Transit workshops hone in on San Marco
By Steve DiMattia
It is not unusual to see Jacksonville’s infamous Skyway traveling its limited 2.5-mile downtown route without any passengers. Many have criticized the Jacksonville Transportation Authority’s “boondoggle” for “going nowhere” and suggest that is the reason it is often sans riders.
But San Marco engineer Doug Skiles has a different view.
“It’s not that it doesn’t go anywhere,” he said. “It’s that it doesn’t start anywhere.”
To help change that, Skiles and 50 other city planners, residents and business owners recently took part in two Transit-Oriented Development public workshops sponsored by JTA and focusing on San Marco.
“TOD encourages mixed-use development around transit stations or within a transit corridor,” Skiles said. “So, for example, the Skyway would have stops within walking distance of residential areas, so it would make sense for people to take it into work. TOD greatly reduces the need for cars and increases the walkability of an area.”
The workshops were part of a process that began two years ago in cooperation with the city planning department and produced two documents: Policy Framework for TOD, which presents a high level overview, discussing typologies for stations and examining how TOD fits into different types of neighborhoods; and Design Guidelines, which focuses on the specifics of TOD design including scale, density models and form vs. traditional zoning practices.
“With that data in hand, we then set out to identify a location to do a Station Area Master Plan,” said James Boyle, JTA’s regional transportation planner and project manager for commuter rail. While they looked at 18 different locations, including Riverside/Avondale, down town and Springfield, San Marco was chosen.
“We went with San Marco for our first ‘dry run’ because it has many important components in place,” Boyle said. “They have a downtown area with great community involvement, an urban area with underutilized locations on the Southbank and transitional areas with re-development taking place.”
San Marco also has one of the city’s first successful TODs at Kings Avenue Station with the Kings Avenue Garage and Hilton Hotel in close proximity to the Skyway.
“The next phase is to have increased residential development,” said Mike Balanky, president of Chase Properties, which developed the site. “We also see the Kings Avenue corridor going retail, with the Skyway connecting to transit routes.”
In this instance, transportation came first because the Skyway was in place. But there is always a “chicken or egg” component to TOD.
“Ideally what you have is private-public partnerships where developers, JTA and the community come together to create a TOD that grows all elements together to best suit the area,” Balanky said.
That “coming together” was the goal of the JTA/TOD workshops. A variety of ideas surfaced, but at the end of the day it was all about “connectivity”: Connecting all areas of the city to one another through strategically placed TODs and reliable light rail, trolley and shuttle service.
“This is much bigger than San Marco,” said Mark Rubin, a local developer who participated in the workshops. “One of the complaints about Jacksonville is that it’s too spread out. Through TOD you could jump on a train to the World Gulf Village or be in St. Augustine for dinner in 20 minutes.”
JTA’s Boyle said that the documentation from San Marco will be used as a guide to encourage developers to build around transit stations. The data will also be used to build a case for federal dollars from the Federal Transit Administration.
The San Marco plan cost $100,000 – mostly for the two-year research studies, an economic impact analysis, consultants, advertising, documentation, meetings and workshops – but further plans will likely be less, Boyle said.
“The next step is to take what we learned from San Marco and move into other neighborhoods throughout the city,” Boyle said. “Hopefully, the developers will follow.”
If that is the case, then the Skyway will likely soon start from everywhere.
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