by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The City will spend $150,000 to remove an abandoned liquor store from the front porch of its planned Children’s Commission building.
The former Jax Liquors currently sits, decomposing, at the junction of A. Philip Randolph Boulevard and First Street. Its boarded-up windows are smeared with graffiti, and its concrete lot is cracked and strewn with broken glass. The Jax Liquors sign hangs upside down from an adjoining billboard.
Mayor office spokesperson Kristen Key said the decrepit liquor store is considered an eyesore and a negative influence on the future inhabitants of the planned Jacksonville Children’s Commission building across the street. Key said the lot is “intensely zoned.” Unless the City takes possession, Key said, another liquor store would likely replace Jax Liquors.
City Councilmember Pat Lockett-Felder, whose district includes the liquor store and the JCC building, said she supported the City’s purchase.
“I’m a product of that community,” said Lockett-Felder. “We need to feed into this area positive things, not negative images like liquor stores or bars. I want that thing gone.”
Lockett-Felder advocated replacing the store with a park. She said the green space would contribute to the area’s improving landscape. The JCC site is across the street from A. Philip Randolph Park. The building itself will combine the red-brick facade of a school with imaginative touches such as columns shaped and painted like giant crayons.
Project Manager Joel Reitzer said the building added a touch of imagination to a neighborhood in need of a fresh perspective.
“The City’s other building projects have been dignified; this one is Disneyfied,” said Reitzer.
Key said the City had no current plans for the lot beyond tearing down the abandoned building. Lockett-Felder said that first step was in the right direction.
“That liquor store, it’s a bad picture to put in these kids’ minds; I don’t want children ever to see that picture,” said Lockett-Felder. “If we are revitalizing the area, we need to make everything positive for the children. I hope and pray that when that children’s center is open that that building is torn down to the ground.”