If you want to glean insight into what’s important to the people of Jacksonville, there are a number of recent polls at your disposal. Much discussion as of late has been centered on JCCI’s JAX2025 survey, which examines how people want to see Jacksonville evolve. Released in January, it targets Downtown as the number one issue for improvement. Last week, a second study of more than 900 people released by the University of North Florida focused on where Jacksonville is today. It found that 37% of respondents feel the economy should be top priority. Linking these two studies together is the Downtown Marketing Collaborative’s fall 2012 poll, which found that 91% of respondents believe that Downtown is important to the economic health of the region.
On WJXT’s “This Week in Jacksonville” with Kent Justice, DVI’s Terry Lorince explains why an active and vibrant Downtown is an indicator of the economic health of the entire Jacksonville region. (Watch Lorince at the 13:15 minute mark.)
Downtown is a reflection of the community and companies looking to locate or relocate to Jacksonville will factor our Downtown in the decision-making process: Does Downtown provide a broad spectrum of quality of life offerings, such as arts and entertainment, to attract a diversity of employees?
Securing community support for Downtown revitalization is the first step in creating a competitive Downtown, which will attract regional and national businesses to our city and create more jobs. The community has identified our areas for improvement. Now, we need to focus on a road map to get there and how we will benchmark success.