J Magazine Winter 2019

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One of the unique aspects of Downtown is you’ve got people living in penthouses and you have people living on the streets and everything in between. You want to create a neighborhood and a culture around that. How do you do that? Dean Kate: Well, you create an attractive, beautiful space. You fill in the parking lots, half of our land is surface parking lot, which makes people feel insecure. I did a funeral three weeks ago and a woman in her 50s came to me and said she hadn’t been Downtown in 25 years because she was frightened to come Downtown. And most of that is myth. It’s not dangerous Downtown. The crime rate is not high, but there’s this sense of emptiness. So the first thing we need to do is fill in the gaps and build. And then, from a theological perspective in the Christian tradition, we believe that God is Trinity which is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which is community. So, we’re called to build community, that’s what God wants for us. God doesn’t want people living in isolation. True community involves diversity. We learn from people who are different from us, who have different socio-economic experiences and races and cultures. So, our vision is to fill in the empty gaps with parks, trees, buildings. Build residential first and then retail and create some kind of economic and socio-economic diversity so that people can come to know each other. Get them out walking, get them out onto the streets. Right now the traffic is so fast on some of those thoroughfares that our elderly people push the button to walk across the street and they can’t get to the other side. It’s literally dangerous. And it’s also kind of an environmental issue as well. We want people back outside. We want some green space. Ginny has figured out a way to plant 100 trees. I particularly feel passionate about these elderly people. They can’t walk because it’s too dangerous, not in terms of crime but in terms of the speed of the traffic. Where do they go? Where is there grass or a garden? There’s nothing for them so then they get isolated, then they get depressed. And that’s not what we want. Ginny: Our master development plan has residential on Duval and Church. Right now those streets are one-way going the opposite direction. So if you can two-way those streets, you immediately slow down the traffic tremendously and create a neighborhood where you’ve got sidewalks capable of handling people on both sides. The city has done a pretty good job recently of putting in what I would refer to as temporary crossing places with a flashing light. There’s one right in front of FIS on Riverside Avenue. It says pedestrians are going across here, and everybody slows down for them. We’ve been talking about two-way streets Downtown for many, many years, and I’m hoping, [DIA CEO] Lori Boyer is on a fast track to do it. Another part of our mission is to develop a sense of a neighborhood, a sense of place. So to “What is about to burst open is what Shad Khan is going to do along the waterfront, which will require literally thousands of employees who are not capable of living in a high-end apartment or a high-end condo.” DEAN KATE MOOREHEAD that end, we have engaged Linda Crofton who’s come on our staff. Her first big event in December is called Christmas in the Cathedral District. All five churches are participating. It’s an evening event with different kinds of music, a street fair and food trucks. And then there’s a biking group that’s coming in the spring to Jacksonville for a big conference, and they asked if they could use a route in the Cathedral District. And we said, absolutely. So that’s going to be the second event where we bring the neighbors out. Dean Kate: We also want to utilize what we already have. St. John’s Cathedral is an architectural jewel that a lot of people have not been in. So we’re now doing regular art exhibits. We’ve got a lot more partnerships. We have a new bookstore in a home across the street from the Cathedral. We’re trying to utilize our space more. We’re doing more music events. So, we hope to just use this beautiful building for lots of different kinds of things, not just worship. We’re hosting Olivia’s Tea Party. It’s a nonprofit where they take homeless girls and throw a huge beautiful tea party for them and get them beautiful dresses and teach them etiquette. Just all these gorgeous things you can do in a Cathedral. Cathedrals are the traditional centers of a village with all kinds of diversity within it. That’s where universities were born. There were schools. There were hospitals. There was art and music. So, we’re really harkening back to something that’s very ancient, and worked for a long time. You all talked about some of the impediments to getting things done. What would you like to see to break through some of those impediments? Dean Kate: We should say that we’re thankful for the Jessie Ball du Pont Fund because without their help, I don’t know if we could have done all this. But we also think that city government should not be an obstacle to this kind of development. They should find a way to make it easier on us. Ginny has had to work really, really hard, and to jump through too many hoops. And if it wasn’t for the fact that we feel called by God to do this, we would never have been able to do it if we weren’t funded by du Pont, had a strong congregation and a real strong vision. We would have given up a long time ago. It shouldn’t be that hard. We should be all on the same team. I believe everyone wants this Downtown to thrive. We want the city to be a healthy city, to have a vibrant urban core. So how could we possibly make it easier on all the nonprofits, all the groups that are trying hard to make this city more beautiful and more vibrant? We could do a better job in process. LILA ROSS, a former news editor at the Times-Union, lives in San Marco. 94 J MAGAZINE | WINTER <strong>2019</strong>
Parking Continued from page 88 Brooklyn — will bring 300 more units. Businesses are feeling pressured now, even without these new developments. The Fresh Market has explored valet parking. “We retained a broker and looked for land we could lease, but we weren’t successful,” said company spokeswoman Meghan Flynn. The land that surrounds the shopping center was once residential, and most of it is still privately owned. Regency Centers is The Fresh Market’s landlord and Brooklyn Station’s owner. They are looking for answers to the center’s parking challenges, spokesman Jan Hanak said. It’s not a situation that is putting store owners at risk, though. Instead, it’s the kind of problem that’s nice to have. “When a retail center is really successful, it usually means there’s congestion,” Hanak said. “And right now that’s a very, very successful area to be in.” Across the street, the YMCA is troubleshooting parking issues, too. Its 300-space lot sees high demand in the early months of the year and during the summer. Leadership is thinking of adding gates to the entrances. The purpose, said Burrows would be to give priority to members, not to keep everyone else out. Non-members would pay a fee to park. “I think we’re one of the last public lots in the area that doesn’t have gated parking,” he said. “This is a way we could honestly recoup a return on whatever parking solution we decide to put in.” Brooklyn’s business owners are working to craft solutions for their own patrons. They are less clear about how to create more capacity for the district as a whole. A road diet along Riverside could help. The purpose of a road diet is to slow traffic, but it also would close lanes that could be repurposed as parking spaces. Or perhaps, extend the Skyway to Brooklyn. The Jacksonville Transportation Authority has long planned to do so. DIA’s Boyer said neither of these are near-term solutions. Riverside has too much traffic to shut down lanes. And the Skyway expansion will take 10 years. Ultimately, it’s up to new building owners to plan for their parking needs, she said. A public parking garage is too expensive a solution for the city to spearhead. The city couldn’t recoup the costs of building one as easily as a business, which is supported by shoppers, hotel guests or renters. Boyer does see a role for the city to play, though. “I don’t see it as the city’s responsibility to provide all the parking. I do see it as our responsibility to coordinate, assist and manage a parking strategy,” she said. Even if a road diet may not be in the cards for Riverside Avenue, the city is planning to make improvements to Forest Street that will add parking spaces. When developers were designing the footprint for the new Panera-anchored building, the city negotiated a land swap. The deal earned Jacksonville a new 39-space public parking lot on the developer’s dime. As new apartments, hotels and stores are designed, the city during the review process will encourage them to overbuild on parking, Boyer said, and to designate the extra spaces for the public. Another strategy Boyer likes is asking companies to make their private parking spaces public during off-peak hours. When different types of businesses collaborate on parking, synergies are possible. Apartment parking lots are full at night, but have open spaces during the day. Offices have parking lots that are full during the workweek, but empty during the evenings and on weekends. It was that kind of thinking that was behind a deal the city struck with Florida Blue. The company plans to build an 869-space parking lot for its employees just two blocks away from The Fresh Market. The city granted Florida Blue the land to build upon and $3.5 million toward construction. In exchange, the garage will be used as public parking on weekday evenings and on weekends. Boyer said she’s looking for more opportunities like that in Brooklyn. It’s not something she’s losing sleep over, though. “I’m not getting calls from people complaining about parking in Brooklyn,” she said. “The numbers in the study say we’re tight. We know we’re tight. So we’re trying to be responsive.” Fresh Market fans like Naugle and Robinson may be circling for parking these days. But so far, it hasn’t kept them from shopping there. Hopefully, it will continue that way, because with the new developments coming in Brooklyn, parking will get even tighter. The city needs to keep ahead of a good problem. 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 Core Eyesore Continued from page 91 to sit here for another few years, empty, in my opinion.” He was right. Two years have passed and that property remains vacant. We’re not accusing the committee members of any malfeasance, simply poor judgment. The sad fact is that this space remains vacant. If that property had been redeveloped, there is a good chance that it would have spurred other redevelopment nearby. Instead, that entire block remains another sad example of Downtown’s depression. Despite the fact that there is much activity in Downtown Jacksonville, there still are far too many vacant buildings, many of them owned by government near the Central Business District. A study commissioned by the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund revealed that 1 in 7 buildings Downtown are vacant. Yet we have become so used to seeing them that we pass them every day. Rather than being shocked and spurred to action, the city has looked the other way. Even if 324 N. Broad St. had been redeveloped, it would take decades to fill all of the vacant buildings at this one-off basis. What Jacksonville needs is something dramatic, a massive sale of its vacant properties. Here again, J magazine published a proposal by developer Mike Balanky in our Q&A feature. Balanky suggested that a real estate company like CBRE come up with the best use of all of the vacant properties. The company would do that in return for having the listings. Then the city would make a huge marketing campaign. Come on down, America, to one of the hottest Downtowns in the nation. We’re having a big sale! Buy this property before it’s gone! “This needs to be a marketing business on steroids,” Balanky said. Right now, it’s on life support. Lori Boyer, the new CEO of the Downtown Investment Authority, started her job running so there is hope here. But the job of J magazine is to push for progress. And we can’t wait another two years or a generation for Downtown’s empty buildings to be developed. It’s worth repeating. One in seven Downtown buildings are empty. We need bold, dramatic progress. MIKE CLARK WINTER <strong>2019</strong> | J MAGAZINE 95
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