"River Dance"
Local Citizen's Take on Downtown Jacksonville's Riverfront
Citizen Wisdom
Jacksonville’s newcomers may not remember our once nationally recognized now defunct citizen engagement innovation, Jacksonville Community Council, Incorporated. JCCI for short.
An outgrowth of a 1974 Community Planning Conference led by Chamber of Commerce then president-elect Fred Schultz, JCCI produced two citizen-led studies annually, year in and year out, between 1977 and 2017.1 Two generations of community heavy lifting.
Nonpartisan by its very nature, JCCI brilliantly engaged just plain folks in researching, debating, and reaching consensus on our toughest community-wide challenges. Local policy-makers, journalists, business leaders, and just plain folks gathered in large well-attended public gatherings to listen to JCCI’s citizen reports, their findings and recommendations. Some implemented; some ignored and forgotten.
This four decade long effort engaging citizens in our public business was a big deal.
And of course, as Joni Mitchell sang it and we’re living it:
“Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"
“Short-sighted and irresponsible”
While JCCI studies may live on only in the minds of those who participated, topics suggest that many past studies deserve another look. Especially River Dance: Putting the River in River City, a 2005 study chaired by local architect Ted Pappas.
When thinking about our common downtown riverfront, North- and Southbanks alike, the River Dance study group recognized that development was desirable and would occur, but they recommended we expand “buffer zones” between the St. Johns River and any new development, creating more public, open “green space.”
Building right up to “the river’s edge” is “short-sighted and irresponsible” these citizens declared, well before we used words like “resiliency” and understood what Irmas will do (River Dance, p. 36).
To illustrate, they imagined new development to be located along the north side of Bay Street, allowing the land between this street that floods all the time and the St. Johns to be forever a publicly-owned natural green space.
In one now exceptionally dated and sadly ignored recommendation, these citizens urged the City’s Parks and Recreation Department to “increase public access to the downtown riverfront by creating more citizen-friendly natural environments through,” among other things, “redesigning Metropolitan Park, Kids Campus, and Friendship Park as active, open, green, civic park spaces” (River Dance, p. 37).
What a concept: “more citizen-friendly natural environments;” “open, green, civic park spaces.”
Too bad we ignored River Dance.
Public Will Stymied
River Dance study participants knew then what we know now: Our “destiny is inextricably linked to the St. Johns River” (River Dance, p. 1).
And like us, their druthers were frustrated by the powers and processes that be. No one in a decision-making position listened to this thoughtful, committed citizen group.
And now?
In terms of current downtown riverfront development, decision-makers no doubt will say we’ve done plenty of listening. We conducted surveys and invented episodic public engagement exercises that asked the citizenry what we want, and brief 2 and 3 minute public comments are encouraged during decision-making body meetings.
None of this adds up to thoughtful citizen engagement and participatory decision-making, especially when it comes to actual design of our downtown riverfront. Citizens are asked to react, not to engage. And when the reacting comment session occurs, plans are all too often in their final stage.
The result: we get stuff we know is wrong-headed—publicly incentivized private development built right up to our river’s edge, blocking the public’s access to the St. Johns, privatizing at the public’s expense what should be public space, and sadly argued against and predicted by River Dance citizens.
While this is a tired and tiresome theme, we must continue to express our disappointment in the continued ambition of downtown decision-makers to privatize the river’s edge, wastefully constructing buildings we know will not outsmart the St. Johns and which deny the citizenry of what is rightfully ours.
“speak-up, speak-out, and speak-often”
River Dance study participants knew the challenge. In speaking directly to the public, they encouraged folks to “speak-up, speak-out, and speak-often about the community’s right to free and open access to the river system” (River Dance, p. 40).
Maybe we should heed their advice.
Tell the Mayor, City Council, and Downtown Investment Authority to slow down their rush to the river’s edge. Tell them to take a step back to rethink our Northbank development plans.
Mayor’s link: https://www.jacksonville.gov/mayor/contact-us
Downtown Investment Authority link: https://dia.coj.net/Contact
City Council member link: https://www.jacksonville.gov/city-council
Sources
The Summer of 2005 - 18 years ago. Seems far more distant. The residential and development market was off the charts - at its peak, with many wolfs on Wall Street.
While Jacksonville toyed with "plans" the adjoining suburbs, particularly the City's most favored bedroom St. Johns County, were leading the nation in housing sales.
Then the proverbial stuff hit the fan and the market didn't begin to truly recover until 2011.
That period was a golden opportunity for Jacksonville to embrace and begin implementing the recommendations in the River Dance Report. But, another opportunity squandered.
Today is the first time since its publication that I have heard of the RD Report. That's my fault.
Comparing the depth, span and thoroughness of the RD Report to the recently released Resiliency Report - I wonder - who reads them front to back? Sometimes less really is more.
Social Media's onslaught offers countless snippets spilling countless tidbits about countless, and often useless and superficial, "information".
Immediacy reigns supreme. "Just Get To The Point" has become the mantra.
As a planner, designer and landscape architect, I never let my project team get mired down with "analysis paralysis". The KISS approach - Keep It Simple Stupid, also known as Using Common Sense.
The underlying message and admonition of both the remarkable RD Report and the Resiliency Report is just that - Use Common Sense. It was also the message of all four of the past Great Cities Symposium speakers. Why we can't seem to do that here in Jacksonville is mystifying.
Thank you very much Sherry for steering us all in the right direction.
The city needs green buffer’s along both the north and south banks. We can’t miss the opportunity to preserve a green buffer along the north bank!