Richard Skinner has emerged as one of the hottest architects in Jacksonville. Since defecting briefly to the commercial side to design the J. Johnson Gallery in Jacksonville Beach, Skinner is focusing again on high-end residential projects. Currently, he has eight homes on the drafting table, seven of them either on the oceanfront or riverfront, and one for a mountain house in North Carolina.
The son of Dr. John Skinner, and a member of the Skinner Dairy family, Skinner worked in construction after studying psychology at Emory. When Skinner was 27, he hopped on his motorcycle and drove north, landing in Boston. After working briefly in radio, he got a job with Bob Vila and the long-running television show, “This Old House.” Yearning to compliment his interest in building with a mastery of design, he enrolled in the prestigious Boston Architectural Center, an institution that attracts a cross-section of professors from places like Harvard, MIT, Princeton and Cornell.
He moved back to Jacksonville with his wife Patricia in 1990 and established Richard Skinner & Associates on St. Johns Avenue in Riverside. Saying that the best part of his job is following the evolution of a project from the purchase of a lot all the way to completion, the firm has grown to include three other architects and one architect-in-training. Daily Record staff writer Sean McManus met with Skinner at a recently completed home on the oceanfront in Ponte Vedra Beach to talk about his work, design in general and his aesthetic vision for Jacksonville.
Question: How do you feel about the movement towards Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND)?
Answer: The TND concept is really popular with most of the new high-end developments. The idea is to converge commercial and residential like you see in great cities like Boston on Newberry Street and in areas around California. Developers need to remember that to do TND, it’s critical to have the right density, meaning that there has to be the right number of people to support the shops and movie theaters but not so many that it’s overcrowded. The other hurdle, of course, is that everything in life can’t be high-end. Everybody loves nice boutiques with apartments on top but the reality is there will always be Wal-Mart.
Q: Is there any way to do TND with a structure as large as Wal-Mart?
A: I did hear about a big retail mall in Orlando that went up two stories and put residential lofts on the second floor. I think the problem becomes the parking lot. I don’t know how many people want to live next to a giant parking lot. And one of the nice things about TND is that there are usually lots of trees.
Q: What are some examples of good TND?
A: The whole area around San Marco, Riverside and Avondale accomplishes the task pretty well. It’s interesting, though, people don’t realize that the land there was all clear-cut, filled and graded, meaning all the trees were knocked down and new trees were planted. So now, 100 years later, it’s nice. But it’s a tough call for architects and city planners to approve projects that would cut down so many trees, even though we know that they do grow back. I’m facing a similar dilemma as we continue to think through ideas for developing some of my family’s land near Baymeadows. Nobody, including me, wants to kill all the trees.
Q: What do you think about the tree ordinance?
A: Let me give you a little background before I answer that. In any city, the challenge to the architects and planners is to work within the context of the city, state, and federal regulations, the ordinances, building codes, zoning laws, environmental codes. It’s part of the creative process to make a project work given those boundaries. But, it’s hard. So most people take the path of least resistance because there are no systems in place to deal with innovative concepts. Potentially, new traffic laws, fire codes, vehicular controls, signage codes and density regulations all would have to be completely reinvented. And getting every agency to sit at the same table and agree on one idea is virtually impossible. That doesn’t even address the financing or the work that goes into studying the marketplace. So the tree ordinance is a classic example of an antiquated system that was put in place as a punitive measure to combat bad behavior.
Q: So we should reward good behavior instead?
A: Absolutely. Instead of knee-jerk reactions to growth and bad developments, let’s encourage the right kind of projects with incentives to keep trees. I mean, the jury is still out on whether the tree ordinance will be a good thing for the long haul. But the smartest thing we could do everywhere right now is just simply to plant more trees. They are also great at hiding bad mistakes. I guess in reality, I would modify the tree ordinance to provide credits for planting trees. This would translate into better products [developments] all over the city and everybody would be better off.
Q: What would it take to make residential communities here better?
A: This is the balancing act. The largest number of people who buy homes in this country and in this city are not wealthy, and money buys quality. Every cost a developer faces is going to come out of something else and usually that means the quality of the construction and the design work. The biggest complaint I hear is how bad some of the houses look. People are starved for nicely built homes they see in other cities. But the relative burden is higher on developers here. Now, that’s not to say we should make it free to do business, but it is important to remember that we want to make it easier to build nice developments.
Q: Who should we look to for good examples?
A: Boston had the luxury of growing up in a wonderful era when, as a merchant center, and a port town in the 1880s, there was an extremely high level of quality. And there was a master plan to link developments with a greenway for developments with controls for where people could build. Natural materials were utilized and red brick and brownstone was available. So, a unique character developed. We, on the other hand, have to impose order out of chaos and try to create a sense of place and continuity in the wake of sprawl. We focus on streets and signage when we should be focusing on JEA and the wires strung from tall poles all over the city.
Q: What do we do about downtown?
A: Downtown is extremely important because it’s the city’s identity and has a huge impact on our national image. And it’s a beautiful place. Most cities would love to have a river like ours and a residential community like San Marco across the bridge and Hemming Plaza. Now, there will always be people who want to live in the suburbs and there will always be people who want to live in an urban setting. Jacksonville has the potential to offer a nice mix of both. We just have to remember not to rush it. We’ve got so much going on here that there will be saturation if we try to accomplish every thing overnight and speculate on where every market is heading. There was a time when things like condos and timeshares didn’t even exist. New ideas could emerge and we don’t want to prevent that by thinking that we’ve got to figure it all out right now. The other thing is parking will be a problem. There’s just no such thing as living in Jacksonville without a car. I bought a Vespa since I live close to my office but I’ve got so many meetings all over the city that I can’t even use it.
Q: How did Boston keep its downtown great?
A: Boston has a historic district for every area that controls what gets built. Even Harvard Square has a newness that I’m uncomfortable with, but it has good architecture and good scale. Downtown Jacksonville really should be the easiest neighborhood to get right. It’s already got a specific historic character, and it’s compact enough to control. Europe does this well, and Coral Gables near Miami. The key is to have smaller locally controlled systems. The funny thing is that parts of Jacksonville do this. The area where my office is on St. Johns Avenue is in the “St. Johns Quarter.” We have an office next to private homes and it forces us all to be friends. The new Publix apparently had to get approval from smaller Riverside organizations. And gated communities seem to like it. LaVilla is actually a good opportunity to see if government can get involved in planning communities in a positive way. The real challenge is the suburbs like Mandarin. It’s hard to create continuity when there is so much space and there are big buildings with big parking lots next to them. Actually, office parks do it the best commercially because there’s symmetry of style and use of trees. The best thing to do is put the onus on the builders to have architectural standards.
Q: There’s a lot of talk in Jacksonville about collaboration in design projects. It that good or bad?
A: It’s usually pretty necessary. The reason is that local architects know the system, which is important for a swift completion of the project. They know which materials work best in this climate and they know the local zoning boards and can coordinate the whole process. When you hear about an architectural firm in Scandinavia collaborating with a firm in Jacksonville, it’s because somebody liked the design element from abroad but needed a firm here that knows the political and environmental terrain.
Q: Will we continue to see TNDs sprout in Jacksonville?
A: I think so. It’s appropriate for Neptune and Jacksonville Beach and it’s starting to happen there. I think potentially it could work in places like St. Nicholas, which would be more of an infill project. St. Joe wants to capture this concept and they own more land than they could ever possibly know what to do with. Imagine doing that from scratch, by the way. That’s a reason to live.
Q: Any advice for new residential apartments downtown?
A: It’s sort of a chicken and egg thing. You have to have stuff to do in order for people to want to live there. And there will only be stuff to do once people live there. But from my experience, it’s pretty important to have a nice amenities package to attract residents, like workout facilities, swimming pools and boat access to the river. I’ll tell you what, if this takes off then the face of downtown will change like never before and we’ll see the emergence of businesses and entertainment in Jacksonville we’ve never seen before.