by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The City is planning to take Brooklyn back to its roots as a residential neighborhood with affordable housing leading the way.
Affordable housing has been an important component of plans to revitalize the area, but now it seems to have emerged as the City’s priority. The City is preparing to accept bids from private firms to put to use the City’s blueprint vision of the neighborhood, and the Request for Proposals begins with developing affordable housing.
The City previously hired Pittsburgh design firm Urban Design Associates to redesign the struggling neighborhood squeezed between LaVilla and Riverside. As it prepares to issue the RFP, the City is looking for a private firm to put the design to use. Jeannie Fewell, the executive director of the Jacksonville Housing Commission briefed the Downtown Development Authority at its Tuesday meeting on the RFP.
The City is looking for a firm to evaluate UDA’s design, tweaking it where necessary to make it more practical. The firm will also be responsible for helping guide the design through the City Council. Once it receives approval there, the design will essentially function as a master plan for the area, said David Auchter, the Downtown Development Authority’s vice chair.
The RFP also gives the winning firm the opportunity to design, and even develop, low-cost housing in the area. Fewell, who helped write the RFP, said it was designed to provide a jump start to affordable housing in the area. That development would serve as a catalyst for the rest of the neighborhood.
“We’re looking for outside expertise on how to implement the plans we have in hand,” she said. “We lead with the element of affordable housing, because that is often the most difficult piece.”
It can be difficult to find developers interested in building low-cost housing, because the return on investment isn’t as great as with higher-end development, said Fewell. She also said it’s important to build affordable housing before the area’s redevelopment drives up the cost of real estate in the area, making low-cost development even less attractive.
The winning bidder will have the option to actually develop affordable units in the area. The City owns land in the area that it would be willing to make available for low-cost housing, she said.
“We have some land in the area that could be developed as affordable housing,” she said.
The City has already received unsolicited interest in the RFP, said Fewell. The City will seek bids from local, regional and national firms. The inclusion of the affordable housing element should soothe the concerns of neighborhood activists, who have monitored the redesign closely and repeatedly asked for assurances that low-cost housing would be part of the equation in solving Brooklyn’s problems.
The Brooklyn neighborhood once thrived, but interstate construction following World War II split the area apart. The UDA plan stitches Brooklyn back together, using parks, ponds and canals.
Auchter has taken the lead role on the DDA in seeing the plan through. He’s heartened to see some light at the end of the tunnel after more than two years of meetings, rough drafts and blue prints.
Auchter remembers outgoing City chief of staff Audrey Moran telling the DDA in 2003 to remember Brooklyn as downtown develops.
“She said to watch out for Brooklyn,” said Auchter.