neighborhood as a multi-modal transportation
hub.
Earlier this year, DIA and JTA released
a LaVilla Neighborhood Redevelopment
Strategy that envisions using LaVilla’s rich
African-American history as the foundation
for redevelopment that will include a
Heritage Trail, an expansion of Lift Ev’ry
Voice and Sing Park and a mix of affordable,
workforce and market-rate housing for lease
and purchase.
The residential component is already well
underway. The Vestcor Companies affordable
and workforce housing — the 130-unit
Lofts at LaVilla and the 108-unit Lofts at
Monroe — were fully occupied within days
of opening. The Lofts at Jefferson Station
are under construction and expected to fill
rapidly.
And who could have imagined an
arm-wrestling match over a block in LaVilla
for the chance to build market-rate homes?
Vestcor; Johnson Commons, a joint venture
of JWB Real Estate Capital LLC and Corner
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 69

“We’re very bullish on Downtown,
and we’re cheering for everyone else
who wants to build in Downtown.”
Steve Moore, President of Vestcor
Lot Development LLC, and Blackwater
Capital vied for the block bordered by West
Adams, Johnson, Lee and Forsyth streets.
Vestcor wants to build 70 townhomes,
Johnson Commons wanted to build 98
townhomes and retail space and Blackwater
wanted to build 64 townhomes. They would
sell in the mid-$200,000s. The DIA chose the
Vestcor proposal.
Boyer expects more development
because many of the vacant parcels in the
neighborhood are city-owned.
Brooklyn
The adjacent neighborhood of Brooklyn,
another historic black neighborhood that was
an eyesore, has now become the poster child
for what an urban residential neighborhood
could look like.
The resurrection of Brooklyn began in
2014 with the construction of Brooklyn
Station, anchored by The Fresh Market. It
was followed the next year by 220 Riverside,
a six-story apartment building with 294 units
built by NAI Hallmark Partners.
Next door, NAI Hallmark Partners and
Bristol Development Group are well underway
on Vista Brooklyn, a 10-story building
with 308 apartments.
The 310-unit Brooklyn Riverside apartment
complex, built by Atlanta developer
Pollack Shores between Park and Magnolia
streets, is now occupied.
Construction is expected to begin this
fall on Vestcor’s Lofts at Brooklyn, a 133-unit
affordable and workforce housing at Spruce
Street between Jackson and Stonewall streets.
They all are in walking distance of the new
Winston YMCA and the Northbank Riverwalk.
Another shopping center, Brooklyn
Place, to be built by Ferber Company next to
Brooklyn Station, is on the drawing boards.
On the horizon is a residential/multi-use
development on the old Times-Union property
across Riverside Avenue.
Southbank
Across the St. Johns River, the Southbank
has emerged as Downtown’s highrent
district: the Peninsula condos, the
Strand apartments and San Marco Place
condos. Most condos at the Peninsula sell
in the $500,000-$700,000 range, but one is
on the market for $1.1 million.
The new Broadstone River House on
Prudential Drive is now leasing its 300
luxury apartments with rents ranging from
$1,462 to $2,575.
The city is trying to give the Southbank
a more neighborhood feel with a “road
diet” to slow down vehicular traffic on
Riverplace Boulevard and wider sidewalks
and crosswalks to encourage pedestrian
and bicycle traffic. The project includes
additional parking and signage for the
Southbank Riverwalk.
A few blocks south off Hendricks Avenue
is the new SoBa apartments, with 147
apartments renting for between $1,300 and
$1,600, opening this fall.
And then there’s the long-awaited
District, a huge riverfront development by
Peter Rummell and Michael Munz that will
include 1,170 residential units for sale or
lease. Construction, expected to start this
fall, will transform the Southbank.
And still on the drawing boards is
Ventures Development’s 185-unit apartment
building on the Southbank west of the
Acosta Bridge.
Cathedral District
People have been calling the 33-block
area on the northside of Downtown home
for more than a half century. It is aptly
named the Cathedral District because
St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral has put its
stamp on the area.
In the 1960s, the congregation established
the Cathedral Foundation, now
known as Aging True, to build three
high-rises for senior citizens. About 640
senior citizens live in Cathedral Towers, Cathedral
Terraces and Cathedral Townhomes,
which recently were renovated at a cost of
$30 million.
Aging True is pursuing financing to
build another apartment building called
Ashley Square at Ashley and Beaver streets.
The five-story apartment building would
have 110 one- and two-bedroom units for
working adults and seniors and would be
adjacent to Stevens Duval Apartments, a
historic red-brick building that was the
city’s first school.
The Cathedral also donated land for the
51-unit Parks at the Cathedral townhomes
built across Church Street from the church.
An adjacent lot on Church Street was
earmarked for a second townhome project
never built.
The Cathedral recently set up Cathedral
District-Jax, a nonprofit whose mission is
redeveloping the district with residential
and retail.
Cathedral District-Jax is working with
Vestcor on a $20 million project to transform
the old Community Connections
property into the Lofts at the Cathedral, a
mixed-income housing development with
about 140 apartments.
The project recently lost out on state
funding but is pursuing other sources,
including state low-income housing tax
credits and a Recapture Enhanced Value
grant.
Another project in the works will bring
micro housing to the Cathedral District in
converted shipping containers. JWB Real
Estate Capital plans to build 320-squarefoot
studio apartments, 18 units at 412 E.
Ashley St. Rent will start at $550.
And developer Rafael Caldera is proposing
an art-themed 45-unit apartment
project at Duval and Washington streets
that would include studio space and an art
gallery.
Central Core
A future option for housing is the adaptive
reuse of historic buildings, something exemplified
in the Central Core.
Boyer calls adaptive reuse “a different
animal” that’s not for everyone.
Downtown abounds in old buildings,
some abandoned for decades, that could be
turned into housing, retail or office. But it’s an
70
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

expensive, complicated and often time-consuming
proposition.
While construction on a vacant parcel can
begin almost immediately, an abandoned
building has to be approached with care. The
aging façade might have unique architectural
details, but its interior can hide structural
weaknesses, and its historic past can
entangle it in preservation regulations.
The majority of housing options in the
Central Core are found in historic buildings,
TODAY: including 11 East Forsyth and The
NTACT US
one: 1-904-271-2352 Carling, which date to the 1920s and are
x: 1-904-271-2352
on the National Register of Historic Places.
Vestcor financed the work on both buildings
with Historic Preservation Trust Fund
grants and low-interest city loans.
Eleven East Forsyth, originally the Lynch
building and later American Heritage Life,
opened in 2003 with 127 units.
The following year, Vestcor tackled the
old Roosevelt Hotel, which was abandoned
after a catastrophic fire that killed 22 people
on the eve of the 1963 Gator Bowl game.
It reopened in 2005 as The Carling with 100
apartments.
Three other historic buildings have been
redeveloped as loft-style apartments:
Metropolitan Lofts, 116 units, in the
Massell Building, built in 1958 on West
Church Street.
Churchwell Lofts, 21 units, in the J.H.
Churchwell building, which was built after
the Great Fire, on East Bay Street.
The W.A. Knight building, 12 units, in
the W.A. Knight Lofts, built in 1926, at 113
W. Adams St.
The 58 units of FSCJ Student Housing,
20 W. Adams St., Downtown’s first student
housing, occupies the old Lerner Building.
The historic Barnett Bank building has new
life as the Residences at Barnett, with 107
one- and two-bedroom 25 N Market apartments, Street made
possible with $9.8
Jacksonville,
million in city
FL
incentives.
32202
And, the old Jones Brothers furniture
store on North Hogan Street is in the pipeline
to be redeveloped by ACE JAX into 28
apartments and retail space.
Sports 25 & N Market Entertainment
Street
Jacksonville, District FL 32202
In the Sports & Entertainment District, Lot
J is closer to shifting off the “proposed” list.
Shad Khan has reached a tentative
agreement with the city for a $450 million
development that would include 300 luxury
apartments and a midrise apartment building
along with a hotel, office tower and the
Live! Entertainment District.
The project would be developed by Jacksonville
I-C Parcel One Holding Company
LLC, a joint venture between Khan’s Gecko
Investments and The Cordish Companies.
The deal would come with $233 million
in city incentives and still has a lot of hurdles
to clear, but if it happens, it will change the
character of the district on the eastern edge
of Downtown dominated by sports and
entertainment venues.
All of Downtown is taking on new character
and a new look
“Our skyline CONTACT is going to US look TODAY: different,”
Boyer said. “It Phone: is continuing 1-904-271-2352 to evolve.”
The demographics
Fax: 1-904-271-2352
are changing, too, as
millennials and empty nesters move to the
urban core.
“You always judge a city by its Downtown,”
said Moore of Vestcor. “It’s in our best
interests CONTACT for Downtown US TODAY: to be successful,
and Phone: housing 1-904-271-2352 is a very large piece of that.”
Fax: Moore 1-904-271-2352 said people look at Downtown
and see a lot of vacant buildings and land.
“But that’s the great thing about Downtown.
There are great opportunities to develop and
redevelop. We’re very bullish on Downtown,
and we’re cheering for everyone else who
wants to build in Downtown.”
Lilla Ross, a former Florida Times-Union
editor, lives in San Marco.
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FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 71

ENDANGERED BUILDING:
Located at 851 N Market St.,
the Downtown Armory has
gone through a handful of
transformations over the years.
72
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

WHO
WILL
SAVE
OUR
Built in 1915, the former Florida National Guard Armory building has sat
vacant for a decade while waiting for the next chapter in its storied life.
By ROGER BROWN Photo by JEFF DAVIS
G O T H I C
FORTRESS?
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 73

“The reason why it’s worthwhile
to save old buildings is to save
the stories they can tell us.”
Alan Bliss, executive director of
the Jacksonville Historical Society
The Armory building
on 851 North Market St.:
• Is a massive hulk of
a structure that is more
than 100 years old.
• Has effectively
been a vacant Downtown
site for a decade (and counting).
• Is prone to being flooded, thanks to its
proximity to Hogans Creek.
• Has been a perennial entry over the
past few years on the Jacksonville Historical
Society’s “Most Endangered Buildings”
list.
So why does the Armory still possess an
uncanny ability to make some of Jacksonville’s
most renowned students of history
swoon at the mere mention of its name?
“It’s a splendid building,” says Wayne
Wood, a longtime local historian and civic
activist, of the Armory. “To me it’s one of
Jacksonville’s great landmark structures.”
Equally effusive is Joel McEachin, the
city of Jacksonville’s legendary longtime
senior historic preservationist — a man
whose passion for preserving history runs
so deep that the city has named an award
after him and he still works twice a week or
so for the Planning and Development Department’s
Historic Preservation Section
even after retiring last year.
“Architecturally, the Armory is a really
significant building because it has the
distinctive stylings of a Gothic fortress,”
McEachin said.
“It’s the only real military building we
have Downtown, and that’s reflected in
its design,” McEachin said. “Yet during
its history it’s been versatile enough to be
everything from a military facility to one of
Jacksonville’s major venues for shows and
concerts and other entertainment.”
With a smile, McEachin adds, “That is
pretty amazing.”
And it makes it all the more sad that the
Armory, which is officially classified as a
local landmark, has been sitting like some
100-YEAR-OLD ARMORY
RUNNING OUT OF TIME
1ST ST.
PHELPS ST.
Confederate
Park
ORANGE ST.
N
Family
Dollar
HUBBARD ST.
Confederate
Dog Park
STATE ST.
UNION ST.
BEAVER ST.
MARKET ST.
LIBERTY ST.
The former Florida
National Guard armory
at 851 N. Market St.
McDonald’s
Hogans Creek
ghostly, weed-ridden presence on North
Market Street since it was last occupied in
2010.
What’s encouraging is that might soon
change.
During the summer the city opened a
bidding process to see if any developers
were interested in taking over the property
— and it drew some intriguing and exciting
proposals.
For example, B&H Fine Foods, a Boca
Raton-based firm, has proposed turning
the 80,000-square foot Armory into a
farmer’s market that will also have other
food-related features.
Local developer Rafael Caldera,
meanwhile, has floated an idea to open
an architecture school in the Armory that
could draw some 1,000 students.
And REVA Development Corp., a Fort
Lauderdale developer, wants to use the
Armory as a site as workforce housing —
along with a sizable facility for artists.
Such heightened interest is a welcome
departure from just a few years ago when
only the Sons of Confederate Veterans
were intrigued enough to attempt to
acquire the Armory and turn it into a museum
— an idea that proved to be a damp
firework that quickly fizzled out
Still, for now anyway, the Armory continues
to sit silent and dormant.
“It’s too bad, because it has so much
charisma,” Wood says of the Armory.
“We just have to find some way to give it
a chance to really display that charisma
again.”
Alan Bliss, the executive
director of the Jacksonville Historical
Society, is fond of offering
a simple yet powerful reply
whenever he’s asked why it’s worthwhile
for the city to save and preserve many of its
older buildings.
“The reason why it’s worthwhile to save
old buildings,” Bliss says, “is to save the
stories they can tell us.”
And the Armory’s walls can definitely
tell volumes of spellbinding tales.
Built in 1915 to serve as a training and
recreation site for the local members of the
Florida National Guard, the Armory was
almost like a hybrid military facility/early-day
Dave & Buster’s. It had everything
from a mess hall, drill area and rifle range
to a bowling alley, billiards room, fireplace
and swimming pool — in addition to a
large auditorium and stage.
Because of its multi-use capabilities, the
Armory gradually morphed from a strictly
military site to become a prominent social
one, too: In the decades after it was first
built, it went on to host concerts by music
notables ranging from jazz great Duke Ellington
to Hall of Fame rocker Janis Joplin.
In short, the Armory has been an iconic
location that’s had more than its share of
cultural icons inside it.
But during the 1970s the Armory’s use
gradually changed from social to merely
JEFF DAVIS
74
J MAGAZINE | SUMMER 2019

INSIDE THE FORMER FLORIDA NATIONAL GUARD ARMORY
Today, the armory at 851 N. Market St. is a shell of its former self. Built in 1915, it originally had everything from a mess
hall, drill area and rifle range to a bowling alley, billiards room and swimming pool — in addition to a large auditorium.
PHOTOS BY WILL DICKEY
76
J MAGAZINE | SUMMER 2019

functional. For several years it served as an
office site for the city’s parks and recreation
department until persistent flooding issues
led to it being vacated in 2010.
The most obvious challenge
to reviving the Armory is Mother
Nature: The building sits on a
flood plain, making it highly
susceptible to significant flooding.
“That’s just the reality of being so close
to Hogans Creek,” Bliss says of the Armory.
“It’s not as though you can easily just
move a building that massive to another
location, either. It would be a heavy lift,
literally and figuratively.”
Wood says that the Armory’s bulky size
is “its biggest positive because that opens
up so many possibilities, but also the biggest
negative” in any effort to revive it.
“When you have something that huge
that has been unoccupied for so long,”
Wood says, “it will naturally need a lot of
work to be really ready for adaptive reuse.”
Christian Popoli, a city planning supervisor,
said that in addition to flooding
issues, the Armory’s “masonry has suffered
from degradation over the years,” which
would require considerable attention from
any developer willing to take on the site.
And McEachin said that while the
Armory “is in reasonably good shape” for
a century-old building that hasn’t had
anyone in it on a regular basis for years, “it
will probably need tremendous upgrades
inside it — and they may cost a bit because
of the Armory’s size.”
Given the real and daunting
challenges that would be part
of trying to revive the Armory,
the logical question must be
asked: Is it realistic to think that it actually
can be brought back to life?
Surprisingly, perhaps, the general view
seems to be: “Sure it could — why not?”
“It’s very realistic,” McEachin says of a
potential Armory rebirth. “It will take work
and investment. But absolutely, the opportunity
for adaptive resuse is there.”
Popoli notes that because the Armory
is an officially designated local landmark,
both the city and the State of Florida have
various tax programs that can be brought
to bear in supporting any effort to develop
the site.
And a bullish Wood sums up the Armory’s
potential in terms as grand as the
old building itself.
“It is,” Wood says, “a wonderful, expansive
blank canvas that’s just waiting for
something magnificent to be created on it.”
Roger Brown is a Times-Union editorial
writer and member of the editorial board.
He lives Downtown.
JEFF DAVIS
Downtown’s ‘most endangered buildings’
What does it take
to make it on
the Jacksonville
Historical Society’s
annual list of “Most Endangered
Buildings” across Downtown?
For Alan Bliss, the renowned and
personable executive director of the
Jacksonville Historical Society, the
criteria are pretty clear.
“They have to be properties that
are at real risk of being demolished
because they are in an advanced
deteriorating state,” Bliss says, “or
properties that have no clear plan for
them to be used in a way that retains
and reflects their original character.”
And why are endangered buildings
actually worth saving?
“The reason why it’s worthwhile
to save old buildings,” Bliss says, “is to
save the stories they can tell us.”
And there are plenty of stories
that can be told about the 11 buildings
that — along with old Duval County
Armory on North Market Street —
comprise the Jacksonville Historical
Society’s 2019 list of most endangered
buildings.
They are:
Dr. Horace Drew’s
residence
245 W. Third St.
• The longtime home of local
physician Dr. Horace Drew, who
also owned a Downtown printing
business during the early 1900s.
Built in 1903, the Snyder Memorial Methodist Church sits vacant.
The Universal
Marion Building
21 W. Church St.
• Built in the early 1960s, it had
a revolving restaurant on its top
floor for years. In recent years it
has served as JEA’s headquarters.
Snyder Memorial
Methodist Church
226 N. Laura St.
• Built in 1903 and famed
as the site where civil rights
activists attacked during Ax
Handle Saturday in 1960 were
able to find safety.
Ford Motor Company
Assembly Plant
on Wambolt Street
• Built in the early 1920s and used
by the Ford Motor Co. until the
late 1960s.
Moulton & Kyle
Funeral Home
17 W. Union St.
• Built in the early 20th century
and empty for the past six years.
Annie Lytle Public School
1011 Peninsular Place
• Condemned in 1971.
The Florida Baptist
Convention Building
218 W. Church St.
• Conceived by famed architect
Henry J. Klutho and vacant for
decades.
Fire Station No. 5
347 Riverside Ave.
• Built in 1910 and inactive for
more than 10 years. It’s now a
prime candidate for demolition in
the near future.
Three shotgun houses
on Church and Jefferson streets
• All three of these one-story
houses were originally located
on North Lee Street. All three
survived the Great Fire of 1901.
They were eventually relocated to
their current LaVilla site by the city.
Genovars Hall
644 W. Ashley St.
• Built in 1895 and a famed jazz
club.
Claude Nolan Cadillac
937 N. Main St.
• Built in the early 20th century.
All of them may be old buildings
in a physical sense — but surely the
stories they can all tell are timeless.
Both the buildings and their
stories are worth saving.
– ROGER BROWN
SUMMER 2019 | J MAGAZINE 77

The
Great
Space
Chase
78
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

Each day, more
than 7,000
Downtown
parking spots
go unused.
They are
just not where
you’re looking.
IBy Carole Hawkins
Illustration by Jeff Davis
‘m running late
for a meeting
running at City
Hall, and the traffic
lights have chosen
this one moment to all turn
red. Everyone’s crowding into
the left lane on Forsyth, and
I wedge in behind them to
take my turn. Finally, a left on
Hogan, I’m getting close.
I look to the curb, where an
unbroken line of parked cars
hits me like a hand in the face.
“And, don’t even think of
trying to park on Laura or
Adams,” a voice in my head
whines as I throw a glance at
two of Downtown’s most perennially
clogged corridors.
I drive past City Hall to
Church Street, a route usually
overlooked by less experienced
Downtown drivers. I turn just
in time to see a car backing into
the last parking space for three
blocks. Curses! »
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 79

“The perception of Downtown’s
parking shortage is actually an
accessibility and proximity issue.”
Vicky Gagliano, Project Manager
for Tim Haahs & Associates
I circle the Hemming Park area twice. There’s supposed to be a
public parking garage somewhere near the library, but I’ve never
been able to find it.
I duck into a small private garage. It has one public space left, and
I’m saved. Until next time.
RANKING RATES
A look at how Jacksonville’s hourly parking
meter rates stack up against seven peer cities.
Plenty of parking (but not here)
There’s plenty of parking Downtown. Just maybe not where
you’re looking.
The core district — which stretches from Hemming Park and
the Courthouse down to the Riverwalk and The Landing — has an
on-street parking shortage. That’s according to a new study performed
by Tim Haahs & Associates for the Downtown Investment
Authority.
It vindicates public sentiment
that Downtown parking is
not so easy to be had during the
busy workweek.
But the study also vindicates
a position long held by city
leaders, who’ve said there’s
enough parking to take care of
everyone. Drive almost anywhere
Downtown other than
the core, and there’s plenty of
parking all day long. City garages,
too, have excess space.
The trick is getting people to
go there.
If we could, it would open
up more curbside parking for
visitors and give Downtown
motorists a little more breathing room. It’s not as tough a problem
as it might seem.
DIA’s consultant, after crunching Downtown’s parking numbers,
offered some suggestions: Raise the price of a Downtown parking
meter to $2 an hour. Lure some commuters to the metro’s perimeter
with economy parking lots.
DIA is considering just that.
HOURLY
PARKING
CITY POP. METER RATE
Savannah 146,444 $1-$2
Miami 463,347 $1.50-$1.75
Tampa 385,430 $0.25-$1.50
Birmingham 210,710 $1
Orlando 280,257 $1
St. Petersburg 263,255 $1
Jacksonville 892,062 $0.50
Gainesville 132,249 $0.25-$0.50
Getting the facts straight
A Times-Union survey in 2017 found 10 percent of people don’t
come Downtown more often because it’s hard for them to find
parking. Thirteen percent identified more and better parking as one
of the top improvements they’d make to Downtown.
Many city leaders believed it was just a perception issue. Others,
like Jack Shad, former head of the city’s Office of Public Parking,
theorized Downtown workers could be feeding parking meters all
day long, instead of going into higher-priced parking garages. That
might squeeze out Downtown visitors, looking for a quick, convenient
spot.
During his tenure, Shad installed and tested a row of smart
meters — electronic devices that detect when cars are occupying
parking spaces. If deployed city-wide, smart meters could one day
help enforce the two-hour parking time limit curbside and also show
leaders where parking demand is most intense.
The city last fall ran a second round of smart meter tests, but no
recommendations have come of it so far. About the same time, the
city hired Tim Haahs & Associates and charged it with assessing
parking capacity Downtown.
“It was to respond to the
EXPIRED
SOURCE: TIM HAAHS & ASSOCIATES
public perception that there
wasn’t adequate parking
Downtown,” said DIA CEO
Lori Boyer, “and to determine
whether in fact there is adequate
parking.”
Getting the facts straight
matters. Building new parking
garages is expensive, and parking
fees alone often don’t support
the cost, said Tim Haahs
& Associates’ Project Manager
Vicky Gagliano, who spoke at
DIA’s June meeting.
Also, building more parking
Downtown may not pay off
in the long run. Times are
changing for personal transit. People are using Uber and Lyft to get to
hotels and airports, instead of the traditional drive-and-park options.
Driverless vehicles could soon appear on the scene. Imagine a future
where those cars bring commuters to work and then return home
until they’re needed again at end of the day.
It’s possible cities might one day need fewer parking spaces, not
more. Throw a new parking garage at a problem today, and the result
in the future could be less than great. Fortunately, Jacksonville won’t
have to.
Downtown has a parking surplus of 7,121 spaces, the study
found. The problem is most of the excess is near the stadium (3,554
spaces), or else it’s in parking garages and lots (3,161 spaces), not
curbside in the metro center.
“The perception of Downtown’s parking shortage is actually an
JEFF DAVIS
80
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

J MAGAZINE
accessibility and proximity issue,” Gagliano said.
That’s an easier fix.
Relocating demand
Best practices in city parking say at least 1
in 7 curbside parking spaces should be
open in order to keep motorists from
driving in circles. In Jacksonville,
the core district’s count comes
in undersupplied at 1 in 8 open
spaces. That’s true even while
city garages in the core have a
few hundred spaces left.
One reason why parking
spaces at meters are full and
spaces in garages are empty
is because the pricing structure
for parking fees is upside
down, the study said. Now, it
costs 50 cents an hour to park at
a curbside meter — the place where
visitors want to park to browse a nearby
shop, or to run into a café for a quick cup of
coffee. It costs $1 to $3 an hour to park in a garage.
The parking rates at the meters should be priced high
enough to encourage turnover, said Gagliano.
“Your most expensive asset should be your street
parking, because it’s the most convenient parking,” she
said. “It’s the first thing people hit, followed by surface
lots and then, garages.”
Out of seven peer cities, only one has street-side
parking rates lower than ours, the study said. Raise
Jacksonville’s meter fee to $2, and cost-conscious
drivers, especially those staying for a longer period of
time, will seek out the garages.
There are other changes Jacksonville could make, too.
Park and ride
The city currently offers low- and no-cost
parking to several groups of people
who park in garages at the core. It’s
the area with the highest parking
demand.
City workers park in garages
at a discount, a benefit for
their government service.
Jurors get free parking in
the Courthouse garage. The
city holds 300 spaces every
day for them, even though
they mostly serve only on
Mondays.
Those groups can keep
their perks, but they could
be moved to parking lots in the
stadium district, which are virtually
empty during business hours.
If the city offered economy parking there,
it could lure cost-conscious commuters out to the quiet metro perimeter,
too. The city could pair the new commuter lots with a bus
circulator to shuttle people between parking and the Downtown
core.
Absent from the report, though, was the city’s earlier idea of deploying
smart meters. It doesn’t mean it can’t happen sometime in
the future, Boyer said. She’s most interested in using smart meters
to help drivers find parking spaces via a phone app. Drivers also
could use their phones to pay.
“Everybody operates with their phone,” Boyer said. “It will be
just when we moved from coin-operated meters to credit card
meters.”
Next steps
Boyer said the parking study’s two biggest suggestions
— correcting the parking meters’ upside-down
pricing and creating economy parking lots — are the
most important takeaways for now. But, it’s too soon
to say exactly what will happen.
How much would a new bus circulator cost?
Would commuters be charged for it, or would it be
part of the economy parking package? The Jacksonville
Transit Authority would have to weigh in.
Also, the city doesn’t technically have control over
the parking lots at the stadium. The city owns the land, but
SMG, the company that manages TIAA Bank
Field, holds the lease for the parking.
It makes sense to activate those lots
during sleepy business hours. But
doing so would take a contract
renegotiation.
Another source of
economy parking could be
the stadium district’s two
garages. Those buildings
are owned by Metropolitan
Parking Solutions. But the
garages are city-funded,
so an agreement with MPS
is possible too. It would take
another negotiation.
Then there’s the idea of a rate
hike on Downtown’s curbside parking
meters. It could be a sensitive subject.
“They recommended $2 an hour … I’m
looking at some of the other cities, and there are some that
are higher,” Boyer said. “But going from 50 cents to $2 an
hour? I think you’d have to do outreach with Downtown
merchants.”
Finally, there’s the issue of timing. DIA wants to
start work this year on converting several one-way
Downtown corridors into two-way streets. It’s a project
that would also give Downtown better wayfinding
signs, like the big blue ones that help people find a
parking garage. That’s work that ought to come first,
Boyer said.
“I wouldn’t want to say [to drivers] ‘OK it’s $2 at a
meter, and good luck trying to find some other place to
park,’” she said. “That’s not the message we want to send.”
Better signs would, indeed, be a good place to start. If Jacksonville
did that, then when all the curbside parking spaces near
City Hall are full, maybe I could finally find my way to the Library
Garage.
Carole Hawkins was a reporter for the Times-Union’s Georgia
bureau in 2007-10. She is a freelance writer who lives in Murray Hill.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 81

READY TO ROLL:
Steph Dale, the owner of Go Tuk’n,
stops in Hemming Park with one of
her company’s vehicles that they use
to shuttle tour passengers.
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Ride &
Shine
Say hello to the
Go Tuk’n. Think
of it as an Uber
for Downtown
sightseeing.
My shirt
was already beginning to stick to my
damp back on a hot, windless July
morning. Bay Street was surprisingly
quiet for a weekday. Light traffic, a few
buses. No taxis. I exchanged “Good
mornings” with fewer than a half-dozen
pedestrians.
I stood outside Bold City Brewing
waiting to be picked up in a tuk tuk vehicle
from the Jacksonville Beach-based
company Go Tuk’n. They offer a variety
By DAN MACDONALD
Photos by BOB SELF
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 83

Go Tuk’n’s Anthony Hall and Steph Dale head Downtown after a stop at Hemming Park in one of the company’s three-wheeled vehicles.
of ways to see our city and the Beaches
communities or make getting from point A
to point B a different experience.
It was the morning of the Rolling Stones
concert when I was taking the three-hour
Downtown historic tour. That is why the
appointed meeting spot was Bay Street
rather than by the Jaguars statue at TIAA
Bank Stadium. T-shirt-garbed parking lot
guardians can be rather strict about vehicles
without passes parking in the massive lot
the morning of a concert.
Go Tuk’n is the creation of Steph Dale.
In her previous life, she had leading roles
in corporate human resources for several
firms. A year ago, she began her new
business that was inspired by her travels to
Puerto Rico and throughout Europe.
A tuk tuk has many uses. It’s a taxi. It
hauls goods. Some might think of it is as
a motorized rickshaw. Throughout Asia,
Central America and various tourist isles,
this is a primary form of transportation. It is
a descendant of the rickshaw, a cart pulled
by a human. Tuk tuks got the name from the
sound the small engine made as it puttered
down the road.
“I just didn’t want a stinky one,” Dale
said, noting that most run on diesel fuel.
Hers are street-legal, battery-operated with
a range of 70 to 100 miles on a charge. Top
speed is 30 mph, making for a leisurely ride
through city streets. Think of it as taking a
horse and buggy ride without having to feel
sorry for the poor draught horse clopping
along on a miserably hot, muggy day.
W
hat makes a tuk tuk
different from a golf
cart is that a tuk tuk
generally is a threewheeled
vehicle that
doesn’t have a steering
wheel. Rather, it is
driven like a motorcycle with handlebars
and a hand-operated throttle.
“Think of it as a low-speed motorcycle,”
Dale said.
Dale’s vehicles are covered but have
clear plastic roofs to allow tourists to
have an unobstructed view. In the warm
months she advises customers to bring
bottled water and an umbrella (just in
case), and the seats are heated for colder
night comfort.
She worked on her business plan and
concept for six years. She found E-Tuk,
out of Denver, that makes electric tuk tuks.
The vehicles are 13 feet long and 6 feet
wide and weigh 3,000 pounds. She has the
exclusive license from E-Tuk to operate its
tuk tuks in Northeast Florida. The basic tuk
tuk costs around $30,000 before all of her
additions are installed.
Before starting Go Tuk’n she had to
work with the state government to allow
the vehicles to transport passengers on
public streets. In addition to operating Go
Tuk’n, she has a travel agency.
Besides the city historic tour, there are a
variety of ways to use a tuk tuk. The company
offers pub crawls, scavenger hunts and
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J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

other historic tours for Riverside and Avondale
and several specially suited for children.
Spontaneity makes Go Tuk’n a crowd pleaser
for tourists. Instead of having to book a week out,
visitors can make a spur-of-the-moment decision
to book tuk tuk packages within two hours
of a scheduled tour. An exception is the popular
9 p.m. Brewery & More tour that must be booked
a day in advance.
One of Go Tuk’n’s cheerleaders is
Katie Mitura, vice president of
marketing and communications
for Visit Jacksonville. She sees
the service as a way to show visitors
our vast city in a reasonable
amount of time. She said visitors
come to her office on Laura Street looking for
ways to discover Jacksonville. Go Tuk’n shows
them the sights and gives them some history
about the architecture after the Great Fire of
1901.
“We have limited opportunities in Jacksonville
that will tell you about our history and what
makes us unique. It is so great that this tour
opportunity is there,” Mitura said.
That’s where my driver, Stacey Parker,
comes in. Her tour starts at the stadium, the
Gator Bowl to us locals. She regales her tour
with facts about the stadium (for instance, for
a short time, we had the largest scoreboard in
the world, and it is still the second largest in
the NFL). Newcomers will be both confused
and amazed at the extravagance of swimming
pools in the stadium and the influence Daily’s
Place has had on the city.
The tour gets more instructive as we motor
through the Downtown district. If anyone comes
away with any catchphrase from the Downtown
Historic Tour, it is “Look up.” Jacksonville’s
architectural beauty is about 20 feet or more
above the sidewalk. You’ll see dragons, animals
and sculptures of wise-men. You’ll notice how
most buildings are the same height. You’ll learn
that our first “skyscraper” wasn’t one at all: The
6-story Dyal-Upchurch building at the corner of
Main and Bay streets doesn’t have steel supports,
which are needed to be a skyscraper, she said.
However, it is estimated that it took nearly one
million bricks to build.
You’ll also learn why Jacksonville should be
more aptly named Cowford, which it was called
for a time. At low tide, cows were herded across
the St. Johns River in Downtown, near what is
now The Plaza condominiums across from the
Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
Parker also takes this opportunity to note
that, while the city is named after Andrew Jackson,
the regional governor at the time, he never
stepped foot in the city named in his honor.
The tour of City Hall, the former Cohen
Building, is worth the price of admission. The
TOURING THE
URBAN CORE
Go Tuk’n gives tourists and
residents plenty of reasons to
jump in their electric vehicles
and enjoy Jacksonville. Prices
vary by the tour, ages, numbers
of passengers and day of the
week.
WEBSITE: www.gotukn.com
PHONE: (904)322-8444
Here is a glimpse of some
of the Go Tuk’n tours:
Historic/
Architecture
Tours
This three-hour tour is
sanctioned by Riverside
Avondale Preservation, which
receives a part of each fare paid.
• The tour focuses on the area’s
architecture and history.
Riverside Arts
Market Tour
If you don’t have time for the
three-hour tour, take this onehour
tour that will spark your
curiosity.
• It’s rather popular. You’ll want
to book early in the week.
Downtown
Jacksonville
City Tour
Until you take this tour, you’ve
never realize how much art is
on the streets of Downtown
Jacksonville.
Downtown
Kids Historical
Scavenger Hunt
Cruising through city streets
will prove to be a fun
experience.
• In an hour’s time, the young
ones will be taught about their
city while trying to spot tricky
Downtown sites and objects.
JACKSONVILLE
Brewery Tours
Tours happen both in
Downtown and at the Beaches.
• Each tour visits three to four
breweries, tap rooms and bars.
• The tours are customizable.
• The first drink at each stop
is free.
– DAN MACDONALD
fact that the city had the foresight to take a
huge, intricate building that was the center
of commerce and turn into the center of city
government is a head turner. City Hall is one
of Downtown’s treasures. Across the street, she
explains that, at the dedication of the statue of
the Confederate soldier in Hemming Park, descendants
of Gen. Robert E. Lee and President
Ulysses S. Grant were in attendance.
W
hile it would have made
it a four-hour tour, I was
disappointed we didn’t
enter at least one of the
underground tunnels that
linked the city’s banks in
the day. The underground
passageways connected buildings so deposits
could be made without fear of a robbery under
the street. It’s a rather cool Downtown site that
should be exploited.
Another oversight is the city’s food trucks.
The tour should offer visitors a chance to taste
the variety of Jacksonville foods offered at the
food park near the soon-to-be-demolished
Jacksonville Landing, across from the Omni. A
chance to taste Jacksonville barbecue or its take
on Asian cuisine is a postcard moment for many
visitors.
The final stop will have a much different
look in the coming months. Parker revved the
engine and pushed the tuk tuk over the Main
Street Bridge to Friendship Fountain. When it
was dedicated in 1965, it was one of the largest
self-contained fountains in the world. She
apologizes that the once famous fountain is now
a mere spitting image of its past glory. Maintenance
costs have reduced it to a fancy water
fountain, Parker said.
A quick two-step to the River City Brewing
Company, she parks the tuk tuk and encourages
visitors to get out and photograph our river and
Downtown. Soon the Jacksonville Landing will
be demolished and gone from future pictures.
While locals take it for granted, visitors know
it as the iconic beauty shot taken from blimps
during televised Downtown sporting events.
Afterward, will a strip of grass in front of our
skyline really be worth the trip across the Main
Street Bridge?
Is the tour a valuable experience? In the fall,
winter and spring — yes. The summer heat may
cause some concern for comfort. But you’re
moving most of the time, and that creates a
nice breeze. You’ll learn about Jacksonville and
appreciate the art that is all around us, albeit 20
feet above our heads.
Dan Macdonald was a music and entertainment
writer for The Florida Times-Union and Jacksonville
Journal in 1984-1996 and the Times-Union food editor
in 1997-2007. He lives in Jacksonville Beach.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 85

Digital
Directions
By SHELTON HULL
Illustration by J MAGAZINE
From events and attractions
to dinner and drinks, staying
connected to Downtown
can be a daunting task
Downtown is growing, upward and
outward, with a new generation of bars, clubs and restaurants,
more retail spaces, a changing skyline and a diverse array of
entertainment options available for visitors of all ages, all races
and all cultural backgrounds.
Those of us who frequent Downtown regularly are already
well aware of all this, but what about those who are new to the
area? Well, maybe not so much. Like almost everywhere else
in our state, Downtown Jacksonville is always keen to maximize
its tourist dollars, but that is easier said than done.
The past few years have seen a dramatic phase-shift in mass
media on local and national levels, and that has changed the
way people get their information, whether it’s about politics
or nightlife. In the old days, the best way to find out what was
going on in any city at any random moment was to pick up the
daily newspaper (especially on a Friday) or the local alternative
newsweekly, both of which had extensive listings of upcoming
events and advertisements that highlighted special attractions.
Now, times have certainly changed, and while those traditional
outlets are still doing their thing, much of the emphasis
for promotions has shifted to social media, which allows businesses
the ability to target their promotions to a wider, more
diverse audience in real-time, at just a fraction of the usual cost.
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In this city, a lot of news is disseminated
through word-of-mouth and social media.
Spot shows and pop-up shops often materialize
faster than social media, but locals
are kept abreast by their peers.
If you’re a visitor, however, or one of
those lucky few people who’ve managed to
avoid being saturated by our all-pervasive
social-media culture, you’re more likely
to be caught unawares, and that leads to
missed opportunities for them and for the
city.
FINDING good info
But you still have options. Outlets like
Folio, The Florida Times-Union, EU, Buzz,
Arbus, Jacksonville Magazine and Void
remain useful for news about the city and
what it offers locals and tourists like. Their
listings tend to be the most up-to-date, and
the array of attached articles provide vital
context about the various goings-on, while
their voluminous archives will show what
you’ve already missed.
While it is unfortunate that Downtown’s
digital presence is not as streamlined and
accessible as it could be, the good news is
that everything is trending upward. Tourism
numbers in the area for 2018 were the best
ever, and the same goes for tourism overall
in Duval, St. Johns and Nassau counties too.
Hotel occupancy rates through last September
were up nearly 2%; daily rates and
overall revenue were also up by 5% and 7%,
respectively. So, more people are coming,
and they’re spending more money.
The Visitors Centers
New visitors to Downtown are bestserved
by making their first stop, of course,
the Visitors Center, currently located at 208
N. Laura St., almost directly across from
Chamblin’s Uptown, although it will be moving
to the ground floor of the Wells Fargo
Center sometime early next year. It’s open
from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through
Friday, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekends.
The center is always a fun place to stop
by when you’re Downtown. It contains all
of our local publications (including this
one), as well as maps, flyers and brochures
that encompass virtually the full range of
leisure-time activities available in the urban
core and beyond. It’s also conveniently
located near Hemming Park, City Hall, the
Federal Courthouse and the former Jacksonville
Landing. It’s one of three Visitors Centers;
the other two are at 381 Beach Blvd. at
Jacksonville Beach and in the baggage claim
area at Jacksonville International Airport,
which is a very nice touch, indeed. (You can
also call the Visitors Center at 800-733-2668,
and someone will mail you a hard copy of its
Visitors Guide.)
Official websites
Visit Jacksonville is active across the span
of social media (visitjacksonville.com), and
so is Downtown Vision (downtownjacksonville.org).
Both groups offer regular email
blasts about the latest news and notes, but
that’s only useful if you’re already on their
mailing lists. New visitors will need to be
referred to those sites. JAX Chamber also
has a fairly detailed calendar on its website
(myjaxchamber.com), but it’s secondary to
what Visit Jacksonville offers. The Chamber
site is of greatest relevance to the business
community and would-be investors, of
which there are plenty these days.
Downtown Vision’s site is probably the
most user-friendly of the bunch. The front
page features an up-to-date list of whatever
events are happening on that particular
day, and it allows you to look up activities
based on the date. There’s also a sidebar
that includes links to articles about the latest
developments Downtown, although most of
those links were inactive at press time. There
are handy tabs for reporting problems or for
submitting event listings of your own.
Maybe best of all, there’s a link that
allows you to keep track of our Downtown
Ambassadors, the helpful, orange-shirted,
Segway-riding public servants who have
been the unsung heroes of the urban core
for years now. These folks have logged
nearly 30,000 man-hours on our streets,
provided more than 1,000 escorts for the lost
and umbrellas for the wet, removed 350+
pieces of graffiti and nearly 800 tons of litter.
This program has proven to be one of the
city’s best investments in recent years, and
almost everyone agrees that expanding their
numbers would be a great idea.
interactive planner
The Visit Jacksonville website offers a
“Trip Planner” (jacksonvillefl.visitwidget.
com), an interactive widget trip planner that
visitors plan their itineraries. It is easily the
definitive online resource for such a purpose
and a link worth sending to anyone you
know who’s coming to town.
For all intents and purposes, this is easily
the most detailed and comprehensive event
calendar available for the average user, and
newcomers will find it of optimal value.
The site is surprisingly easy to navigate,
offering a variety of options for parents,
children and swingin’ singles alike. Options
are arranged on a sidebar in several convenient
categories: “Active & Outdoors,” “Arts
& Culture,” “Nightlife,” “Live Performance,”
“Family Events,” “Fairs & Festivals” and
“Sport Events.”
The items within are all GPS-tagged,
allowing you to plan your trip with maximum
efficiency. There are also tabs for
tours, hotels, restaurants and bars, etc. You
can lay everything out on your desktop and
then print it out, or you can download their
app, which allows you to do all this from the
convenience of your smartphone.
Getting the word out
To the uninitiated, our city’s online
presence seems to be a hopeless muddle of
primitive websites with outdated information,
slow load-times and more pop-up
ads than a game of Whack-A-Mole. But it’s
really not that bad, and collectively, they
do achieve the utilitarian goal of getting
newcomers around the area safely and with
the bare minimum of backtracking and
wasted gas.
What we need now is not necessarily any
new websites or apps, but simply a more
concerted effort to get the existing resources
out there in front of people, and that comes
back around to word-of-mouth.
Branding is always an existential concern
in a city with so much history and so
much space to navigate. One step would be
to maybe change the URL for the Visit Jax
widget to something easier to remember,
perhaps incorporating the widget into the
regular website, and advertising it prominently
Downtown on light-posts and such.
It’s great having street signs that indicate
the general direction of prominent local
landmarks, but we can always do with more
of that. It would also be nice if all these
sites included links to each other, thereby
ensuring that visitors got a more holistic
view of the entire setup. This is one area
in which competition should definitely be
encouraged.
As stated earlier, last year’s tourism
figures were at all-time peaks, and all indications
are that 2019 will exceed those numbers.
With an estimated 300,000 new people
moving to Florida every year, and many of
them flooding into Northeast Florida, the
need for information will only increase, and
we are on the right track.
The bad news is that there are no easy
shortcuts to promoting a weird, wonderful
city like ours, but the good news is that once
they visit for the first time, odds are good
of them returning, over and over and over
again.
Shelton Hull has written for Folio Weekly
for 22 years. He also appears regularly on WJCT.
He lives in Riverside.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 87

CORE
EYESORE
ASPHALT LOT
NETS LITTLE
DOWNTOWN
IMPROVEMENT
10 N. PEARL ST.
BY FRANK DENTON
Which was or is the greater insult to the
optics and optimism of Downtown: the old,
dilapidated and depressing Greyhound Bus
Station that was at 10 N. Pearl or the new,
black and bleak parking lot that succeeded it?
The answer is that ugly is in the eye of the
beholder.
In April 2018, Greyhound moved its
operations six blocks west on Forsyth to a
sleek new building as part of the blossoming
Jacksonville Regional Transportation Center,
and its old building went on the market.
Up stepped a Miami entity called AK
Pearl LLC, which in December paid $2.78
million for the 121-acre property and razed
the building built in 1956.
Good so far. But then the new owners
slabbed down some asphalt, threw up a
fence and declared it yet another cursed
parking lot.
The fence includes some ominous warning
signs — “No trespassing. Violators will
be prosecuted” per city ordinances — which
turned out to be ironic since the parking
lot itself is illegal. [Continued on page 97]
PHOTO: BOB SELF
Spot a Downtown eyesore and want to know
why it’s there or when it will be improved?
Submit suggestions to: mclark@jacksonville.com.
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FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 89

A new vision
for MOCA
By CHARLIE PATTON
CULTURAL OASIS:
Visitors fill the lobby area inside
MOCA Jacksonville during a recent
event at the Downtown museum.
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“We want people to see we are
art-centered and art-focused and
immediately see this is a museum.”
Caitlin Doherty, director OF THE
Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville
MOCA Jacksonville (2)
The Museum of Contemporary
Art Jacksonville occupies a
significant space Downtown,
at the corner of Laura and
Duval streets across from
Hemming Park and just around the corner
from City Hall.
But the location has one significant disadvantage.
It occupies a building, renovated
in the early 2000s, that was originally built as
the Western Union Telegraph
Building in 1930-1931.
Its exterior doesn’t call
attention to the fact there is a
museum inside. And the only
gallery space on the first floor is
the Haskell Atrium Gallery, an
elevated space that can’t really
be seen from the street.
“You can walk past it now
and not realize it’s an art museum,”
said David Engdahl, a
MOCA board member who is a
sculptor and retired architect.
“It doesn’t have a strong
visual presence,” said Dita Domonkos,
a board member who
is an interior designer.
Engdahl and Domonkos
are members of a task force charged with
developing ideas for turning the first floor
lobby into a lobby that says “we’re a museum,
an art museum,” said Caitlin Doherty,
MOCA’s director.
Ben Thompson, MOCA’s assistant
director, who is spearheading the task force
planning a makeover, said “the project has
been in the making for years.”
He credited Doherty, who became
director two years ago, with making a firstfloor
makeover a priority.
The first step in that makeover surprised
many people. The museum closed NOLA
MOCA, its first-floor restaurant.
Then the museum spent eight weeks
conducting polls and seeking ideas from
visitors, particularly during the May Downtown
Art Walk that brought about 1,000
visitors to MOCA.
One of the findings was that many
people who ate at NOLA MOCA had never
visited the museum.
This bothered Engdahl.
“We’re in the museum business, not the
restaurant business,” he said.
Still, the plan never was to end food
service permanently.
A rendering of MOCA Jacksonville’s proposed sidewalk cafe on Laura Street.
A restaurant will be reopened, but it will
be a fast casual restaurant. Orders will be
placed at a counter. There will no longer be
table service.
Some menu favorites will probably
return, like chicken salad and quiche. But
the menu will generally be simpler than
NOLA MOCA’s menu was. The name will
probably change to Café MOCA.
The café also will probably have different
operating hours than NOLA MOCA
had. It will be open whenever the museum
is open including on weekends.
The café will exhibit works from MO-
CA’s permanent collection. In addition to
seating inside the café, there will be tables
and seating on the street.
MOCA has continued to offer catering
even while the restaurant was closed, and
that will continue.
MOCA’s gift shop closed in July last year,
ostensibly so Troy Spurlin, a former MOCA
employee who owns an interior design
company and a furniture store in Five
Points, could open a retail store in the gift
shop’s space.
But that plan fell through, Doherty said:
“We had a parting of the ways.”
Over the last year the space
has occasionally been used for
exhibiting art. Now a section
of the old gift shop space at
the corner of Duval and Laura
streets will become a permanent
gallery.
Thompson said that while
that gallery could exhibit many
kinds of art, the curatorial
staff is interested in using it to
exhibit regional art.
Meanwhile a somewhat
larger central lobby area “will
be much more visitor-focused
and much more visitor friendly,”
Doherty said. “The space
will feel more enlivened.”
“It will be more of an inviting
community space,” Engdahl said. “It will
be more comfortable with lounge seating.”
“Our main goal is to create a very flexible,
adaptable space,” Domonkos said.
Doherty’s vision includes more signage
on the outside of the building. There is
currently a sculpture in front of MOCA but
there are sculptures throughout Downtown,
including in Hemming Park.
“We want people to see we are art-centered
and art-focused and immediately see
this is a museum,” Doherty said.
Plans currently call for the changes to be
completed by early September.
Charlie Patton retired last year after more
than 41 years with The Florida Times-Union,
spending his last nine years covering the arts. He
lives in Riverside.
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 91

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
By Frank Denton
‘Tiny steps
for tiny feet’
Sherry Magill sees benefits in
harvesting low-hanging fruit
S
even years ago, when Downtown seemed destined
to remain just a barren office complex
from which almost all life disappeared after 5
o’clock, not many people could see much potential in its
acres of parking lots and old empty buildings.
One of them was Sherry Magill, then president of the Jessie
Ball duPont Fund, the private, Jacksonville-based foundation that
awards about $13 million in grants
SHERRY
MAGILL
WORK:
Retired. Visiting professor
this fall at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel
Hill.
FROM: Prattville, Ala.
LIVES IN: Avondale
nationally. Magill traveled to many
other cities in her work and saw
vision and progress elsewhere
that was missing in Jacksonville.
But she saw opportunity
here in one particular old empty
building, the Haydon Burns
Library, built in 1965. It was designed
by Taylor Hardwick, who
in rebellion against the lifeless
Downtown tried to create “a
bright spot in a drab urban environment.
He wanted a building that would attract people
and create in them an interest to enter and find out what was
going on inside,” according to a book about his work.
The library certainly didn’t blend into the bleakness. At
the end of the Mid-Century Modern era of architecture,
Hardwick had laced the exterior with rows of bold vertical
concrete fins and backed it with colorful — green! — tiles
and huge windows opening the library to the street. Writer
Tim Gilmore later wrote the quirky public structure “felt like
yesterday’s idea of the future.”
After two generations of service, the library in 2005 gave
up its books to the new Main Library on Hemming Park, and
the Haydon Burns building deteriorated and began to feel
more like today’s idea of the past.
Magill saw potential and opportunity. She persuaded her
trustees to buy the building, restore the exterior and convert
the huge interior into a center to house local nonprofits and allow
them to collaborate and save money at the same time — while also
WILL DICKEY
92
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

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saving a community landmark. It opened in 2015
and now houses 22 nonprofits and hosts many
community gatherings.
The duPont Center is a model and inspiration
for the new Downtown.
For her vision and work, Magill, now retired
after 26 years at the fund, received the Times-
Union’s EVE of the Decade Award in June.
I interviewed her in the center’s Rich Magill
Seminar Room, which she and her husband endowed
in honor of her late brother.
You really are a Downtown pioneer. What did
you see about the opportunity Downtown
that caused you to step out front and take the
chance?
A couple of things. One was I knew of a project
in downtown Wilmington (Del.) that houses
numerous nonprofits. The Jessie Ball duPont
Fund was a small financial partner in that project
because we did a lot of grant making in Wilmington,
and I was in and out of that building all the
time. So I understood what it could mean for the
community and nonprofits.
But specifically about Downtown Jacksonville,
the Jessie Ball duPont Fund was committed to
Downtown. Its offices were always Downtown.
Over 20 years, I watched the demolition of what
I considered great buildings Downtown and the
creation of a lot of asphalt parking lots. In my
work, I traveled to a lot of American cities, and
there was a renaissance going on, but not here.
And so I wanted, and the trustees agreed, to
house nonprofits in one location to drive down
their rents. ... We wanted to help Jacksonville save
Downtown.
What was the response outside the foundation
to the idea?
The collective response, the majority response
was: It’ll never happen. That’s a horrible building.
It’s ugly. On Twitter and Facebook, oh, they’re
going to put a bunch of homeless people in there.
You just had to ignore the naysayers. And then, of
course, there were champions, particularly after
the fact.
Looking back, what would you have done differently?
That’s a tough question ... I think we were
carefully ambitious and naïve about that corner
over there, the retail space (on the first floor, along
Ocean Street). We tried for over two years to get
somebody to come in there. We were going to
be very favorable in terms of rent structure and
the kinds of things we were willing to do. And we
just couldn’t get any takers. I always wanted that
to be a semi-bar because of the proximity to the
Florida Theatre. And in the fall and winter, that’s a
beautiful space with a nice overhang. So to have to
have glass of wine and nice hors d’oeuvres there,
but we just couldn’t find the right match. I believe
“I think we
have to get
back to some
studies in
the past that
have been
done that
have begged
us to turn
these oneway
streets
into twoway
streets
and widen
some of these
sidewalks
and put up
great shade
trees. We
never seem
to execute,
don’t seem
to figure out
how to do it.”
it will happen one day if this part of town begins
to take off.
One other thing I would say about what I
would have done differently. This bothers me as a
taxpayer and a citizen and someone who worked
Downtown a long time. The city has built these
major chiller plants (to produce air conditioning).
One serves Downtown. We talked to JEA about
connecting this building to that chiller plant and
not building a new chiller plant in this building
because it was our understanding it was part of
the rationale for building that chiller plant. All the
buildings at that time, this would have been five
years ago, all the buildings on that plant are public.
So, the library, the courthouse, the city hall…
The reason it didn’t happen for us is we were
told by JEA that we would have to pay for the infrastructure
all the way down to this building, which
was going to be close to $2 1/2 million. We could
build a new chiller plant for half a million. So if I
had all the time in the world, I would have fought
that, because think of what’s happening. We can
centralize air conditioning for all these businesses,
reduce their cost of redeveloping these buildings
if they didn’t have to pay for the infrastructure. I
did ask, if we paid for the infrastructure and the
people across the street wanted to hook in, what
would they have to pay for? “Oh, just from the
hookup to their building.” Well, that’s just illogical
to me.
What is your vision for Downtown?
I think we have a great opportunity, ironically
because we have so much open space that is poorly
used, because we’ve got so many surface parking
lots that are inefficient, hot and I think prohibit
our ability to be imaginative about all this space. I
was just in Birmingham of all places as part of the
civil rights tours two weeks ago, and what they did
with the area where Bull Connor and the police
dogs attacked people, that’s a beautiful little park
now, right across from the Civil Rights Museum.
You don’t have to go far, Savannah, Charleston,
the greenery, every major city I go to now that
looks interesting to me, the landscape comes first.
You go to Vancouver; those people love their trees.
Every street is tree-lined.
I think we have to get back to some studies in
the past that have been done that have begged us
to turn these one-way streets into two-way streets
and widen some of these sidewalks and put up
great shade trees. We never seem to execute, don’t
seem to figure out how to do it. We worry too
much about growing the homeless population
Downtown. You’re not going to go to any major
great city in the world and not have a certain percentage
of poor that live on the dodge. That’s not a
problem of Downtown space. It’s a problem of not
having a smart housing policy. It’s a wage problem.
We keep trying to solve the wrong problem.
So my vision for Downtown is great open
public space along the river. We’ve got to get off
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J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

the river. This is ridiculous. We now have a new
ordinance that says, what, you’ve got to be 25 feet
from the river? I promise you 25 feet is not far
enough. It’s just not far enough. So all this expanse
along this great river right Downtown, I see that
as a great public park. You cannot go to a major
city that does not have a great park. Every great
city has a great gathering place. And that ought to
be public and not private. I see wetlands and tree
lines and non-commercial.
(The city has sodded the site of the old courthouse
and city hall annex.) I’m going to be cynical.
We’ve got a football season coming up, and it can’t
look like it looks. Not from the blimp! If you told
me they were planning a park and planting trees,
I’d get very excited about it.
Personally, what do you do Downtown now?
Now that I don’t work, what I do now is not that
much Downtown. I’m beginning to understand
how there’s a disconnect with Downtown.
What would you LIKE to be able to do Downtown?
Walk. Can you buy an ice cream cone Downtown?
I’d like to see a historic trail. There are
precious few historical markers here. Other cities
do a great job of telling their stories of people and
place, and we don’t do that here.
You wrote a piece on the blog you cofounded,
JaxLookout.com, about what you called
“low-hanging fruit” to improve Downtown.
I complained for years about the parking
meters. Just go to St. Augustine, and they have
smart meters. You can use Apple Pay in most
cities. I don’t think we’re intentional about this.
The parking meters in front of the Supervisor of
Elections office, they’re quarter meters. Something’s
wrong with that. Think about what that
office does; there’s something wrong with that. I
know the parking meters are expensive for the city
to implement, but I think we’re hurting ourselves.
If we’ve got to have the parking meters, make them
modern.
People over and over and over tell us they don’t
know how to park Downtown. It’s incredibly easy,
but if you never come down here and that’s all you
hear … and the signage is terrible. If you’re coming
here from somewhere out of town and don’t know
where to park, it’s not obvious.
I think you could do some simple things. I’ve
said for years, implement the two-way streets. And
do a little pressure washing. The garbage cans are
deplorable. You’ve been to Asheville; their garbage
cans on the street, they recycle. Do we recycle? I
have no idea. It tells you we care about the place.
Nothing public down here says we care about the
place. And that’s what I mean by low-hanging fruit.
You’re a southerner. Have you seen a Southern
city you consider a model for Jacksonville, where
“I complained
for years
about the
parking
meters. ...
The parking
meters in
front of the
Supervisor
of Elections
office, they’re
quarter
meters.
Something’s
wrong with
that. Think
about what
that office
does; there’s
something
wrong with
that.”
the downtown’s a success?
Charleston. There are some things about
Charleston we can’t replicate: They don’t term-limit
their mayor, and they’ve got (former Mayor Joe)
Riley. But we certainly can replicate the thinking.
So people here say, look at the aquarium in
Charleston. But it didn’t start with the aquarium.
It started with saving the housing. There was a
plan to tear down that historic housing in historic
Charleston, and Riley and other forces stopped
that.
Now obviously, we don’t have Downtown housing,
but you can develop it. I kind of laugh, we all
say, oh, isn’t it great LaVilla’s coming back. LaVilla’s
gone. What historically was LaVilla? It wasn’t a
place, it was a community.
Charleston, a coastal city, embraced its slave
history and race history and acknowledged it. I
wouldn’t say celebrated it but acknowledged it in
a public square. People naturally after they reach
a certain age are interested in what was the past
about, and we’re kind of missing that.
The study the duPont Fund commissioned
while I was there by the National Trust for Historic
Preservation was about Downtown Jacksonville.
It’s a study I am very proud of, and it has a shelf life,
and it talks about how you bring back the economy
by saving your architectural history, because
your architectural history is part of who you are
as a people. They made this observation, aha, I
get it about Jacksonville, why we’re not Savannah,
why we’re not Charleston, that is, this developer
mentality. We’re kind of stuck thinking our salvation
is becoming like the rest of Florida, and that’s
new development and shiny and not really very
interesting architecturally and no sense of past, just
the present. Their observation was that Jacksonville
still had an opportunity to have an architectural
history. And if you do, it’s right down here. The
developer mentality isn’t that.
So yes, we need this Downtown housing absolutely
because we have to make sure that millennials
can afford to live Downtown because it’s where
they want to live. There are such great properties.
Everything doesn’t have to be a new little box.
Who do you see as people who have to provide
leadership if Downtown is to be revitalized?
Organizations?
Well, I think philanthropy has done what it can
do. I think of those that have endowments, and in
our community, that’s the education community
and the hospital community. They must have a
greater presence on the Northbank. I think what
Cynthia Bioteau tried to do with FSCJ on historic
properties is admirable. And if duPont can do this
and Cynthia can do that and the Bedell Law Firm
(can do its former Carnegie Library building on
East Adams), tiny steps for tiny feet.
You’ve got to do these smaller projects. I think
the National Trust study says that. LISC is doing
everything it possibly can, and the fact it’s devoting
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 95

part of its attention to historic Downtown is really
helpful. All these little infill things. I would say DIA
has to get into the business of these little infill projects.
Building new infrastructure for the District?
We have infrastructure here. We have property
here. We’re just not intentional about it.
You grew up in a small Alabama town, and you
said one of the reasons you took the duPont job
in 1991 was you wanted to get back to the South.
What is about the South that appeals to you?
Sense of community. Camaraderie. Common
purpose. Things to work on that matter.
Jacksonville is part Florida and part southern.
What is your characterization of that?
I describe Jacksonville as a great big small town.
I found Jacksonville to be very welcoming of people
from elsewhere and not closed in that sense. I
found that very exciting, and I think that’s still true.
I like to put down roots and work on community
challenges, and I think Jacksonville lets you do that.
Downtown leaders have set a goal of 10,000
people living Downtown, and apparently we have
about 5,000 living here now ...
And 48,000 parking places.
All those new apartment buildings open or being
built in Brooklyn, LaVilla, the Southbank and
elsewhere Downtown should get us much closer
to the 10,000.
You can live in San Marco and not come
Downtown. You can live in Brooklyn and not come
Downtown. I don’t think San Marco and Brooklyn
are Downtown. I have a very narrow geographic
area, which is simply the Northbank. I think we
hurt ourselves, and I know what the studies say,
but we should get rid of all the parking meters
Downtown… I can live in San Marco, I can go
to lunch in San Marco, I can go to dinner in San
Marco — I don’t have to pay. The only place in
the entire county, if you are a worker, where you
have to pay to park is here! Well, that’s prohibitive
to people living and working Downtown. It just is.
You have to pay to park. Why do you not have to
pay to park in San Marco or Brooklyn? I’ve never
understood.
The idea seems to be, and Aundra Wallace used
to tell me this, if you build Brooklyn and build the
District and build that out, it’ll eventually come
here, and that’s what we all think is happening.
Well, what’s it going to look like? Are we going to
save some of these properties that are vacant that
is starting to happen now? I worry about the next
recession, which is going to happen, stopping every
bit of that. Then we’re back to another 10 years.
I still want to believe, tiny steps for tiny feet,
so pick some of the low-hanging fruit, make it
more attractive, green up the place, be intentional
about a major public park Downtown. We pride
ourselves on having the largest park system in the
“I describe
Jacksonville
as a great
big small
town. I found
Jacksonville
to be very
welcoming of
people from
elsewhere and
not closed in
that sense.
I found that
very exciting,
and I think
that’s still
true. I like
to put down
roots and
work on
community
challenges,
and I think
Jacksonville
lets you do
that.”
country, and none of them are Downtown. Go
to Chicago and look at Millennial Park, and look
how many people it attracts. It’s right on the water.
I think we’re making a mistake in saying we’ll
have people living right on the water’s edge, and
eventually we’re not going to want to.
What about Jacksonville makes you throw up
your hands?
The political leadership. It just isn’t very visionary,
it’s not. And it’s not engaging. You know,
people want to be engaged in the places where
they live. People are naturally just problem-solvers,
particularly Americans. We used to be a
can-do people, we can do anything. We’re kind of
losing that, but I think the political class has a very
narrow understanding of community life. In this
community, boy, it’s about money. We ignore the
work the nonprofit sector does. It really struggles,
and they do a great job. So the short answer is:
political leadership.
What can you say to ordinary people about
believing in Downtown and its revitalization?
Like all of us who love Downtown, you hear
the same refrain: “nowhere to park,” so you’re
constantly saying, well, that’s not true.
“I get lost” — I think that goes back to the
one-way streets, because on a two-way street, if
nothing else, you can turn around and go back the
same way you came. People get a little confused if
they’re not down here all the time.
“Nothing to do.” Well, Jacksonville competes
with itself: We have the beaches, some great
restaurants, lots of things to do. It’s hard for
us, because we’re not on the beach. I think the
beaches compete with us. The “nothing to do,”
well, you just keep trying — there are some great
restaurants, there’s the Symphony, there are the
museums, there are things to do. But I don’t know
what people mean when they say nothing to do. I
don’t know what they want to do.
I think this Emerald Necklace idea has such
promise. It’s sad to me that Groundwork has to
raise so much private money to do something
that’s definitely a public good. I’m not saying
there shouldn’t be any private money in it, but the
burden there is long and hard. And I don’t understand
why philanthropy from outside Jacksonville
would care about it… Why can’t we do this? Are
the creeks too far from the center of town? …
We’ve got to begin to think about activating the
creeks, and activating them is not putting motorboats
on them. It’s cleaning them up, making them
little park areas where people can visit, walkable,
bikeable. I love what Groundwork is trying to do.
I think it’ll be important to all of us. I just think we
need to move faster on it. That’s probably an old
person talking.
Frank Denton, retired editor of The Florida
Times-Union, is editor of J. He lives in Riverside.
96
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

Core Eyesore
Continued from page 89
The Downtown Investment Authority
quickly called out “AK Pearl LLC” in a “To
Whom It May Concern” letter, saying that,
while the demolition of the building had a
city permit, the parking lot was not allowed
in the Central Civic Core and was constructed
without permits.
“The property was to be grassed in
accordance with … Jacksonville Code of
Ordinances,” pending presumed legal redevelopment.
Guy Parola, operations manager of DIA,
asked for a response to the letter “prior to
enforcement actions.”
AK Pearl is one of the business entities
used by Miami real-estate investor Ramon
Llorens, who in recent years has bought a lot
of Downtown Jacksonville property: the 1.48
acre parking lot at 317 Water St. next to the
Omni Hotel, a 2.78 acre parking lot at Hogan
and West Bay streets, the parking garage at
336 W. Bay and the TIAA Bank Center, which
happens to be across the street from the
illegal parking lot.
Llorens, who could not be reached for
comment, presumably has a grand plan for
the area, or at least an appreciation for the
investment potential of Downtown.
Mark Rimmer, a Llorens representative,
has asked for a meeting with the DIA “to
discuss the future development plans for the
lot,” and Parola responded that he will ask
the code enforcement administrator to also
attend the meeting “so that we can move
forward along a path to compliance and
redevelopment.”
A look at Jacksonville’s new Greyhound bus station
at W. Forysth and N. Pearl Streets in the 1950s.
Meanwhile, the parking lot is about
half full of cars, along with some industrial
equipment apparently being stored there.
While we’re glad to see the investment
interest in Downtown renaissance, particularly
from high-rolling out-of-towners, we
want them to do something constructive —
and legal — with their property.
TINES-UNION ARCHIVE
FALL 2019 | J MAGAZINE 97

THE FINAL WORD
Warriors and the
battle to reshape
our Downtown
DEBBIE
BUCKLAND
EMAIL
DBuckland@
BBandT.com
n yoga, there’s a pose called
I Warrior II. It is a standing pose,
with feet spread wide, arms outstretched
parallel to the horizon. One knee
is bent with the thigh parallel to the ground,
knee stacked over the ankle. Shoulders are
squarely stacked over the hips. The head is
turned to face the same direction as the bent
knee, with the head and gaze focused over
one or the other of the outstretched arms/
fingers.
Try it … too far forward and your knee is beyond
your ankle … too far back and your knee is behind
your ankle. You find yourself leaning back in space
no longer properly grounded — wobbly. Either way,
you lose your ability to feel settled and powerful in
the pose.
I had a teacher once correlate the stability (or not)
of Warrior II to the living of life — which can sometimes
feel like a battle. A stable and capable warrior
is settled, grounded in the present, balanced and
strong, ready for whatever comes her way.
She’s not stuck in the past (too far back in the
pose). She also won’t be served by getting too far
ahead of herself (too far forward in the pose), compromising
her power in the moment. She also doesn’t
worry about the spectators. They have no skin in her
game — they’re just there for the spectacle.
Warrior II is also how I see our work to improve
Downtown Jacksonville. We must be balanced in our
efforts, grounded in realities, ready for the future. We
all want our Downtown to be world class. It is a battle,
and we are playing to win.
The warriors are on the field — solving problems,
pushing through obstacles, living and learning from
their mistakes. The strong ones don’t look back —
they know you don’t win battles in the past. And they
certainly don’t come into the game from a place of
cynicism.
Here’s the thing. In our battle for a better Downtown
– we are the warriors. It’s up to us. You and me.
“They” are “we.”
Do you want to be a wobbly warrior unbalanced,
stuck in the past, or do you want to be part of the
solution?
What our Downtown needs is for you — dear
reader, yes you! — to get in the game.
Our Downtown needs people. People to come to
First Wednesday Art Walk. People to show up and
buy coffee at Vagabond or Urban Grind. People to
bring their children to MOSH and go to MOCA for the
art. People to visit any one of the many bars Downtown
for a happy hour drink with friends after work.
We need people living Downtown. We know that
10,000 residents is the tipping point for bars, restaurants
and businesses to succeed. When businesses
have plenty of customers, they succeed. When business
and commerce thrive Downtown, more people
will want to live there. Residential and retail developers
will take note and continue to build because their
investment can expect a reasonable return.
So please resist the temptation to fire off an angry
tweet or toss a conversation grenade complaining
about what “they” are not doing to revive our Downtown.
Because “they” are us and “we” is you…
Be a warrior for Downtown. Don’t badmouth,
come out. Visit Downtown on Saturday for a stroll on
the Riverwalk ending at the Riverside Arts Market.
Check out the string of murals dotting Downtown
buildings or one of the public art installations. Grab a
bite in many of our Downtown restaurants. Or swing
by one of the museums — MOCA, Cummer, MOSH.
You might find me practicing yoga in our new
Corkscrew Park under the Acosta. Looking for the
perfect balance in Warrior II.
Debbie Buckland is BB&T market president
for Jacksonville and 2019 JAX Chamber chair.
She lives in Atlantic Beach.
98
J MAGAZINE | FALL 2019

MOVING
TOWARD
HEALTH
TOGETHER
At the YMCA of Florida’s First Coast, our cause is strengthening
community and we’re committed to transforming lives by
nurturing spirit, mind and body.
Every day at the Y, we’re supporting kids, adults, seniors and families through programs and services that protect,
teach, connect, heal, nourish and encourage. We’re here to fill the gaps in community needs and give everyone the
opportunity to realize the power of their full potential.
Join the movement. There’s a Y near you.
Downtown Jacksonville/Riverside Locations:
YMCA at the Bank of America Tower
Winston Family YMCA
Outdoor fitness at Corkscrew Park
Learn more about how the Y is moving toward a better us at FCYMCA.org.

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