by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Jacksonville’s Brooklyn neighborhood has yet to join downtown’s residential boom, unless the packs of stray dogs are counted. But due to its location and City plans to bring low-cost housing to the area, Brooklyn’s future looks bright, say market analysts.
The City is searching for a private firm to put to work the City’s blueprint vision of the neighborhood sandwiched between downtown and Riverside. Those plans emphasize affordable housing as a catalyst to retail and commercial development.
Once the ball starts rolling in Brooklyn, the momentum might be tough to stop, said Ray Rodriguez, president of the Real Estate Strategy Center of North Florida. The assumption in the past has always been that Brooklyn needs to piggy back on the success of Riverside Avenue’s corporate development or wait for the new County Courthouse to jump start the LaVilla neighborhood next door. But Rodriguez thinks Brooklyn can stand on its own right now.
“People see Brooklyn as a suburb of Riverside basically, but Brooklyn has the resources to support itself in terms of development,” said Rodriguez. “It’s a prime location with easy access to both interstates.”
City planners don’t currently see that as a good thing. The City hired Pittsburgh design firm Urban Design Associates to design a master plan for the area. That design is still waiting for private input and City Council approval. But City planners and Rodriguez like the plan’s broad strokes. It calls for a series of parks and green spaces to stitch back together a neighborhood that was sliced into quarters by interstate development in the 1940s and ‘50s.
Rodriguez likes the focus on green space. Grass and trees are needed to soften the neighborhood’s stark concrete landscape, he said.
Some neighborhood activists complained that Brooklyn took a step back in that area when the Florida Department of Transportation widened Riverside Avenue from four lanes to six. UDA said the road project could cut off Brooklyn from the thriving Riverside commercial district. But Rodriguez sees the wider Riverside and the improved access to interstates 95 and 10 as a positive.
“From the design standpoint they (the critics) had a point. But they had to do something to address the traffic flow problems that were coming due to all the commercial and residential development along Riverside,” said Rodriguez. “And now the interstate access has gone from a negative to a plus. It’s the first spot people see coming down I-95 or I-10. If Jacksonville is where Florida begins, you could say Brooklyn is where Jacksonville begins.”
Rodriguez thinks an emphasis on Brooklyn’s history as one of Jacksonville’s first black neighborhoods and a thriving entertainment district could help market the area to developers.