J Magazine Winter 2019
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T<br />
Jacksonville Regional Transportation Center to be<br />
a beacon for Downtown’s LaVilla neighborhood<br />
JTA’s gleaming,<br />
new ‘diamond’<br />
By MIKE CLARK // Photos by BOB SELF<br />
The Jacksonville<br />
Regional Transportation<br />
Center is so cool, so<br />
futuristic and so important<br />
to the renaissance of LaVilla<br />
that its name doesn’t do it<br />
justice.<br />
The people who came up with DUUUVAL need to<br />
come up with a nickname.<br />
To understand the importance of the Regional<br />
Transportation Center, you need to understand the history<br />
of its neighborhood, LaVilla.<br />
The LaVilla neighborhood and transportation are<br />
intertwined.<br />
LaVilla was once the boyhood home of James<br />
Weldon Johnson when Jacksonville welcomed African-Americans<br />
and other immigrants, like the Cubans<br />
and Chinese.<br />
With its location near the rail lines and Union Terminal,<br />
LaVilla has a strategic location along the East Coast.<br />
A. Philip Randolph, who graduated from the Cookman<br />
Institute, became the head of the porters union and later<br />
was one of the most influential people in the country.<br />
It was Randolph who pressed President Harry Truman<br />
to integrate the armed forces. It was Randolph who<br />
organized the 1963 March on Washington, which included<br />
Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.<br />
But LaVilla and the South slid into decline in the<br />
1900s as Jim Crow discrimination took over the South.<br />
Sadly, much of LaVilla was torn down during the<br />
River City Renaissance of the 1990s.<br />
A kind of urban depression set in. Union Terminal<br />
no longer greeted rail passengers as AMTRAK moved to<br />
a hard-to-find location in Northwest Jacksonville.<br />
But the history of LaVilla couldn’t be suppressed. A<br />
few stalwarts persisted.<br />
The Clara White Mission set aside an upper floor<br />
with historic artifacts. The Durkeeville Historical Association<br />
persisted with almost no funding. The Ritz Theatre<br />
and Museum was sometimes more influential outside<br />
Jacksonville than at home. Urban planner Ennis Davis<br />
spread the history of this area.<br />
The Times-Union Editorial Page sought to do our<br />
part, partnering with the University of North Florida in<br />
an uncovering.jax website.<br />
But something dramatic was needed.<br />
Nat Ford, CEO of the Jacksonville Transportation<br />
Authority, has provided it.<br />
Ford found plans for a Regional Transportation Center<br />
that had been on the shelf for decades.<br />
The Times-Union Editorial Board had received<br />
presentations on the plans. But like so many other impressive<br />
plans in Jacksonville, they never turned into<br />
concrete.<br />
The traditional design was connected to the Prime<br />
Osborn Convention Center and its iconic Union Terminal.<br />
There was logic to it.<br />
But the problem was that the cost of the Regional<br />
30<br />
J MAGAZINE | WINTER <strong>2019</strong>