 As downtown Jacksonville works to get on solid ground financially, in some places the literal ground is still shaking. As WJCT's Ryan Bank reports, summer cautioning economic development is impossible without the infrastructure to sustain it. Take a look. For business owner Al Emmerich, February 1st isn't a day he celebrates. Approximately midnight, my son had been out on the balcony that night. He said he heard this big thud and felt this kind of like rumble. Emmerich and his family were among the first to move into the Berkman townhomes on Jacksonville's North Bank. He says it was his dream home, riverfront property, close to work, and even closer to downtown events and nightlife. But that thud and rumble changed everything. A power outage in questionably stable ground drove the Emmerichs to break their lease and move to Springfield. East Street has fallen in right here at the border of the north side of the St. John's River in downtown. A year later, Florida Senator Bill Nelson is looking out at the collapsed Liberty Street and coastline drive from his high-rise office on the other side of the St. John's. Nelson says help is on the way. And the city council and the Florida Department of Transportation have already decided that they are going to do this over the next several months. Those several months could be as much as two and a half years. The estimated cost of fixing Liberty Street is close to $40 million, with most of it falling on the city. The federal government will reimburse a little over $7 million as part of a highway bill Nelson helped to pass. Coastline drive was rated structurally deficient more than two decades ago, and 19 other roads and bridges in the city hold that distinction right now. Two downtown bridges are also rated functionally obsolete by the Florida Department of Transportation, meaning they're not up to the latest federal standards but are still safe. St. John's Riverkeeper Executive Director Jimmy Orth says extreme weather and sea level rise can make things worse. I think unfortunately we have so much aging infrastructure and all that's going to happen is with these storm surges and look what happened in New York City, it's just going to put more pressure on that aging infrastructure, weaken that aging infrastructure and then as we go in and we replace this infrastructure, we really should be thinking about how to protect it. Orth says redeveloping downtown is useless if one major storm like Hurricane Sandy can wash it all away. In Parvez Ahmed, director of the Center for Sustainable Business Practices at the University of North Florida agrees, but he says environmental considerations and economic development aren't mutually exclusive. Well, sustainability from a business perspective is a three-legged stool. The easiest way to understand sustainability from a business perspective is to think about the three P's, people, planet and profit. Ahmed says he'd like to see the city partner with private businesses and non-profits to take sustainability seriously. City officials say they're prepared for extreme weather, but Jacksonville recently dropped out of the 100 Resilient Cities program, which would have brought $1 million in funds and services to address climate change and other issues. For Community Thread, I'm Ryan Bank.