J Magazine Winter 2019

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