Jacksonville

[ComputerGuy]

Originally Posted by Floridian

When finding a house, locate areas at Ponte Vedra, Mandarin, Southside blvd.,Julington Creek , Bartram Park & St John's county area.

I agree that these areas are generally nicer than other areas of town. I have to be honest, Jacksonville has had a large number of homicides, and this year hasn't started off to well, but overall I still believe that Jacksonville is a nice place to live.

Coming from the west coast, the humidity will be a little different, but you should adjust.

[Ocklawaha]

Why are large Metro area's like Granola?

Jacksonville has it's fringe, and this is a good example of it...

I'm gonna tell it Like it is. Jacksonville is a product of "white flight" in the 60's thru the 1990's. The culture of the city and its urban neighborhoods were brutally erased by racially motivated "urban renewal" and devaluation by the city fathers who owned a ton of cheap land in outlying areas. After devaluation of the city core,

Sorry about your history, but Jacksonville was on-board from the early 1960's with every federal program under the sun to better the condition of the urban poor. Massive new federal housing programs, whole sections of town, were leveled and reconstructed with playgrounds and schools. I was here at that time, and I'm telling you NOBODY stood in the school house door in this town. The only possible racial thing that I know of is the Expressway Authority, which built what is today's I-95, before the interstate system. It ran North South through the cheapest West-side land available. Thus it was labeled as a divider of the races, the poor black on the West and the wealthy white on the East. But the fact is, that was never the real picture, depending on what part of the road one was on, it was pretty poor on either side.

the first Baptist Church took advantage of the removed neighborhoods and associated commercial structures and bought up many blocks. With this they constructed a fortress of multistory parking structures to feed their insatiable growth (biggest church in Florida) and which to this day forms a kind of rampart-barrier of concrete between the current struggling adjacent area of Springfield to the north and the central business district to the south.

I find this one almost funny, First Baptist Church was BANKRUPT in the early 1960's. They were not buying up anything. In fact, they had second or third mortgages on their own little historic chapel. Gulf Life Insurance across the street from the old Chapel, moved to a new tower on the South Bank of the St. Johns River, and offered the old HQ to the church for some symbolic amount like a dollar. The church built parking (which it didn't have) in order to grow, and used the buildings to back the loans). To prove the financial worth of the loan amounts the garages were leased to corporate tenants on weekdays, and the church uses them on the weekends... a practice that continues today. Make it to number ONE and it's amazing the stories that are told about you.

Recently there has been an attempt to recover some of the denuded culture in the downtown La villa neighborhood where a fragment of the old theater has been restored.

The Ritz theater is completely redone, and is beautiful. La Villa is a wasteland of empty lots, and is just now starting to see developer interest. I agree, that clear-cutting entire sections of the City does not conserve a sense of neighborhood.

During this transformation there was a county commission and a city council, and you guessed it, the percentage of black voters within the city limits threatened the balance or shall we say imbalance of power. So around 1965, the entire county which is about 65% white voted to dissolve the city government and extend the boundaries of the city of Jacksonville to encompass the entirety of Duval county. Now the only reason whites had for a long time after this strangulation of the city to come downtown was to go to a football game.

Again, this was NOT the reason behind consolidation. First it was a pilot program, sponsored by political science labs all over the USA. We had so many tiny communities, Volunteer Fire Departments, Police, Sheriff, a dozen electric, sewer, water and other utility companies with a City of 186,000 dead in the center of the County and spread out to the edges due to Navy, railroad, or river influences. The City was nearly broke, the County was not running it's services at all and the School system was WITHOUT accreditation. The whole house was falling down. We all, BLACK and WHITE, voted to bring it into a new type of government and make things right. Since that vote, that you label as racist, we have been one of the nations fastest growing cities.

Even the people mover and "Jacksonville Landing" were designed with these old prejudices in mind, so that white patrons could park on the south-bank (white San Marco area) and ride the monorail people-mover to the landing without (barely) finding themselves on a downtown sidewalk- god forbid...The landing, designed by Ben Thompson who also did similar structures in Boston, Miami, and Baltimore had a unique concept- horseshoe shaped structure to limit access to the waterfront from the streets of the city. Defensible space, or shall we say fortress America is therefore alive an well in Jacksonville.

If the previous part was funny, this is downright hysterical. The people mover wasn't designed for ANY such thing. In fact the original system didn't even go over the river. The City entered a national competition and won one of 3 slots to have the federal government build a demonstration project for us... NOT US, Uncle Sam built it. JTA did a study and they figured 56,000 a day would ride the first mile or so from downtown West to La Villa.
They planned to go north through Confederate Park to University Hospital at 8Th Street. The Historic Community would NOT stand for the giant modern elevated system running through this mostly black community. In fact, they shot it dead at State Street. Later, in 2000 the City tried to rescue the system and converted it to Monorail. San Marco had filed suit in 1925 to get a overpass over the FEC Railroad Mainline, for access to downtown. They pushed to get the new "Skyway" monorail too, but the City wouldn't spend the bucks to reach these "rich white folks". So the project has stalled again, still dumb, and still dead. Only carrying 1,500 a day. How do I know? Because I'm a planner that was on the OTHER side.

The Jacksonville Landing was designed to focus on the River. The courtyard centers the focus of the whole mall, food and entertainment complex toward the waterfront on the belief that most people, black or white had rather see sail boats, then City buses. We all realize today that it was built too small, and not open enough to downtown to welcome the City inside. That is being addressed as we write. A new owner wants to greatly re-develop it, and expand it. New Parking garage North of the building is planned. We can hope that the City approves the plan to cut a huge hole in the North side to make a walk-through corridor. The original was a rough copy of Boston and Baltimore's Inner Harbor, less then perfect, it needs to be tweaked to really work for us.


You will find here an abundance of boring suburban stucco boxes carved out of swampy pine-land surrounded by moats, and artificial lakes with overstated decorative fountains , walls and security gates. Jacksonville made a good(...blah...blah...blah... added to prevent sleep)

...and Miami is? ...and Tampa is? ...and Orlando is? At least some parts of Jacksonville are not low ground, some of the lakes are real and all of the many rivers and creeks are REAL. Fountains are really pretty at night, and security gates or walls keep out thugs without regard to race, color or religion. Want to see a see of boring stucco? Try Southern California to New Mexico... and THOSE buildings are mostly brown! You don't suppose that they were racially motivated do you?

Yes, I'm a Jacksonville cracker, who spent most of my hippie years and about 1/2 of my adult life in California, Oregon, Oklahoma and Colombia.

I AM COLORED TOO! A sort of peachy white, my wife is Hispanic from Bogota, she is probably colored too, but damn... I never thought to ask her what color.

...and THAT is the real Jacksonville story, from someone who both lived here and on the LEFT COAST. One that worked in the heart of the imagined race war, I must have slept in and missed it? Come on down friends, WELCOME ONE AND ALL! We'll all meet at the landing and I'll buy the first round!

Why is a Large Metro Area like Granola? Because what isn't fruits and nuts, is probably flakes!

Ocklawaha