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Jacksonville Today
OPINION | Don’t Blow It: Jacksonville’s Special Committee on the Future of Downtown
By Sherry Magill,
2024-08-09
Since May, the City Council Special Committee on the Future of Downtown has met three times, with additional meetings in the offing. This committee, appointed by former council President Ron Salem and extended by newly installed council President Randy White, presents a promising opportunity to rethink our understanding of and approach to reinvigorating Jacksonville’s historic Downtown urban core and engage the local citizenry in deep and meaningful ways.
The committee’s charge promises a “public discussion,” one that would allow “ the very identity of Jacksonville itself to be properly aired and framed.” It calls for including the Downtown Investment Authority, nonprofits, Downtown Ambassadors, the development community and “the public at large” in the committee’s deliberations.
At its first meeting, committee Chair Kevin Carrico mentioned inviting presentations from “stakeholders and experts” including Downtown Vision, Visit Jacksonville, the legal community, the mayor’s office, Sulzbacher, the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, Community Foundation for Northeast Florida, the Jaguars, Public Works Department, Sheriff’s Office, JEA, small and emerging businesses, Jacksonville Transportation Authority, and the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce.
No mention of civic-minded architects, local historians, preservationists, park advocates, environmentalists, urbanists. No mention of academic expertise and folks who’ve succeeded at this work in peer cities.
A vexation
Despite its promise, the committee’s conversation thus far has been focused too narrowly on what’s right and what’s wrong with DIA, not that that discussion isn’t worthy.
The larger opportunity — exploring historic Downtown’s role in shaping the very identify of Jacksonville itself is one we would do well to exploit. What is it about Downtown Jacksonville’s story, one told through its relationship to the St. Johns River and its early 20th century architecture, that makes Jacksonville a unique place? How might we preserve that identity and foster a sense of place far into our future?
Examining DIA
In fairness, examining the successes and failures of DIA makes sense. Initially formed in 2012 by the city council, DIA’s purpose is narrow: Invest local public tax dollars to spur private economic development in what DIA considers Downtown: an area spanning nearly 4 square miles along the St. Johns River, from the Southbank to Brooklyn and Lavilla to the “stadium of the future” and the working waterfront between the Hart and Matthews bridges.
But DIA’s Downtown is not synonymous with the historic Downtown, the “Downtown” implied in the special committee’s written charge. DIA is not responsible for preserving our collective identity or fostering a sense of place. Nor is it charged with framing a conversation about crystallizing, preserving and building upon Jacksonville’s identity.
Sadly, DIA’s Downtown is something of an albatross, a curse even, whose sprawling geography strangles any hope we have to focus our attention and resources on reimagining the future of Downtown, to reclaim our identity as a resourceful and resilient people who built something special out of 1901 Great Fire ashes.
Where is historic Downtown?
Historic Downtown Overlay | maps.coj.net
According to Ennis Davis , a Downtown Jacksonville Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. Its 158 acres include “176 contributing buildings, one contributing site and two contributing objects.”
Folks, “contributing” means special. Unique. Unlike any other. Physical assets created by the genius and grit of previous generations, and which give meaning to us contemporaries — the inheritors of the place they built — who walk the same streets situated along the same nearby St. Johns River. The physical assets previous generations built provide us with a sense of place, an identity.
An asset-based approach
Wonder how different the special committee’s conversation might be had they begun with an understanding of the geography and the history of the place itself, of the 158-acre Downtown historic district.
How different might their eventual recommendations be if they expand their inquisition beyond what’s wrong and right with DIA to what’s special and unique about historic Downtown Jacksonville, and how we might build upon those assets?
How different might those recommendations be if the committee genuinely invites into their conversation committed and dedicated active local citizens, themselves “stakeholders and experts.” Folks who have an impressive track record imagining, restoring, and caring for common civic space, like historic Riverside and Avondale and Memorial Park; who have spearheaded creation of Riverside Arts Market; who have studied and know better than developers, DIA staff, and the special committee about what works in other cities; folks who care deeply about and love historic Downtown Jacksonville more than most, and who have absolutely nothing financially to gain?
They deserve the opportunity to make presentations.
Instead, engaged and caring citizens get “3 minutes and you’re done,” and only if the committee time clock hasn’t run out as it did during the July meeting.
What’s the problem?
Solving the DIA problem might be a problem we need to solve, but the larger problem is our lack of appreciation for place and history, and this unwillingness to listen to civic-minded people with expansive knowledge and experience.
As Jacksonville Historical Society CEO Alan Bliss wrote in May, “Jacksonville has often seemed to care less about its past than other [peer] cities do.” This despite the fact that everyone knows that one’s past helps identify who one is, and that other more successful cities with thriving urban cores (Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, etc.) saved and marketed their unique sense of place.
Upcoming meetings:
The special committee next meets at 1 p.m., Monday, Aug. 12, in City Council chambers in the St. James Building. Come prepared to speak, though you may not be heard.
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