by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The Southbank’s real estate market used to suffer from a lack of interested developers. Today, the area is crowded with builders and the development rights are in short supply.
State statutes prevent the City from allowing development that would overload the area’s infrastructure. It’s a problem the City is happy to have, because it means the market is taking off. But that market is already bumping up against residential development limits and the City is looking for ways to make room for more.
“It’s a good thing that we’re running out of development rights,” said Eric Lindstrom, a project manager for the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission. “It’s indicative that the market is heading in the right direction.”
Lindstrom is pursuing several adjustments to the City’s comprehensive plan for the area to accommodate new development. It’s the residential allowances that are running short. The City is expecting another 2,050 residential units to enter the market but has development rights available for only 210.
The St. Johns Center, currently under construction on a riverfront lot east of the Riverplace tower, will add 295 apartments and additional condominiums. Across Riverplace Boulevard, San Marco Place is under construction and will open with 148 condos. But the biggest impact would come from the San Marco Riverwalk. If the planned “city within a city” makes it from the drawing board to reality, the $500 million development would add 1,500 units built on the current site of the Radisson.
Just the units from the San Marco Riverwalk would far exceed available development rights. Throw in the Riverpointe, a planned 300-unit development that would surround the Aetna Building, and it’s clear that supply is not keeping up with demand.
The Downtown Development Authority approved Riverpointe Wednesday.
“The Riverwalk is a huge project that totally eats up the development rights we have left,” said Lindstrom.
As a remedy, the JEDC will seek the City Council’s approval to change the City’s comprehensive plan for the Southbank. The amendment would trade off increased allowances for residential development for less office development. The City will also lobby the State to ease development restrictions on the Southbank.
The first step is to exchange development rights for 150,000 feet of office space in the area for rights to build an additional 90 residential units. That will give the City an allowance for 300 units, enough for the Riverpointe development to go ahead. The Downtown Development Authority approved that change Wednesday.
Although the change won unanimous approval, DDA board chairman Bob Rhodes sounded one note of caution. He warned the JEDC’s planners not to let one area of development dominate the Southbank.
“We need to keep an eye on whether we’re going to have a practical, marketable mix of development,” said Rhodes. “We want to make sure the development doesn’t become unbalanced.”
The City wants to create additional wiggle room for residential development by making future development rights available now. The residential allowance might be pushed up a bit because the State decided last year that area roads could handle more cars.
Even with those changes, the City will likely need the State to ease development restrictions if the San Marco residential market is going to continue to grow, said Lindstrom. The State’s Department of Community Affairs has allowed similar exemptions in Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Ocala, he said.
The restrictions are in place to make sure development doesn’t overwhelm available infrastructure, particularly roads. But Lindstrom said the City would make the case to the State that development is less taxing downtown than in the suburbs. It’s the same approach used by many of the cities that won exemptions, he said.
“If you shut down downtown development, then where does it go? To the outlying areas, the suburbs where it’s far more costly to deal with,” said Lindstrom.
Traffic can be easily rerouted on urban streets laid out like a grid, while slow-moving traffic in the suburbs requires expensive road construction to address, he said.
Urban residential development tends not to have as much of a traffic impact, said Lindstrom. More people living downtown means more people walking and riding the Skyway to their jobs. But the City will still proceed cautiously, he said.
“We don’t want it to go the other way where we have so many people living downtown and so much traffic that everybody leaves again,” he said.