Downtown Jacksonville, Is there a vision?

[kyle19125]

Originally Posted by T Block

I see some empty parking lots.

I would build a city block of one-story cluster-houses. Each house would front on a city street, have a front door, a rear door, and have a cathedral ceiling. The lateral spaces between the houses could be 10 feet or less. The community grounds would include a driveway and parking lot between the backs of the houses.

The advantage to downtown is that it is uphill from the river.

What downtown needs is density, which won't come from one-story cluster homes. They need to go vertical and have mixed-use space attached partially supported by the residents that includes a grocery store, wine and spirits, restaurants, bars, health club and a coffee shop. Commercial office tenants are also attracted to those types of development and is an enticement for potential employers to have a work/live/.play space they don't have to commute long distances to. The trouble is this is Jacksonville where developers haven't yet displayed any progressive sensibilities and still seem quite content with their 1990s suburban sprawl options.

[T Block]

Young doctors, lawyers, and bankers are going to get their feet wet if they buy Riverside houses.

I have a plan for that situation as well. I build crawl-space houses with floor-joist holders that are 304L set in wet-pour concrete footings.

And there are some variations. A wall-stud can sit beside a floor-joist with a second wall-stud sitting on top of the floor-joist and with everything bolted to the 304L. Then a ceiling-joist can sit on one wall-stud and bolt to the side of the other wall-stud. The entire house bolts together. However, a bolted blocking is needed near the tops of the wall-studs because there is no header. Or two wall-studs can sit on the 304L with a floor-joist sitting on one wall-stud cut to floor-joist elevation. Then a fitted piece of wall-stud is bolted between the floor-joist and ceiling-joist and bolted to the full height wall-stud.

The 304L floor-joist holders can be a channel shape, for instance, with legs pointing North and then a second channel shape with legs pointed East that is bolted to the first channel. The second channel shape is cut shorter than the first channel shape to make a seat for the lumber. In fact the first channel could be an L-angle instead. The floor-joist holders are set in wet-pour concrete footings.

[remirosie123]

Marriott just bought up a whole block downtown, River City Brewing is now going to be a condo I think with a rooftop bar, the Shipyards just got approval for a huge complex, the downtown vision is finally happening, from what I heard, this has been a long time coming as we just moved here in April. The Laura three corners area of downtown is being redone, lots happening down there now! The homeless are a huge issue, they are on every corner and who wants to go downtown if they are all ove the place, well Marriott was brave and invested so much money into their complex, hopefully all is going up from here guys!

[Florida2014]

Originally Posted by T Block

Young doctors, lawyers, and bankers are going to get their feet wet if they buy Riverside houses.

I have a plan for that situation as well. I build crawl-space houses with floor-joist holders that are 304L set in wet-pour concrete footings.

And there are some variations. A wall-stud can sit beside a floor-joist with a second wall-stud sitting on top of the floor-joist and with everything bolted to the 304L. Then a ceiling-joist can sit on one wall-stud and bolt to the side of the other wall-stud. The entire house bolts together. However, a bolted blocking is needed near the tops of the wall-studs because there is no header. Or two wall-studs can sit on the 304L with a floor-joist sitting on one wall-stud cut to floor-joist elevation. Then a fitted piece of wall-stud is bolted between the floor-joist and ceiling-joist and bolted to the full height wall-stud.

The 304L floor-joist holders can be a channel shape, for instance, with legs pointing North and then a second channel shape with legs pointed East that is bolted to the first channel. The second channel shape is cut shorter than the first channel shape to make a seat for the lumber. In fact the first channel could be an L-angle instead. The floor-joist holders are set in wet-pour concrete footings.

Thanks for this very, very, very detailed response about building codes. What it has to do with downtown Jacksonville......anyone's guess.

[T Block]

Professional people who work downtown are buying houses in popular neighborhoods that are essentially flood zones.

The high ground is downtown, when a couple of blocks from the river, and areas North of downtown.

[JBtwinz]

Reviving this thread as it seems downtown is making such slow progress in returning to it glory days of long ago (and the forum has been pretty quiet).

I see the Freedom Fountain is up and running again, it seems like it was just yesterday they had refurbished it and when we were at the Agricultural center for a show late summer I never noticed the new apartments that had burned down.

We have been here since the Landing opened and it seems like it is going to take forever for downtown to become vibrant again.

The retired Navy vessel is a nice draw but I wish the city of Jacksonville would provide some sort of seed money for businesses to open downtown instead of putting all their baskets with the Jaguars.

I would like to be able to hangout downtown along the river front as we did years ago with food and beverage availability like we had at the Landing.

[kyle19125]

It seems the route toward any meaningful downtown revitalization happens through private-public partnerships. Reaching out to the key players in Detroit's resurgence might be a good starting point to organize around and then identify similar progressives in Jacksonville. Florida Blue, Baptist Health, Bank of America and CSX are some examples of potential corporate partners.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/...ns-on-revival/

[JBtwinz]

Originally Posted by kyle19125

It seems the route toward any meaningful downtown revitalization happens through private-public partnerships. Reaching out to the key players in Detroit's resurgence might be a good starting point to organize around and then identify similar progressives in Jacksonville. Florida Blue, Baptist Health, Bank of America and CSX are some examples of potential corporate partners.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/...ns-on-revival/

I wish we could mirror Detroit, we travel a lot and Jacksonville is so blessed to have a waterfront like we do but it still hasn’t helped. All the emphasis seems to be placed on the Jaguars revitalizing downtown.

There was an article a year or two back mentioning city’s undergoing urban revivals and Jacksonville was one of two city’s mentioned that still lacked any vision.

[remirosie123]

Originally Posted by JBtwinz

I wish we could mirror Detroit, we travel a lot and Jacksonville is so blessed to have a waterfront like we do but it still hasn’t helped. All the emphasis seems to be placed on the Jaguars revitalizing downtown.

There was an article a year or two back mentioning city’s undergoing urban revivals and Jacksonville was one of two city’s mentioned that still lacked any vision.

I agree with you. I said in another post, last night we went to see a comedian at the Florida Theatre and it was so nice to see the area around it filled with people walking, Dos Gatos Bar was full of patrons and even after the show, we walked to our car and the Underbelly and some place next door to it, was open and pretty full of people. The fountain looks beautiful! I have heard Gateway Jax is really revving up, but not sure exactly the plans there. It has so much potential!!

[bativac]

Originally Posted by remirosie123

It has so much potential!!

People have been saying this about Jacksonville since before I was born. Jax might have the most perpetually unrealized potential of any city in America.