By Max Marbut, The Financial News & Daily Record
Jacksonville’s downtown has a new face who hopes to bring a newer face to the city’s central core.
With funding limited, new Downtown Investment Authority CEO Aundra Wallace says he will seek assistance from the public, private and philanthropic sectors to invest in Jacksonville’s downtown.
“I’m no stranger to working in environments where capital is limited,” Wallace said when he joined the city last month.
“In Detroit, we had less than $750,000 when I got there. I was able, fortunately, in three years to raise almost $30 million in capital,” he said.
Wallace is the former executive director of the Detroit Land Bank Authority and was selected to lead the Downtown Investment Authority by its nine-member board after a nationwide search. His annual salary is $178,000.
“We need leadership and the community is looking to the DIA to provide that leadership,” said board Chair Oliver Barakat, the commercial Realtor who introduced Wallace to the media.
Barakat said Wallace’s time at the Detroit entity is similar to that of the authority in that Wallace was the organization’s first executive director and grew the organization to a staff of 10 and an annual budget of $1.5 million.
“It’s going to be a great challenge. I’m looking forward to it,” said Wallace.
He anticipates hiring a five-member staff for the authority.
The first order of business will be to spend his first 90 days “meeting and greeting” all downtown stakeholders and assuring them the authority is operational, he said.
“Now it’s time for me to come in and lead the board in a management aspect,” Wallace said.
Barakat said Wallace’s arrival also will allow the board to be more productive and the authority will “have somebody who can focus exclusively on downtown.”
Establishing a downtown master plan also is a priority, which the authority has retained a consultant to develop. Barakat said the consultant has projected it to be complete by February.
The plan must be approved by Jacksonville’s City Council.
“We need to go into 2014 having a lot of these things behind us,” Wallace said.