Jacksonville can count on a lot of pluses – climate, river, military – to move forward but at least one civic leader says it lacks a pivotal component.
“My biggest fear is Jacksonville does not have a personality, and that’s a theme that we need to think about,” said Peter Rummell, a developer and the founding chairman of the private Jacksonville Civic Council.
Rummell and Ed Burr, president and CEO of GreenPointe Holdings LLC, met Wednesday morning with about 50 members of the Society for Marketing Professional Services North Florida to talk about “Sustainable Development in Northeast Florida.”
The wide-ranging, 90-minute conversation, moderated by JAX Chamber executive Alan Mosley, covered the themes of housing, transportation, crime, education, employment, ports, climate change, green development, pension issues, UF Health and more.
Mosley is the chamber’s vice president of transportation, energy and logistics.
Yet, they continued to circle back to a combination of Jacksonville’s need for a personality, theme, vision and focus, specifically related to Downtown and even more directly about how to make the city attractive for millennials.
Burr, Rummell and Mosley referred to the “complicated” equations necessary for sustainability.
Burr, the chairman of the Civic Council of area business leaders, is aware of studies that say millennials, today’s 18- to 35-year-olds, lean toward urban living in dense, dynamic environments.
A developer, Burr is working on some urban-infill residential projects to lure such residents, although he also is aware of research that millennials “still see themselves owning a single-family home … in the suburbs.”
Nonetheless, Burr says Downtown Jacksonville is “woefully behind” other Southeastern cities in creating the live-work-play environment sought by young residents.
Burr said Rummell’s proposed The Healthy Town development on the Downtown Southbank would be part of the move to attract not only millennials, but other generations that seek a lifestyle community focused on wellness and activity. The project is almost 29 acres.
Rummell and Burr emphasized that the core of Downtown, considered the Northbank, is critical to urban development.
“If you don’t have a core that is viable and full of energy and alive and an attractive alternative, then you simply don’t compete,” Rummell said. “It’s a fundamental requirement.”
Burr referred to the success of the St. Johns Town Center retail and lifestyle development at Butler Boulevard and Interstate 295 in Southside.
“We don’t want to be known as the town with a great Town Center,” he said, explaining he appreciates the popular 240-acre suburban development but that “we have to have a core Downtown.”
Rummell said he and development partner Michael Balanky expect to complete the purchase of the Healthy Town property early next year and open the first phase by the summer of 2017. Focus groups are working on a new name for the project.
In the meantime, Rummell said their lawyers are helping to work through, and re-invent, the “convoluted, contradictory, archaic” development entitlement system.
He and Burr both said the Downtown Investment Authority was aware of the issues. Rummell said the group was “working through it diligently to get it right.”
Both also said that out-of-town developers might not understand the local challenges in the regulatory process. “It needs to operate in some kind of logical way,” Rummell said.
The two didn’t specifically wade into politics, but the May 19 election of Republican Lenny Curry that unseated Democratic incumbent Mayor Alvin Brown came up in their discussion of promulgating sustainable development.
“We just decided that we’re going to make a change and it’s in everybody’s best interest here to make that change work,” said Rummell, who backed Brown in the 2011 election but supported Curry this year.
The 19-member City Council also has a majority of new members as 11 were elected to their first terms, starting July 1.
A new mayor and new council representation, along with a new council president, will take office in five weeks.
Coupling that with relatively new leadership at the JAX Chamber, Jacksonville Transportation Authority and Duval County Public Schools gives Burr optimism.
“We have a chance to do the right things going forward and really embrace this sustainability concept,” said Burr, a JTA board member.
Both also want a civic identity breakthrough.
Rummell wants someone to declare that Jacksonville is the next “something,” perhaps the most millennial-friendly place east of the Mississippi River in 10 years, and to outline the steps to get there.
“We’ve got to stand for something,” he said, “and it’s got to be more than take it to the next level,” a clear reference to one of Brown’s repeated phrases.
Calling himself the millennial in the room, a young participant asked how his age group can connect. “How do we say what we want? Who can we talk to?”
Rummell advised they join the many young-leader groups in the city, such as ImpactJAX at the chamber.
Rummell, 69, said he invited some of those emerging leaders to his home and was impressed. “It’s ‘put me in, coach,’” he said.
Leadership opportunities, Rummell said, are “there for the asking.”
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