cityXtra Magazine

Mayor Brown's Downtown Vision

As we looked into Mayor Brown's Downtown reinvestment there seems to be some MAJOR issues.

First lets consider the Metropolitan Park expansion. The park has been past victim to noise level issues from residents across the St Johns River. So why would the Mayor want to spend $250,000 on designs for an amphitheater at Metropolitan Park? Don't we have an amphitheater being built at 220 Riverside in Unity Plaza? This makes no sense to build another one less than one mile form the Unity Plaza. The big deal is that Metropolitan would be done with taxpayer money and then taxpayer money will have to maintain the project. The Unity Plaza is a private sector and tax money project with a fraction of the cost to taxpayers.

Second, the downtown needs infrastructure put into place before any redevelopment occurs. Mass transit, better pedestrian walk ways, parking, bike lanes, traffic relief, etc. The city can build and development whatever it wants downtown but if you can't get in and out of downtown nor have a place to park, well then it will another epic failure such as the Landing. The Landing has failed because of PARKING and the city still has NOT addressed the parking issue. Why build before you have infrastructure to handle the customers & visitors. May we suggest the Mayor consider expanding the SkyWay  which was proven to inadequate during One Spark to handle large downtown crowds.

Third, make another park where the old court house. I'm all for parks but doesn't Jacksonville already have parks that are falling apart because we don't have the proper funds to maintain one of the largest public park systems of any US city? Sell the property on the river to a developer and allow private sector to develop the land. Yes, we can do the same deal as we did with 220 River Place and have a smaller park included on the property. A win win for our city.

Fourth, one HUGE thing left out of the Mayor's Downtown Vision was Aqua Jax. Aqua Jax already has the money ready to develop the project and only needs the shipyard land. An economic boost to downtown and the tourist business for our city but is left out of the Downtown Vision. Did the Mayor not listen to the people of the city during One Spark? We want a Downtown Aquarium. No taxpayer money would be used they ONLY need the land. Duh Mayor Brown?

Fifth, the Landing. Yes there needs to be something done with property. However, using $11.8 million of taxpayer money to then only give the profits to a private sector company is way off base. If the Sleiman's want to redo the property then by all means redevelop the property but NOT with taxpayer money. The city owns the land GREAT but allow the private sector to redevelop the property and NOT on the backs of hard working taxpayers. The city has not business in running businesses, the city government needs to govern. PERIOD.

In closing, we don't want to come off as a person not wanting Downtown Redevelopment, just the opposite we believe this is vital to our growth as a city. The challenge remains in separating the city from business. The private sector will gladly build and the city should gladly build the infrastructure. This is government and private sector working to create growth and redevelopment in downtown. We caution any major redevelopment without a study into the infrastructure needed for such projects. If we do NOT this prior to these projects then the city will have another HUGE bill coming for infrastructure need to support these projects that we currently see no where in the Mayor's Downtown Vision.

Therefore, we give Mayor Brown 'F' on his plans for downtown. The reasoning is simply there are a lot of issues that need to address in the budgets for the plans and to much taxpayer money being used for the private sector businesses. Mass transit, parking, pedestrian walk ways, bike lanes, etc. before any NEW projects downtown. We can't put the cart before the horse, if we do EPIC failure at the expense of taxpayers. We are not evening going to enter the the area of repaying the pension funds before spending millions on other projects. Ugh!