by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
A Jacksonville Economic Development Commission committee charged by the mayor with reviewing the City’s handling of downtown development agreed Wednesday that the area’s parking problems wouldn’t be solved without help from City Hall.
The mayor’s office asked the Downtown District Committee to recommend fixes to the City’s parking policy. But several members said the area’s parking suffered from a lack of action, not recommendations.
Committee member Mike Harrell, a vice president at CB Richard Ellis and board chair of Downtown Vision, Inc., said the mayor’s office was already sitting on a stack of studies and recommendations, including one released last year by DVI. The shortest route to improved parking, said Harrell, would begin with putting those ideas to work.
“We’ve all studied parking ad nauseum; we all know where the deficiencies lie and we’ve passed that information on to the mayor’s office,” said Harrell.
The committee and City Hall seem to agree that downtown parking needs to improve for the area to draw businesses, residents and shoppers away from the suburbs. A lack of parking consistently ranks as a top complaint in surveys of residents and proprietors.
The City’s current strategy is to provide parking at downtown’s perimeter. Commuters would then use public transportation to move around. Earlier this year, the JEDC negotiated a deal with local developers to build three garages, providing about 3,000 spaces around the Sports Complex and the new Duval County Courthouse.
Those garages are in line with several of the studies commissioned by the City. However, Harrell said the City needed to provide more parking within the Central Business District. Without available parking, Harrell said relocating businesses would skip downtown for suburban office parks.
“It’s simple economics. A guy who’s going to develop in the suburbs doesn’t have to worry about parking.”
Committee member Jay Jabour, owner of Karl’s Clothiers, said retailers would stay away from downtown in the absence of on-street parking.
DDA managing director Al Battle said the committee could spur action by highlighting the importance of parking to economic development. Battle made a series of parking presentations earlier this year to Mayor John Peyton’s staff.
The mayor’s office said Peyton would likely take another look at parking policy, after his two-month review of the JEDC is complete.