JaxPort’s Big Lie

We don’t often look to public relations flacks for  straight answers. But occasionally, despite their training and obligations, they let fly with a nugget of truth.

Such is the case with a December 2004 statement by then-JaxPort Authority spokesperson Robert Peek. When asked by The Florida Times-Union about the viability of a cruise ship terminal at Mayport, he responded, “Our analysis shows there is no room at Mayport.” Peek added, “We would need 40 acres of property along the river. There is not 40 acres of undeveloped land at Mayport. We would have to buy homes and businesses.”

The statement succinctly explains the central flaw in the port’s plan to build a cruise ship terminal at Mayport — a plan dissected (and decimated) by local property rights lawyer Andrew Brigham. In a Dec. 8 letter to Jacksonville City Councilmembers (available at flogfolioweekly.com), Brigham makes clear that the port’s claim that it needs just 10 acres of Mayport for a new terminal is a blatant untruth. The state’s other cruise terminals are larger by an order of magnitude (Miami’s footprint is 80 acres, Port Everglades is 50 acres, and both Port Canaveral and Tampa’s port are 70 acres each) and the port has done nothing, other than propose stacking cars in a five-story parking garage, to rein in land needs. Besides, the port’s own spokesperson acknowledged just four years ago that they’d need 40 acres to make the terminal work.

If we accept the port’s 10-acre estimate for what it is — a fiction — then the question becomes: How do they expect to make the terminal work? The answer can only be described as a kind of death-bed larceny, a process that allows the port to acquire land as Mayport declines. Brigham calls this “taking by attrition.”

The benefit of this approach is that the port avoids the high cost and bad PR associated with eminent domain takings. Which is not to say that no outright land grabs are necessary. “Initially, eminent domain will be used to widen the two-lane central boulevard of Mayport Village, A1A,” Brigham predicts, since it doesn’t have near enough capacity to handle cruise ship traffic. This “first wave of condemnation will consume or incapacitate the small commercial enterprises on either side of A1A,” he continues, and will gradually spread to adjacent properties.

But Brigham contends it won’t be government taking, but “the gradual demise of Mayport Village … that will be the most painful for its inhabitants,” who will be forced to “see their neighborhood crumble in stages.”

So what’s the payoff for killing off a village whose history dates to 1562? Well, to hear JaxPort tell it, the opposition of Mayport residents is the only obstacle to a lucrative local cruise biz. But Brigham argues that the port has greatly exaggerated the financial impact of the big boats, and he observes that the cruise biz generates far less money than the port’s shipping and cargo clients. What’s more, Mayport wasn’t even included on the list of potential sites in the port’s Master Plan in 2005. The only reason port officials selected the site was because Vestcor, owned by GOP rainmaker John Rood, decided the market was too soft for his planned Mayport condo project — or, as Brigham puts it, to “bail out a politically favored private investor.”

The Mayport follies are just the latest in a years-long, bumbling effort to locate a cruise terminal, an effort defined by failed eminent domain takings and bad public relations, as port officials lunged from one side of the river to the other searching for a place to land. They’ve paid for, then ignored, studies, wasted tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees and infuriated residents near whatever must-have property they currently desire. That’s not leadership. It’s blind-man’s bluff.

Brigham’s letter may be the best distillation of the dangerous, wrongheaded push to turn this historic fishing village into a soulless tourist portal. And it’s worth reading. Of all the voices opposing the plan, his is probably the most substantial and among the most poignant. He makes a case for preserving this place not just for those people in Mayport, but for everyone who believes that our shared history — and humanity — matters.