Three solutions to turn around aging urban districts

Modern Cities shares a Spring 2017 presentation by Ennis Davis, AICP to the board of City Beautiful Jax, highlighting a few cost effective options for stimulating market rate economic development in historic neighborhoods.

23. The last revitalization tool for historic neighborhoods I’d like to highlight in this presentation revolves around the idea of promotion of existing innovation, creativity and trends through coordinated marketing.

24. When most think about urban Jacksonville and historic preservation, the focus immediately shifts to downtown Jacksonville, Prairie-School Architecture and neighborhoods like Riverside/Avondale, San Marco and Springfield. Little attention is paid to the historic wholesale and industrial districts that are the primarily reason Jacksonville continues to strive as a diverse city in the 21st Century. Despite being the reason Jacksonville was once known as Florida’s “Gateway City”, Honeymoon Yard is an area worth pointing out.

25. Just west of downtown and nearly a mile in length, the Honeymoon Yard is where the CSX Transportation (CSX), Florida East Coast (FEC), and Norfolk Southern (NS) railroads converge. The name Honeymoon actually predates this important junction. Honeymoon was the name of Colonel Lucius Augustus Hardee’s mid-19th century residence. Seeing the need for a large single rail terminal, Henry Flagler acquired most of the area in the late-19th century to accommodate the sorting, storage and cleaning of passenger sleeping cars at the Jacksonville Terminal (now Prime Osborn). By the 1920s, this major rail junction had become home to many of the city’s largest industrial employers for the efficient transportation of goods and shipping of raw materials by rail.

26. The increase in automobile popularity and air travel had an adverse effect on the health of Honeymoon Yard. The decline culminated with the loss of the main economic engines that led to the district’s late 19th century development. In 1974, the Jacksonville Terminal ceased its downtown operations and a year later, the Railroad Express Agency (REA) filed for bankruptcy, shutting down its nearby terminal. Despite the loss, four decades later and largely ignored by most downtown and urban core advocates, the district and much of its early 20th century built environment still remains.

27. While other large century old wholesale districts have become obsolete and largely abandoned, Jacksonville’s lives on with many major operations such as Beaver Street Fisheries, CSX, Load King, Main Metal Recycling, Preferred Freezer Services, White Wave Foods and others that significantly contribute to the city’s tax base and economic might. In recent years, additional long abandoned structures have been repurposed into innovate and creative uses ranging from artist studios and architectural salvage to a craft brewery featuring a bier garden that was converted out of a former rail loading dock.

28. Buoyed by an influx of new businesses reimagining industrial buildings, this district, which is home to 346 businesses employing nearly 6300 jobs and generating $2.62 billion in annual sales, could become one of the largest regional destinations and successful wholesale districts in the country. Now, area business owners are formally organizing in an effort to capitalize on the area’s assets, market the area appropriately and improve on infrastructure that has gone neglected for decades. Detroit’s Eastern Market can provide us with a glimpse of what’s possible through coordinated marketing and leveraging.

29. Eastern Market is the largest public market district in the country. In 2006, the market was transferred from city management, in favor of a public-private partnership operation with the Eastern Market Corporation. The goals of this partnership are to maintain Eastern Market’s authenticity, development equity, connectivity, density and diversity. With that in mind, the corporation manages operations, develop programs, build facilities, provide critical infrastructure, and collaborate with community partners to enhance the district as a robust regional food hub, fortify the food sector as a pillar of economic growth and improve access to health, green and affordable food choices throughout Southeast Michigan.

30. Once dominated by abandoned industrial buildings and rail corridors, today the district serves as both a piece of the city’s past and a portal into a healthier and sustainable future for its economic resurgence. Not only is it home to a cluster of traditional food related wholesale businesses, this densification of complementing uses is complimented by light manufacturing and makerspaces. The foot traffic stimulated has created an environment for ancillary uses such as independent eateries, retail, galleries and performance venues in formerly vacant spaces.

31. At the market alone, which covers roughly six blocks, annually, over 2 million people shop and buy food, spending $418 million on meat and $360 million on wholesale food. The impact of this activity is the stimulation of 1,300 jobs for the local area. A significant portion are entry-level, living-wage jobs. In short, the district has become a local business incubator with the ability to organically revive and economically anchor the larger community surrounding it.

32. While this is great for the City of Detroit, the reality is that areas of food related wholesaling business clusters exist in most regions across the country. The Eastern Market District serves as an economic example of success of combining the concept of unified promotion, urban planning and local history with the clustering of complementing uses within a compact pedestrian scale setting. Other successful examples of similar districts include Union Market (DC), the Arts District (LA), Strip District (Pittsburgh) and Wynwood (Miami).

33. So in closings, this presentation was intended to show that retrofitting and rehabbing our historic structures goes far beyond the cost of reconstruction. In fact, in many cases the cost of construction is not the issue that limits the redevelopment within many established communities. These examples show that through Social Collaboration, Embracing Market Urbanism and Promoting Innovation Through Coordinated Marketing, we can create conditions where rehabilitation starts to become viable at a market rate level.

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Presentation by Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com