Wait, are we not getting Lerp?

The entire process raises a lot of questions. Is Lerp happening or not? If it is, where’s the money coming from? If not, why was Perkins & Will chosen in the first place? And will we really have to wait until 2026 for funding to redevelop the site?

We took these questions to the DIA, but unfortunately the city’s Public Affairs Office declined to answer any of them. The Public Affairs Office is frequently on hand to talk about Lenny’s Lawn when they can spin it positively, but when someone asks obvious questions about its future? Crickets. Tumbleweeds. A lone coyote howling in the distance. In other words, the Lenny’s Lawn of answers.

What we do have – after submitting a separate public records request – is the Riverfront Plaza Request for Proposals (RFP) and the summary breaking down how the DIA scored each bid in picking the winner. The documents reveal much about the DIA’s hopes for the space, but they don’t offer much to suggest that we’ll get what we saw in the renderings.

Daryl Joseph’s scoring sheet, July 22, 2021.

Lori Boyer’s scoring sheet, July 22, 2021.

First off, while the DIA spoke about the $10-15 million placeholder budget for the park in the media throughout the process, the figure doesn’t appear anywhere in the RFP – no budget limit is included at all. And in the scoring, while ability to meet deliverables within the budget was one of the criteria the three bidders were judged on, it only comprised only a small fraction of the total; in the scoring rubric, it was worth a maximum of 15 points out of a total of 115.

In contrast, 20 points are dedicated to how well the bid incorporates “an iconic and unique art piece(s) that is authentically Jacksonville.” This tracks with the DIA’s earlier statements indicating the importance it placed on the iconic art piece. And in fact, Perkins & Will’s success in this category is what gave them the edge and won them the contract. Perkins & Will ended up with a score of 100 out of 115 (52.5 points from Daryl Joseph and 47.5 from Lori Boyer), while Agency received 97.5 out of 115 (53.5 from Joseph and 44 from Boyer). Boyer’s scoring on the public art column is the place where the two are notably different: she gave Perkins & Will 19 points out of 20, while giving 9 points out of 20 to Agency’s bid. As such, it appears that Lerp won the competition for Perkins & Will.

The rubric prioritized iconic art over meeting the budget, and as a result, the DIA may have selected something that will never be built. There’s no indication that the city has the money or political will to make the sculpture happen as proposed, and as we argued before, it’s unlikely the sculpture can be built for the given estimate anyway. Unless the city knows something they’re not telling the rest of us, it would appear there are only two outcomes here: either someone contributes millions of dollars for the ambitious sculpture, or it will have to be greatly scaled down, if anything is ever built at all.

Editorial by Bill Delaney, Ennis Davis, AICP, and Mike Field, managing partners of The Jaxson. Contact Bill at wdelaney@moderncities.com, Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com and Mike at mfield@moderncities.com.