 joined by Jake Gordon, CEO of Downtown Vision, who's made it his mission to create and support a thriving downtown sector. Jake, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. So we just heard from Tony Cho about his ambitious plan for the Phoenix Arts District. That's outside the footprint of Downtown proper. But how does that impact what you're working on with Downtown Vision? Yeah, I mean, it's only super positive that people from outside are interested, investors interested in Jacksonville. You know, I moved here eight years ago, and I think you see there's a lot more interest now in Jacksonville growing as a city. You know, developers are definitely want to make money, but you can see someone like Tony is really about building community and like an amazing amenity to have in Jacksonville. So even though it's not physically downtown, it just helps like our entire city grow, which is just a great thing. And it doesn't suck resources, enthusiasm from like what you all are trying to build in a Downtown space that also has a lot of, you know, buildings that could be repurposed and opportunities to grow. I think that there's no competition really. People think Downtown against the beach here in Jacksonville. You're like, I love the beach. People want to live at the beach, they come Downtown. You know, it's really about the city growing, really. I mean, I think, and that the city of Jacksonville has really not succeeded in the national consciousness like some of these other cities because they're Downtown are Downtown is not as fully formed. And I think you see a lot of people moving here. The people that live in the Phoenix Arts District that are gonna go there are gonna come Downtown and vice versa. Like these invisible lines that we draw on maps that residents don't really see them. Like even the definition of Downtown has been questioned. And it's really more about the urban core or the city. I do think the, you know, the city lines matter, but really regionally, Jacksonville is in the middle of a huge region of a lot of other counties. And the better Jacksonville does, the better St. John's County and Nassau and others. And we're just really focused in Downtown the property owners that we work with every day, you know, really just want the city to grow, you know, hyper focused on supporting the mayor and a lot of these others. So I definitely don't think that there's this intense competition that maybe some people think. Do you think that there's any structural difficulty or complexity with a city as large as Jacksonville because the city is the county that it makes it more difficult to define, you know, the city part. I mean, usually when you think of the city, right? It's like the Downtown portion, but the city is this giant, you know, sort of unwieldy property. Does that make it harder to kind of fix on Downtown as like the city portion of the city? I think definitely. I mean, like as someone, I'm on the International Downtown Association Board of Directors, there's cities from all over. On some level, like the city being huge is so valuable. We're like the 12th biggest city by population, but the city being so massive, 860 square miles. And like this idea that Downtown Jacksonville, however defined is like three square miles. I think that is really hard. You look at the city and what Mayor Deegan is looking at right now. I mean, you've got all these areas that need investment like the north side and others and then you only have so many resources. So you have the resources of the whole county, but it really is hard to remain focused, especially with, you know, all the city employees that I know are working really, really hard, but even trying to drive all around the parks department, there's 400 parks. I think that's why you see leaning more towards the creation of the Downtown Investment Authority under Mayor Brown. Like that used to be under Office of Economic Development where they were working on the whole 860 square miles. And now you see with Andre Wallace, their former CEO, now Lori Boyer, there's a lot more focus in the DIA they only have so much to focus on. So I do think it is a challenge and I think we're evolving to kind of address that challenge from a Downtown perspective. So there's the Downtown Investment Authority, the DIA that you're referring to. You're with Downtown Vision. Remind us what the interplay is between those two organizations. Sure, great question. So the Downtown Investment Authority has created almost a decade ago to be the investment authority for the city of Jacksonville. So those are city employees. So Lori Boyer, the CEO of the DIA is amazing and a great leader for our city in our downtown. They've created a plan for Downtown. Downtown Vision, who I'm the CEO of, we are not the city. I'm not a city employee. We are representing the property owners and those property owners in my Downtown District which is about 1.3 square miles, they pay an assessment and my organization and myself manage that money on the greater good of those property owners. Now, it's good that people are confused because we work in lockstep with the DIA, like we don't really have a plan for Downtown, we follow the DIA's plan and we all really work at the pleasure of Mayor Deegan now to try to make sure that Downtown's getting better. But I like to think of it as a public-private partnership. We are a private nonprofit, my organization, Downtown Vision DVI. DIA is a agency of the city. And you do this annual report. What are the metrics in the report and why should people who don't live Downtown or work Downtown care? Yeah, great question. We have our 2023 State of Downtown report which looks at the last 18 months of statistics. I think people also get confused. It's not really an advocacy document. We're not really trying to show people like how great Downtown is doing, but the reality is Downtown is doing really, really well. And I think if you look at the report which is on our website, downtownjaxville.com, you can see a lot of the metrics that we use to evaluate Downtown working with the Mayor's office and also the DIA and showing why Downtown Jacksonville is doing so well. Jake Gordon, I appreciate your enthusiasm and your willingness to be here. Jake Gordon, CEO of Downtown Vision. We'll check in with you again soon. Thank you.