What is an Edge City?
Over the Southside’s Blue Cross Blue Shield campus.
The term, Edge City, was popularized in the 1991 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau,</b> who established its current meaning while working as a reporter for the Washington Post. Garreau argues that the edge city has become the standard form of urban growth worldwide, representing a 20th-century urban form unlike that of the 19th-century central downtown.
Edge Cities typically consist of mid-rise office towers surrounded by massive surface parking lots and manicured lawns. Instead of a traditional street grid, their infrastructure networks consist of winding parkways (often lacking sidewalks) that feed into arterial roads and freeway ramps. They develop at or near freeway intersections and airports and they rarely include heavy industry. They are large geographically because they are built at automobile scale.
Edge Cities are impossible without the automobile. In Jacksonville, the J. T. Butler Boulevard corridor, represents the city’s first true example of an Edge City. Because it stands as the region’s only emerging Edge City, we have decided to highlight the continued densification of the corridor on a quarterly basis.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city
Fall 2017 Construction Update
1. Portiva
Construction continues on Portiva, a 260-unit apartment development at A.C. Skinner Parkway and Salisbury Road. When complete, the project will include eight four-story buildings.
2. 7987 A C Skinner Parkway
300 apartment units are being built on a 15-acre site being developed by Killashee Investments and A.C. Packer at 7987 A C Skinner Parkway.
For more information: https://jacksonville.com/business/2014-07-07/story/southeast-jacksonville-apartment-boom-continues-plan-new-complex-skinner
3. Vistakon Inc.
Jacksonville-based Vistakon recently completed a $4.6 million solvent tank farm at it’s disposable contact lenses manufacturing complex in Deerwood Park. Vistakon is in the process of investing $300 million to expand the manufacturing complex over the next few years. The expansion project is expected to create 100 high-wage jobs and add 35,000 square feet to the manufacturing complex. The new manufacturing space will include five new production lines, the tank farm, a 3D printing center and a site for medical device laboratory test method development.
4. Arby’s
This 3,828 square foot former Hardee’s at 5081 J. Turner Butler Boulevard is in the process of being remodeled into an Arby’s Restaurant (#8127). The contractor is CCS Construction.
For more information: https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/article/development-today-1036
5. JTB Apartments
JTB is a 350-unit complex being built by Killashee Investments near the southwest quadrant of the Southside/Butler Boulevard intersection. Featuring four five-story buildings and seven two-story carriage houses at the cost of $50 million, site work on the 13-acre luxury apartment development is underway.
For more information: https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/article/jtb-vera-apartments-top-63-million
6. The Point at Town Center
Block One Ventures is in the process of building the Point at Town Center at the intersection of Gate Parkway and Burnt Mill Road. When complete in summer 2018, The Point at Town Center will be a 246-unit luxury apartment complex featuring eight three-story buildings and a clubhouse.
For more information: https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=548692
7. Town Center Promenade
Core Property Capital continues the build-out of the Town Center Promenade development on 30-acres near the intersection of Town Center Parkway and River Marsh Drive. When complete, the project will include 350 apartment units, 150 hotel units and 100,000-square feet of restaurant and retail space.
