 So Lori Boyer has worked as a land use lawyer and a real estate investor. You served two terms in city council, including as council president and now you are the chief executive officer of DIA. So this report is published by Downtown Vision. Can you explain the relationship between your agency, DIA, Downtown Vision, the city and private developers? So let's start with Downtown Vision, who publishes the report. They are a business improvement district, so they are also created by the city government. They were established by that, but they really report to and were voted on into being by the business owners and property owners within their district. Their boundaries are smaller than ours. DIA, Downtown Investment Authority, also created by city council. We are a community redevelopment agency. Fancy term, it is a state statute created entity that receives a tax increment. From the growth we see within Downtown, that tax increment can then be reinvested with incentives, with capital projects, things like that for those. In terms of we are a hybrid agency in that we are semi-autonomous. We have a board of directors. The board of directors hires me or hires the CEO. So we have some continuity beyond changes in mayoral administrations. That was part of the impetus for the creation of DIA, but we are housed in City Hall. We function as a city department, and so we're closely affiliated with city government in the implementation of everything we do. So having seen this report, can you just give us an overall state of Downtown according to its findings? Okay. High level. We are seeing substantial momentum in growth in tax values Downtown. So last year, the hour boundaries, which are 3.9 square miles of Downtown. We saw about a $260 million growth in taxable value and about a $200 million growth a year before. That's about a 16% overall growth rate, which we're seeing growth all over the county, but this certainly exceeds that rate, which is a big positive thing for Downtown. Growth in residential development, number of units being delivered and also retaining a high occupancy rate in Downtown. So we're growing that residential population. We're seeing a growth in retail establishments and reoccupancy of vacant storefronts. So that's great. We've seen a decline in office occupancy, as would be expected that we're seeing nationwide. Pretty much recovered on our hotel and visitors, still a little below pre-COVID levels, but significant uptick over the last couple of years. Okay. That's a great summary. So how is the data compiled for this report or how are the data? Is it purely empirical? Who's surveyed? So Downtown Vision does the research effort to collect the data. We are one of the stakeholders that they seek information from. Most of the data is purely empirical and the sources are identified in the state of Downtown report. There are a few things that are hand count that Downtown Vision actually handles either by survey. So some of its survey data, where the satisfaction numbers that you see in the report are surveys that they send out. They also hand count number of residents. And by hand count, I mean they reach out to the actual apartment complex and ask how many residents there are and do it that way because what we find is the census tract data and other more generalized data sources that you can get for Downtown are highly inaccurate. Interesting. At that level of specificity. Correct. Interesting. Okay. The Downtown Vision report, it's designed to track indicators of urban vitality. It uses things like residential demand, like you said, office, market and employment base, tourism health. What are the bright spots overall in that report? So I would say for us, for DIA, we have been focused very much on building a residential population downtown. Let's go back five years, eight years. When you're looking at Downtown, we had then 56,000 people who work Downtown and very few residences or residents who live Downtown. So we had big commute going into and out of Downtown and we also didn't take advantage of that day and night and weekend opportunity if you have residents downtown. So we were focused on that. We've been incentivizing that. We've now seen it grow to 4,600 units, 7,600 residents. And State of Downtown says there are 1,500 units under construction in Downtown. Our number is 1,200. Nevertheless, that number of units that are currently under construction, those are not speculative, will bring us over that 10,000 resident number, which was always kind of the initial benchmark to start to become sustainable for retail establishments to return. We've kind of moved the benchmark now. Now we're looking at 15. Yeah. I was looking back at some of the earlier reports that were compiled. And that 10,000 resident goal, I mean, it really has been a goal for so long, at least two decades. And so the growth has been incremental. You know, in 2009, there were under 3,000 residents Downtown, which is kind of remarkable. And so now it's up to almost 8,000. 7,600, 7,700, depending on which schedule you're looking at. So initially, for our purposes, if we could get 300 units a year, that was really good. We are now to the point with over 1,000 units under construction, we're going to be delivering somewhere between 500 or 600 units a year at the current rate, which is significantly more. And as I said, we're within probably 18 months of all of those units that are under construction being in the market. The other good news for Downtown is we've retained a 97% plus occupancy rate. So everything that we can deliver, people move into. It's not like once you have more units than the occupancy falls off. And I think it's interesting that you say 18 months that those will sort of be delivered those properties. Because I know, I mean, some of them are certainly under development. Some I haven't seen quite shovel ready in terms of the ones that are listed. So all of them are actually under construction. So if you looked at, so for example, Doro is one of those that's in that list. And Doro's almost finished. I see that one, yeah. Doro will be finished. And I mean, actually they're pre-leasing right now. They have the pool and some rooftop things to do, but they'll be finished by March. But something like the Union Terminal Warehouse that will be ready, you think? Well, so Union Terminal is not in my number, in part, because... It's in the report. Right. So I used 1200. I got you. I got you. And that's because really it's outside of our boundary. There's a corner of the building that's within the downtown boundary. We treated it that way for historic purposes. But when I'm looking at my 3.9 square miles that I deal with, the residences are really not within the boundary. I want to ask, tell me about the boundary because I know after this report came out, there was a little pushback from the TU columnist, Nate Monroe, about what constitutes downtown. They're crediting, you know, there's a new grocery store downtown. And he was saying, you know, it's the whole foods that they're talking about under construction at the site of the Old Times Union Building. Is that really downtown? It's Brooklyn. What is the boundary there? So downtown for our purposes, and it's been that way since the 1980s. This is not a new creation. The boundary basically a state and union street on the north. I-95 on the west goes all the way over to Matthews Bridge. And on the south bank, it is I-95 as it curves across the south bank. So it includes Brooklyn as in terms of neighborhoods, as we call them, Brooklyn, LaVilla, City Center, North Core, Cathedral, Sports and Entertainment, Working Waterfront and South Bank. Right. I saw those marked off. Okay. So in the view of that definition, which is the standard definition, that does include that area. It does. And as I said, it hasn't changed since the 80s. The downtown zoning overlay has been that entire area, and the tax increment districts have been that entire area. Now, clearly in the public view, the City Center, where we're talking about City Hall down to the former landing site, have been the core and the center of downtown. So I want to pick up a call here. We have got Shamari on line one. Wanted to talk about residents downtown and the goal that you were talking about. Good morning. Shamari, go ahead. Good morning. Good morning. Hey, so in the past mayoral campaign, we heard a lot about 10,000 residents downtown to spur development. And at the age of 42 and having grown up in Jacksonville and having lived in other cities around the nation and with extensive travel and working and I've worked in zoning and land use in Atlanta. And so my question is about the residents like, you know, you see in Jacksonville, it seems like we we we plan and we do things, but it's mostly short term fixes like when we expand the lanes of traffic, we don't we're not actually it doesn't appear to me that we're planning for 15, 10, 15, 25, 30 years ahead. So in the big picture, when you have ShadCon and other developers, you know, with these massive ideas, 10,000 residents downtown just doesn't seem to be commiserate with the goals. So my question is with down because I remember when downtown vision came online years ago, I believe it was Mayor Delaney and and I remember they had a master plan. It seemed like, you know, things were moving in the right direction for planning, but when I hear of the projection of 10,000 residents downtown, it just seems like we're selling ourselves short. Well, what about that? Yeah, thank you. What about that, Laurie? I totally agree. 10,000 was a benchmark set many years ago. And the idea of that benchmark is when you get to 10,000, retail will follow because there's enough concentration of residents that you can support a neighborhood pharmacy, a grocer and other retail establishments. Little changed with COVID and the changes in the retail industry, which is why we're saying it's more like 15,000 now. But nevertheless, that is not if you looked at the downtown master plan and the ultimate goal for residents in downtown and we do have a 30 year lens on in our document. That's not the ultimate goal. That's not where we ultimately hope to get. But I will say we will not have the density in downtown Jacksonville that you see in some metropolitan urban areas where all of that is in high rises because the cost to build high rises is much higher than our rents will bear. And so what you're seeing here is seven story, nine story, something like Vista Brooklyn, things that are proposed in Gateway, those types of developments just don't yield as many residents on a block. Interesting. And so what is the ultimate goal if you had to put a number on it at this point if it's not 10,000? Oh, I think we can easily serve 30,000 residents downtown and accommodate them on the various parcels that we're looking at. But that number could even be higher depending on where the economics trend in the next 10 years. So we've got a question on X. Duke wants to know, does the recent class action lawsuit against JWB affect the grant process for the downtown investment authority? Are we granting money to companies that have unfair practices? So I would say the first answer is no. It doesn't affect the grant process for an incentive because our incentives are based strictly on the particular development project and the cost of construction of that project. It has nothing to do with the actual renting policies or things like that. So if you're referring to the class action, I presume it was the issue regarding the rental screening application and the use of the algorithm by the rental screening company, which I believe is not just used by JWB, but used nationwide. So those types of after-development, because they could sell the property to someone else at that point, it's not about who the particular developer is. In terms of delivering product, they're delivering the product. So it's not about who their tenants are necessarily or who they're renting to. It's about the broken orders. Or even who the landlord is. Right. Interesting. Okay. So I wanted to ask you about a couple of things that have been getting buzz about downtown. One is drinking on the riverwalk. Talk about that. Is that way into your calculus of the stage that downtown is at? So yes, the answer is yes. It does way into the calculus. It's all about that vibrancy and vitality that you mentioned at the beginning. And this is something that the state legislature authorized perhaps a decade ago. Tampa has it on their riverwalk. A number of folks from here were there a few years ago, and we're suggesting that we do it. What it allows is establishments that are located directly adjacent to the riverwalk to sell alcohol in designated cups that then the patrons can walk on the riverwalk with those cups. So why that's important is one of the big complaints we hear all the time is there are no food and beverage establishments on the riverwalk. There are no places to go. We want places to go. So this is one more thing that encourages those establishments to locate on the riverwalk because it's a benefit they have that elsewhere may not be. We made a change a year ago to allow with the help of the state legislature to allow food and beverage establishments in downtown with only 50 seats to get a liquor license. That's lower than the standard elsewhere, but those are types of things that we support to encourage the establishment of those facilities. What's the significance of the special cups? Just so that they only are from the designated vendor. So actually you can't go across the street, a public street with them. So they're only properties that are immediately contiguous to the riverwalk that have a liquor license that can then have the cup and use the cup to dispense the beverage that and then that beverages that cup is recognizable on the riverwalk is permissible. Gotcha. So you can just walk around with a beer that you bought somewhere else. Correct. Are there going to be bathrooms provided? Well, as part of all of these parks that are being constructed on the riverwalk, yes. Each one of them has bathrooms. Right now I will tell you on the South Bank, the one bathroom is closed and so at Sip & Stroll the double tree opens their bathroom. And they would be one of the vendors that could sell beverages, alcoholic beverages. So I think that there'll be interim solutions and then the permanent solutions would be there will be bathrooms at the Friendship Fountain Park when it is newly completed and reopened. There's also another bathroom on the South Bank and we can go up and down the North Bank. Talk about where there will be. I want to come back to Friendship Fountain in just a second, but we'd like to invite you to join our conversation. We're here with Laurie Boyer of the Downtown Investment Authority. You can call us at 549-2937. You can tag us on X at FCC on Air or send an email to First Coast Connect at wjct.org. You can also reach us through the First Coast Connect Facebook and Instagram pages. Friendship Fountain, it seems like it's been under construction forever. Am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. So first, thanks for asking that question because it's important that I distinguish DIA's role and how we work on these projects. So construction of all of the city road projects and the park projects are the responsibility of public works and the parks department. And while we advocate for those, we help fund some of those projects, we aren't the person that enters into the contract with the contractor and can control the timing of all of that. Not your fault. Well, I hesitate to say it that way, but I don't have real dates. So that's the real question here is I can't promise a date because I can't deliver that date. But what I will say is the Mayor Deakins administration is very focused on how we accelerate those. We have a working group with Parks and Public Works and Procurement and General Council's office to kind of dissect a series of projects that have taken a very long time and understand what the bottlenecks were and how we correct those. And then we've got a series of a couple new projects that we are very focused on accelerating and making sure that they deliver more timely. So I think that if there was ever an opportunity to change the timelines, we're going to see it. Yeah, maybe a reset on some of that. Right. But I do think that that project is nearing completion. And again, with that caveat, I will say that I'm hearing that the fountain itself, I know it was running for Florida, Georgia weekend and will be opening in early 24th the fountain. The surrounding park will probably take a year to complete. So just in terms of the appearance of downtown, I know that there's a lot of discussion about, you know, there's a lot of vacant space downtown. There's a lot of open space downtown. And it wasn't a terribly dense, you know, landscape. In some ways, there was a lot of vacancies anyway, but to have all these large patches of just straight up vacant lots. How does that affect the perception of downtown as like a, you know, growing, booming, bustling area versus a place that is maybe seeing reversals in growth? I do think it affects it. There is a perception that there is a lot more public property available for redevelopment than there is. Most of the public property downtown is being used for municipal purposes. So City Hall or the courthouse or the stadium or the parking lots surrounding the stadium. So those are not really available for sale or redevelopment. And then what did happen is when in response to public demand for more public access and recreational opportunities on the riverfront, we took parcels out of redevelopment inventory and committed them to parks and did the design competition for riverfront plaza and have now are working on the design of shipyards west. Those look like vacant lots or the courthouse property looks like a vacant lot. But in that case, there's actually a redevelopment proposal on the other two. There are parks that are in design, riverfront plaza is under construction. They start with infrastructure. So they've started with the road, the bulkhead will be the next part you'll see cranes out there working on. And that happens all you can't build the playground and you can't build the amenities so you get the infrastructure in. And when do you feel like some of that vibe is going to really start to be manifest? I mean, you know, I would guess some people look at the Four Seasons Project as something that will really be a game changer, at least in the perception and the appearance of downtown Jacksonville. But what are the projects that you look for as true signals of downtown vitality? Well I think delivery of those, I think delivery of riverfront plaza as a park and delivery of shipyards west as a park, which should coincide with the timing of the Four Seasons development and hopefully be close in timing to the delivery of the new Mosh project would be a major impact on the North Bank waterfront. If you're looking, I know Nate doesn't like to include Brooklyn, but if you're looking at Brooklyn, right now you see the construction well underway on the Whole Foods and the new residential there and that's really building out the riverfront in Brooklyn. So I do think that there are projects that are being delivered that will add to vibrancy. That project I mentioned in Brooklyn has a waterfront restaurant. There's also another waterfront restaurant coming in Brooklyn. Who's will add to that vitality, but so will these park spaces? I just want to push back on that a little bit because I've been here long enough to know when Metro Park and kids campus and the shell that was used for concerts and events, that was sort of what we're looking to do again in the shipyards west area is kind of create this point of access where people will be able to go and enjoy the river and have a playground and why would why is this different? Why did that fail? So I would say that that was a pretty vibrant place once upon a time there were a minute. Yeah, it was. There were a lot of activities and one of the things that I think we have to do differently is we have to program and maintain those spaces. And one of the things that we have failed to do is to adequately fund that programming maintenance and instead we do a great job of building the capital project and then we turn our back on it. Friendship is an example of that where we have renovated it but not then maintained it or fully renovated it just kind of did the cosmetics. So I think this the difference here is we now have a conservancy which I'm very supportive of having that organization, you know, fully stood up as an entity that can help run the programming and maintenance. DIA through the Downtown Economic Development Fund is helping to fund annual maintenance contributions from that tax increment. So we recognize the importance of that. We're also asking developers and in the case of the four seasons, ShotCon volunteered $200,000 a year to go toward the maintenance of Metropolitan Park. So we are looking at that kind of ongoing capacity to really make a difference in those facilities once they are completed. I want to talk to you about business vacancies because that is one area of the report that reported a significant decline. So I think that overall downtown business infrastructure there has a vacancy rate of 25%. So I'm going to caution the use of the word business vacancy because that would be inclusive of the retail and we're seeing the retail go up whereas what you're seeing is commercial office go down. So it's the commercial office vacancy that is up now to 26. That is rather expected, but definitely concerning. And we knew that was coming as a result of what happened with COVID and hybrid work and people consolidating space, reducing the amount of office space they're using, very focused on the backfill of those as opposed to building new office space. But we also held a symposium a week ago on conversion of office buildings to residential and brought in some architects from LA and DC and engineers and others who were looking at the building stock we had and what the opportunities for those conversions are. Because again, if we can take some of that vacant inventory out of the market, that will help support the buildings that are more leasable, more viable in the market. I mean, I've heard mixed reviews on that. It sounds like it's a very costly process to transform something that's designed as an office into livable spaces. It is costly, but there are cost savings as well. So takeaways from our seminar or two, I would say, one is that you can deliver a conversion about a year faster than you can deliver ground up construction. So when you think about where we are in the market right now, where there aren't a lot of construction loans being made. And I told you, we had those 1200 units under construction. They'll come online in the next over the next, you know, five to 18 months. And then we're going to have a gap because there aren't new projects that started a month ago or six months ago where we're in this hiatus where there aren't new ground up projects starting. So I think that's an opportunity in the market that we don't we won't have otherwise capture. The other thing is that the concrete and steel costs have gone up so much that if you can save the shell of that building, even if you're gutting the interior, putting in all new mechanical systems, everything else in the interior, and if the building is designed with the right depth so that it works for residential, there's a real opportunity there to recognize some cost savings that offset the retrofit costs. And it appears that it may be net neutral and cost. One of the buildings we were looking at is the J.E.A. Tower, the old Universal Marion building. And those individuals in town thought that that had some real possibility for conversion. Interesting. I don't want this to be an afterthought, but just in the time we have remaining homelessness, I feel like there's a perception among people who work downtown that the problem is getting worse, if you will, that there's more people visibly home, unsheltered, living on the street, you know, tents. And what is your sense of is it is it becoming a greater problem for downtown Jacksonville? And are you hearing that same thing? I would say anecdotally, I'm hearing it. I don't know that I am seeing it. Or if I look back a few years ago when we had a kind of major group of folks living in tents along either state or Union Street, we don't have that now. So I'm not sure if it is. And if you look at the statistics, they're not saying that it's greater, but it certainly has heightened visibility. And there have been some encounters that made people feel unsafe where normally it has been just a perception issue. Now there's actually been some circumstances in which people feel unsafe. So I do think it's a problem we need to deal with. I think City Council and the mayor are very much focused on that. And it's very important to downtown that we do focus on that. But kind of going back to the philosophy of relocating people out of downtown is not the answer. That's not the only answer, right? I mean, there may be a problem with the concentration of service providers in downtown, but shifting that to some other neighborhood is not the solution. It really is, how do we provide supportive housing? How do we provide supportive services? How do how do we address the larger issues that are the source of the homelessness? Well, you can find a link to the downtown vision report on the state of downtown on the First Coast Connect website. Thank you so much to Laurie Boyer, CEO of Downtown Investment Authority. Appreciate you being here. Thank you for having me.