 We are speaking with real people who live and operate a business on Jacksonville's Northside. I feel like we need a theme song. I feel like Sly and the Family Stones should come in and say and ooh man I hit that no bad. Everybody sitting around the table looking at me like don't sing. Don't sing Mr. Letts It. Don't sing. So we have Lakita Spann co-founder of Mr. Potato Spread. How you doing Lakita? I'm great. Thank you for having me. All right. Chef Onyx, owner of the sweet and savory chef founder and creator of Relax and Unwine, Secret Elevated Dining Experiences. Hello. Hi. Thanks for having me. I need to check this out because I need to figure out how to relax and unwind. You do. We got Michael Samson, Executive Director of the Jacksonville Community Action Center. Michael, my man, how you doing? Thank you. All right. And my buddy, my dude for many decades now, Mr. Charles Griggs, President of 8th and Wittner Group. How are you, sir? I'm good. Good morning, Al. I'm glad to be here. All right. So, you know, when I came in as the interim host of First Coast Connect, my thought is that like I just really wanted to dive into the title of First Coast Connect. Like let's connect the First Coast. And so these everyday people panels are all about the neighborhoods. And so we're starting off with the north side. With that in mind, please, Lakita, tell me about Mr. Potato Spread. Yes. So Mr. Potato Spread is a vast casual restaurant and food truck. We have three locations. Two in Jacksonville, one in Orange Park and a food truck here locally. We've been in business since 2014. And we have one location on the north side in the River City Marketplace. And so what exactly is the food that Mr. Potato Spread? It's all things potatoes. We're fluent in all things potatoes. So potato based items loaded with all types of goodness from seafood to steak to cheese to veggies, whatever you like. So our number one seller is the Crab Pot, which is a spin on the Low Country Boyle. We're from Warner Race in Jacksonville, and we call Low Country Boyle's Crab Pots, therefore the name. And so that's old to our love for Duvall and the Crab Pot Potato. I have one question. Sure. Why did you not bring me some? I got you. I got you. What is that? We're going to talk about that later. Chef Onyx, please tell me all about the secret elevated dining experience. Well, it's just that it is definitely elevated as a fully immersive dining experience. So there is some form of all five senses are tapped into at the dining table. So you the last dinner was a sound bath experience. So while you were eating, you were able to experience a fully full body sound bath from our great sound bath therapist, Yogi Steve, and a plant based meal. Nice. Yeah, I specialize in vegan and plant based foods. And so these are events that happen around the city? Around the city. Yes. And you can. So what you what people do is I have a component of my business called a sharing dish. And the sharing dish is the location and the location can sign up. It could be a private residence. It could be an actual business. And you can sign up with to be a part of the sharing dish. And because you're sitting at the table with strangers, and you're sharing a meal family style, bringing back the dining room table. Okay. All right. Again, I need to be on your middle. Michael Simpson, please tell me all about the Jacksonville Community Action Center, which I'll do. So the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, we were formed six years ago to really deal with systemic issues that we see here in Jacksonville from racial inequality, trying to fight for police accountability, as well as other issues. And I'm a, you know, I grew up in Jacksonville, grew up off the streets of Pearl Street. I went to Jackson High School. And I thought about that with Mr. Griggs here, because I was wondering, is Jackson consider east side or north side? So I was kind of on that border. East side. I kind of lived on the one side of the street. So I claim the north. But, you know, we've been organizing for a couple of years, trying to fight for social change here in Jacksonville. And obviously, a lot of the systemic issues that we see the inequalities exist on the north side. So, you know, the north side is where I live. So my family lives, my family grew up in Brentwood, the Dierkeville. So it's in my blood. So I'm happy to be here and share some love for my side of town. And Charles Griggs, president of Eighth and Wittner, please tell me what what what do you do? Well, now people for me with me on the radio here, they hear me on WJCT and they just say, Hey, that guy works for WJCT. No, but I do media and government relations. I work with people throughout the community, not only nonprofit organizations, but corporate folks as well, and help connect people with solutions that relate it to media, my, you know, my background is in communications and and creative and marketing. So it's been I've been in this business now for, you know, almost 40 years. And I love connecting people in and finding ways to solve problems between, you know, various fractions of the community. Yeah. And the type, the name of your company is based off of where you grew up, right? On the north side. Yeah, I grew up in Durkeville. My house was located on my grandmother's house was located on the corner of Eighth and Wittner, which was three blocks west of Eighth and Myrtle, right there near by JP Small Park. So, you know, that community is, you know, it I live with that community in my heart every day. And my grandmother was a was a pastor, she was a minister. And so we say I church in our house. So that's my foundation. It kind of keeps me grounded. And as I'm doing business with folks around the community, it reminds me every day who I'm working with, you know, the type of passion I need to have for the work that we do. And as well as, you know, how to stay grounded in a place where you know, you're doing the right thing, you know, and you always try to do the right thing. And that's what the business is based on. Yeah. Now, for the purposes of this conversation, can we outline exactly where the north side is? Before we got started, there was some debate about like where these lines are. Right. Well, we know, we would like we was talking about earlier, I know that for a long time, people traditionally out north of north of Dunn Avenue considered that to be the north side and considered anything south of Dunn Avenue to be northwest Jacksonville, you know, northwest of the river. And which is really kind of weird, because like Michael mentioned, some people consider parts of the east side, the north side, they just don't kind of, you know, that whole line is blurred because the characters of the neighborhoods are very much the same, especially, you know, where they are large concentrations of African Americans. So, you know, for me, I consider it the northwest side, even like Reigns Reebok football game that happens every year, it's a northwest classic. So, you know, some of the folks in, you know, Oceanway might take, you know, like the first coast area might take, you know, exception to us considering all of it to be the north side. But, you know, in many respects, it's, you know, we can sort of narrow it down to being the northwest side. Yeah. What do the four of you feel like the biggest challenges are on the north side right now? Access. Access to food, most importantly, access to health care, transportation, and funding. So that's something I've noticed in that community, especially for small business owners that live in the community and operate in the community is access. People don't even know they exist, a lot of them because only the people that live on the north side and the northwest side of Jacksonville, some people from out east that visit those establishments because they don't know that they're there, no one else in the city. I travel outside of the north side because I don't have, there's not enough access to good grocery stores. And so, as a chef, to shop for things that I may need for my clients, I have to leave and go to the south side or other parts of town to get fresh produce and that shouldn't be. And the everyday person that lives over there should have access to good produce. You can join the conversation at 5492937. You can tweet us at FCC on air. You can email us at firstcoastconnectedwjct.org and you can find us on Facebook. So we were talking about the challenges of the north side. What do you think, Latika? Yeah, I would definitely agree access. I think that that's definitely an issue, access to healthier food options. And, you know, although I own a restaurant and we offer some healthy, healthy food options, we also have a food truck and before opening our restaurant, we trial the food truck out just on the north side. And, you know, I think the response was little interesting. It obviously led to us opening a location within the River City Marketplace, which I thought was amazing. But what I also realized was certain parts of the north side, you know, we would get calls saying, can you deliver the food to me? I don't have a way to come in. I want to support. I just don't have a way to come and actually get the food. And so I found that that was very interesting. Michael, you've been working on these issues for a while. I agree with everything everyone said. I think economic opportunity is a big issue. My church was off Soutel, so, you know, driving to Limp Turner, going to Soutel, you kind of see certain economic blight. And as well, I think, you know, this is a historic issue in Jacksonville. There's been a overinvestment in other parts of town and a lack of investment in the north side of town, particularly when the north side of town is home to majority of African-Americans who live in the city of Jacksonville, the urban core, like, you know, even though the urban core is not definitely the north side, but a lot of folks, you know, are tied together economically to this area. So the lack of economic opportunity, you know, growing up in Jacksonville, it felt like the north side was my own town, you know, I like literally freaked out driving on Deers, Southside, Deers Creek or whatever, Deer Park. Yeah, Deer Park. I freaked out driving out there. I was like, where am I at? This is like another town. So like the access issue is what's able to connect folks from the north side to other parts of town, but also the lack of access kind of strangleholds. Our abilities are really, you know, built for ourselves and like how those institutions that we can control and I will be remiss if I didn't also mention over-policing to an extent, I think. Growing up in this city, I mean, I think other parts of town see the police more often. I think oftentimes on the north side, when we want to see the police, we don't see them, but when we don't want to see them, we see them. So I think that's an issue that we have to address, you know, and that ties to racism, that ties to policy, that has historically just been an issue here in Jacksonville, particularly affecting us on the north side. Yeah. Yeah. Before I go any further, I just want to give mad respect to that crab pot potato. That is my go-to at Mr. Potato Spirit. Thank you. You just make, you just rubbing it in. I mean, it is good. Thank you. Like, I've had it out. It was just a less Wednesday. Right. I'm sorry. So, but I need to do a fact-finding mission. Yeah. Right. Live from Mr. Potato Spirit. But we, but I think that, so access is a thing. It's an issue. But one of the reasons why access is an issue is because and we haven't really seen the type of intentional efforts at making sure that the north business areas in the northwest out of town have been, have what they need in order to thrive. In other words, you know, we've heard a lot of the Mayor Deegan talk about infrastructure and we've heard infrastructure, the word infrastructure come up a lot, a lot over past administrations. But another has been really intentional, intentional for the northwest area in order to help build, you know, companies to want to build in those areas. It is one of the reasons why we have economic challenges in north side is because these companies, when they come to town, they get pointed in various directions of where they should and when they should not go. And because of the infrastructure in the northwest area and north side of Jacksonville, it's been very difficult to encourage development south of 295. So, the more we can encourage better infrastructure, the better the chances of us seeing real opportunities for economic development in north side. And until that happens, which we understand that the Mayor is looking to do now, you know, we're going to continue to see economic challenges over there, which will continue to exacerbate access problems. No one wants to, you know, put a business someplace where they can't get, you know, they don't have access to transportation and so forth, you know, bus lines and things like that. So, we don't have a business quarter, a real business quarter. No, we don't. And what's interesting about that is what, you know, we only had the food truck, our business model was centered around larger businesses, right? It made sense for us to take our food truck to locations who had 200, 300 employees. You were going to the hospitals. We were going to hospitals and we were going to Deerwood Park, like what you were talking about, you know, Gate Parkway. And so that those are the areas that our food truck frequented because it made sense for us. That was just the business model. It just made sense. And so, that was always a request. Why don't you ever come to the north side, come to the north side. And so, that was always a struggle with trying to find a business that was large enough and made sense financially for us to actually take the food truck to. Yeah, I think one of the ways to sort of measure that is to look at, and I just, you know, just kind of off the rip, how many businesses or how many office buildings or business quarters do you see that have buildings that are taller than two stories in the north side, other than the hospitals? You don't know. So those business quarters are just, you know, they would be, they're important to encouraging folks to open up shop, you know, barbers, lawyers, doctors, and so forth to participate in various communities. Well, I will say that there's, outside of the access and the infrastructure, these are things, these are facts that we know exist within the Duvall County area. But also, the propaganda that has been fed to the residents and citizens of Jacksonville about the north side. And so, I know people, I've even had an Uber driver that's never gotten off on the Edgewood or Limturner exit, have never seen that exit, and she immediately locked her door because of what she's heard about this community. There is an entire food truck village located on Limturner that those, the people who own the food stalls and the food trucks over there are not making the revenue that they should because people fear coming to the north side. And because of what has been fed to them, I live in like the core part of the north side. And it has a stigma on it that I can't for the life of me understand, and I've never experienced any of what they've said. And because crime happens everywhere in this city, not one neighborhood is exempt. I have a friend whose car was just stolen out of a gated community in Argyle Forest. And so don't make it seem as if the north side that as soon as you get off the exit, you're going to get carjacked or you're going to get robbed, or there's nothing there. It's beautiful. It's trash. It's not trash everywhere. The people who live in that area keep it clean. Yars are kept. Beautiful homes are beautiful over there, but they're not coming because of what the media is feeding the community. And we have some very nice neighborhoods in the north. Beautiful neighborhoods. People are really proud of their communities. Many of them are not gated, of course, and they just they grew up with that tradition of the yards and keeping the streets and so forth. Right. Landscaping, but to bring people to that community to highlight those the food truck village that is over there and the hard work that they put in to be able to be out out there. But at night when it gets dark, it's also dark in the food village because of access to J. A. Coming to put out power lights out there in that field, because the person who owns the lot may not be able to afford to put a power light out there. But they do have a lot for food trucks to come and park for residents to walk to. It is a walkable location for residents to come and get food. We got a tweet from Lee Brown. He says Northwest Jacks is a food desert and has been one for decades. Publix leaving Gateway was the death now. There is no other area in Jacks so depleted of services. They're just getting around to removing septic tanks. Do you all agree with that? Because right on my street, yes, my street is literally dug up and I have pipes everywhere. They have the worst road signs over there. They don't care to leave signs to say there's a dip in the road or anything. You'll tear your car up. But if you go somewhere else with this construction and they're doing the septic tank rollout, it's not like that. It is very hard to drive in the areas and it looks a mess, but that is happening in the food desert. When Publix, he's right. When Publix left, it was in my personal opinion a bad decision when Dixie moved in because when Dixie is no longer providing healthy options or good produce for the residents in that community. If you look at Gateway, I mean the economic, when I was growing up, Gateway was where you bought school clothes. Mr. Kicks. You bought your church clothes there. I was fresh for three days. I recycled everything. I had everything there. Even you look at Lim Turner and Dunn. That economic mark, when I was growing up, it was popping. You had a Jason Kenney there. There was a Wal-Mart restaurant there. Yes. You've seen that kind of deteriorate over the past few decades. I think you cannot disconnect the perception of criminalization of the North side. Obviously, it's criminalized because as African-Americans, we live there. We have a culture in this country we have to deal with. But also that ties to economic development or lack thereof. If you think one part of town is a bunch of crime, it's not safe to be there, then you're more likely to invest those dollars to build up a town center when you could have had a town center on the North side off of Dunn Avenue or other areas. I think we have a new administration that I think understands the plight of a lot of folks and is seeking to address that. But we've had decades of this type of mentality. I was just going to say that I agree with that. But also I've been in Jacksonville since I was a little kid. The North side has always struggled to get the resources that other parts of town seem to get pretty easily. It doesn't matter who is the mayor. It seems that I'm probably going to get some tweets and texts about this. But the truth of the matter is that every city in America has been shaped by racism. Every city. And any listener that does not believe that challenged me. I will prove it to you that every city has been formed by racism. And when you think about Jacksonville specifically, I think about consolidation. That absolutely was about keeping black people out of power. And then you look at what has happened on the Northwest side of Jacksonville and see just the sheer inattention. I don't even know if that's a word, but I just created it. When I served on the Charter Revision Commission, one of the subcommittees we worked on, the Urban Core Development Authority piece, where we were looking at addressing what used to be the original city of Jacksonville, the boundaries there. And we thought that we would get some intentionality to address specific issues in the Urban Core, where we set up really a resource, a dedicated resource for the Urban Core, much like you see with DIA and the Downtown Investment Authority, to address a lot of these issues. Not only infrastructure, but economic empowerment, food, deserts, incentives and things like that. And the concept was it was managed and run by people from the community. And because the community has to decide what's best for it. Yep. We're going to go to the phones. We got Eugene on the North side. Eugene, how you doing this morning? Hey, good morning. I'm a current resident of the North side. I'm proud of it. For a quick time, one, just to give you some history on the River City Marketplace. Hey, Eugene, we're losing you a little bit. Your signal's coming in and out. Can you repeat what you just said? You said you're giving some history on the River City Marketplace. Not River, the River City Marketplace was drunk up by some black businessmen and it was never able to get through. So you could do some fact-checking on that, if you like. And one of the issues and concerns I have with a lot of people that live North side of town, they get up Saturday morning, Sunday morning and what have you. They go, they spend most of their money and revenue at the St. The Town Center, the Avenue Mall, the Orange Park. And then when they come back home, their community is struggling because a lot of our part of the resources are just going out of the neighborhood. The money is not circulating in the neighborhood as it should. So you need to address. I take your point, Eugene, but I think it's very much a chicken and egg situation because the money is going out of the neighborhood, but if there's no resources in the neighborhood and you need something, then you got to go to the south side to get it, right? So it's like, how do you fix that when the root problem, I think, at the root is that there's a lack of investment there. So, therefore, like the residents have to go out to other places. Case in point, we have a lot of young African American males, they get up Saturday morning in some cases and then get on the city bus and we're at the Orange Park Mall having a mall. No one's going to reach you right now, but they could go to Hibbitt Sports or we have a foot locker in the gateway mall they call it Town Center. So I'm saying a lot of these resources are available, but for some reason people at home, they're sold the hype that, okay, when you go over here, it's going to be nicer. They keep the mall 72 degrees versus the mall that the Gateway Town Center is going to be 78 degrees. So, you're basically hitting on a theme that has been in the black community for, you know, ever since desegregation, when you're talking about, you know, once we desegregated, a lot of people decided that if a white store sold it, it had to be better. Very true. I mean, thank you. Thank you for your call, Eugene. And hopefully it could be addressed. Okay, thank you. Thank you, man. Are you about to say something, Michael? I think it was also a lot of black economic headquarters were destroyed. I mean, when they built the highway and villa and all that jazz, I mean, there's actually federal dollars that cities can apply for to deal with the what the highway system destroyed in terms of black economics and reason why not to. We're going to take another call. We got David from Pranavidra. David, how you doing this morning? I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. I really appreciate the conversation this morning and the opinions being offered. I'm living where I do, where my wife and I live, but we feel very far removed, obviously, from the situations that you're addressing this morning. But I'm wondering if people like us can do to help advocate for and just to not just have so many words, but have action being taken up there to help transform the lives of the people that live in the area up there, especially the children. I was in education for many, many years, worked with children from all ethnic groups and inner cities in other states. And so I can relate to what's being said. I'll stop there. But what can the average person and Jacksonville do with anything other than I just vote? And I think hopefully we have a mirror now that will show more interest. David, thank you so much. Yeah, I would say and thank you for that, David. It's that get to know the culture. There are so many resources, so many people out here who have amazing businesses. And, you know, like the chef Onyx over here and, you know, come by and visit Mr. Potato Spread. Tell your friends. I mean, because people from the north side, they drive a long way to go someplace else to find, you know, what they're looking for. And then perhaps it should be the other way, you know, that if that was reciprocated, you know, we could get some energy coming back to the north side, not only just supporting ourselves. We've talked about a lot of the issues around the north side. But give it some love. Tell me, tell me the things you love about the north side. Like what makes you I actually I won't steal your thunder because I was about to say what you said earlier. I love the nature of the north side. The north side is absolutely beautiful. And just and I don't think people realize how beautiful it is. We have trails. It's not that well where I live at it doesn't take that long to get access to getting to the beach if you go up extra drive, you know, there if people would just get out and see Trout River running through Rebault River and all of the beauty. There's even a hidden trail out by the airport that people don't even know about. I'm not going to exactly tell you where it is. You have to do your own research on that because I'm low key trying to like keep it a secret. There are trails just everywhere and it's just like I am surrounded by nature living off of Palmdale. We are in the Lake Forest area. It is a beautiful sight. If not, I've even seen although I shouldn't have seen it, but we've seen coyotes in the area. We've had a bear walking down Mon Creek. There are just things that happen on the north side that you're just amazed at and just how people are the people. It's it's literally the people that make the north side beautiful. Yeah, I think I'd add to that and say there's very much a happy, joyous for the most part. There's this culture right on the north side that I love. I remember a friend of mine, we were just kind of walking and she really hadn't been on the north side before. We were just kind of taking a walk and everybody that walked past us, you know, there were groups of people that were walking where we were as well and everybody spoke and she said, Why do you know them? And I said, No, I know. That's just what we do. We speak. She goes, Well, no, I've never experienced anything like this before. Why is everybody speaking to everybody? And I said, This is just what we do on the north side. And so having a business on the north side, you know, there's just something so beautiful about people coming in and saying, Thank you for opening up on the north side, right? We're so happy that people are opening businesses on the north side and just that that happiness that welcome right, wanting to welcome us to the north side. There's this family familiar kind of feel that because I'm born and raised always lived on the north side from from Sherwood to Pondale to Lake Forest for 27 years. And now I still live on the north side off of Main Street near Pecan Park. So yeah, I think I think the people like they all have said, I mean, I work out of pro plaza, which is I see everything, you know, see all economic backgrounds. And even the poorest folks you'll meet, they have a sense of optimism, smile, you know what I mean? I think other parts of town may not be like that. I'm pretty biased about the north side. And I think the people just make up the north side. I think the type of individual you meet on the north side is someone who's seen it all, but has a certain type of enthusiasm to work and do better. And I think that exists out of town. I absolutely still get goosebumps every time I drive by JP Small Park. I love that stadium. So much history there. So many things. I mean, Hank Aaron played there. The Jackson and Red Cavs played there. And even today, you know, Stanton plays there and EW plays there. That stadium has so much history. And it just it just really sort of speaks to the character of the community. All right. So, Lakita Spann co-founder of Mr. Potato Spread. Next time I see you going to bring me a potato. Absolutely. I want the one that Charles is talking about. I got you. I'm going to see him around town. He's going to be like, you ain't heard it. I got you. Chef Onyx, owner of Sweet and Savory Chef, founder and creator of Relax and Unwine, Secret Elevated Dining Experiences. She's going to have me on her guest list for the next one, correct? I sure am. Bam, bam. My man, Michael Sampson, Executive Director of Jacksonville Community Action Center. Thank you, sir. Thank you. And my brother from another mother, Charles Greggs, President of Athe and Wittner Group. Thank you all so much for coming in with us. Thank you.