Steaming ahead with plans for a naval center in downtown Jacksonville
Plans to dock a Navy vessel in downtown Jacksonville are producing solid results, at last. The USS Orleck, a Navy destroyer built in 1945, will be docked on the Northbank near the site of the old courthouse, now demolished. It was approved by the City Council last month. Local lawyer and retired Navy captain Dan […]
Like a broken record, it is time to renew downtown again
Grab your wallets. Another plan to “revitalize” downtown is in the works. Taxpayers have been diverting money they need for their families to the city treasury for decades in order to “invest” in the downtown area. The effort began in the late 1940s under Mayor Haydon Burns and, arguably, downtown was a mess – then. […]
Good intentions are making downtown look shabby
While city officials and civic leaders are busy discussing ways to gussie up downtown’s face, the tramp camp in the heart of downtown continues to grow. Well-intended people decided weeks ago to help the homeless people in the camp by moving them into hotels. Once homeless people learned of the plan, the population of the […]
Part 2 – $56 Million Tax Dollars: Are city officials to blame for the mounting cost on the downtown parking garages?
It appears that the parking garage fiasco may have been brought on by city officials many years ago. As usually is the case in government, those who created the mess are gone, leaving the taxpayers to clean up. Three parking garages were built about 16 years ago, two at the sports complex and one near […]
Downtown making a U turn?
After decades of trying to make traffic move quicker and smoother, local officials apparently have decided to make a U-turn and slow everything down. In the 1950s, many downtown streets and streets leading to downtown from the suburbs were changed to one-way traffic. For example, College and Post streets. In the past few years, however, […]
Big talk by Jags owner is unrelated to reality
Comments by Jaguars owner Shad Khan the other day were worthy of note. First was the notion that nothing has been done downtown for 50 years. “This has been like a 50-year objective in Jacksonville to do something downtown,” Khan allegedly told local reporters. “I’ve talked to enough people. We are probably as anxious as […]
Downtown Revitalization: Are we beating a dead horse?
Downtown “revitalization” has been a topic in City Hall for as long as I can remember. In the 1940s, Mayor Haydon Burns led an effort to clean up the city, especially the waterfront, where aged and unsightly docks ruined the view of the magnificent river. Burns parlayed that into “The Jacksonville Story,” which earned him […]
Breaking News about the Jags: Could it be they are moving to London?
In April of this year, Eye on Jacksonville posted an article about the possibility of Shad Khan moving the Jaguars to London – something he keeps denying over and over again. The research we did showed that the NFL had a goal to build their international market. Gee whiz, we thought…surely that would play into […]
Mayor Curry: Jax on the Rise? Yep. Rising crime and gunfights downtown.
Mayor Lenny Curry is touting in his campaign ads that Jacksonville is on the Rise. I have to agree with him on that point – Crime IS rising in Jacksonville. We woke up Monday morning to this headline: Shootout leaves bullet holes in two downtown Jacksonville office towers No this isn’t the wild, wild […]