Public outcry against storage units in downtown Jacksonville forces delay in vote

A groundswell of public opposition caused Jacksonville City Council to hit the pause button on deciding whether it will open up more areas of downtown to new self-storage buildings.

About 120 residents residents and business-owners emailed council members and called on them to kill the bill.

“You’re hearing the cry of a lot of folks that are saying ‘No,’ and if they say ‘No,’ we have to listen to what the people say," council member Ju'Coby Pittman said.

Even the bill's sponsor Reggie Gaffney said he was on the fence after hearing the pushback.

Rather than take a vote Tuesday night, the council sent the bill back to the Land Use and Zoning Committee, which had previously recommended approval, for more discussions at the committee level.

City Council member LeAnna Cumber, who opposes the legislation, said if Jacksonville were to change the overlay for the entire downtown because one company wants to construct a self-storage building that's not allowed by the current overlay, it will undermine any sense of vision for developing downtown.

“When people say why can’t we be Tampa, why can’t we be Nashville, why can’t be these (other) cities, this is why — because there’s no vision that anyone will hold onto," she said.

Storage units downtown? Company that builds self-storage units wants Jacksonville to lift ban in much of downtown

Cumber, whose district contains the Southbank of downtown, said the city is investing tens of millions of dollars in redeveloping downtown and building amenities such as the Emerald Trail network connecting downtown to surrounding neighborhoods.

She said if council members want all the spending to "have any effect other than being burned in a bonfire," it should vote down the change to the overlay.

City Council member Rory Diamond, chairman of the Land Use and Zoning Committee that voted 6-1 last week for changing the overlay, said he supported it because of the design requirements for the appearance of the buildings and ground-floor uses for retail or restaurants.

He said having the committee look again at the bill could be a “cooling tray where we try to find consensus” based on more discussion and public feedback.

But it's not clear whether modifying the bill would pick up enough support from City Council members. Some questioned why the Simpson Group, which builds self-storage units across the Southeast, can't file a planned unit development application narrowly tailored to the lot where it wants to build.

Council member Randy DeFoor said changing the downtown overlay would be "throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It really doesn't make sense to change the whole overlay for one project."

Council member Al Ferraro, who voted in favor of the bill when it went through the Land Use and Zoning Committee, said based on the public comments he later received, he changed his mind and would oppose the bill because communities should have the ability to determine what they want.

The legislation would not have allowed a new self-storage building at any specific location, but it would have expanded the area in downtown where they're eligible for zoning exceptions.

The provisions of the legislations would make that permissible area include the property at the corner of Hendricks Avenue and Prudential Drive on the Southbank as an eligible site for Simpson Group to build, a few blocks from where downtown transitions to San Marco.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville City Council defers vote on storage buildings in downtown