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From backwater to the big game

Self-conscious Jacksonville's makeover efforts culminate with Super Bowl fans deciding how far the city has come.

By BILL VARIAN
Published February 6, 2005

	[Times photo: Michael Rondou]
	Playing host to today's game gave Jacksonville more incentive to spruce up.
	[Getty Images]
	Workers prepare the field at Alltel Stadium.

JACKSONVILLE - Jake Godbold was visiting Tampa for a football game the day a story about the city where he was mayor hit the St. Petersburg Times.

As he remembers it 20 years later, the headline said it plain and simple: Jacksonville: a city that smells.

The 1984 story was actually headlined Jacksonville: What's a city without odors?, and did describe a nasty stench from the city's paper mills, although it was largely complimentary about the mayor and his town.

But that day, Godbold never made it that far. He and his traveling contingent skipped the game, packed the van and drove home in a huff.

"I used to get mad and say "Kiss my butt,' and take it very, very personal," the former mayor said recently. "Now I have more patience than that."

Today the mills are closed, the smell gone with them. These days, the prevailing odor in downtown Jacksonville comes from the Maxwell House coffee plant, with its neon cup sign that drips.

This city is breathing caffeine.

Who would have thought Jacksonville could have scored the Super Bowl, the biggest public relations and marketing event in the world? That the Pigpen of Florida could come clean?

Derided for years as a wart protruding from South Georgia into Florida, Jacksonville is treating today, Super Bowl Sunday, as its coming-out party. City leaders aim to prove that the smallest market ever to hold a Super Bowl deserves a spot with the in-crowd.

This little city that could, believes that it can.

More than 100,000 people are expected to have arrived in Jacksonville in the week leading up to today's big game. As many as a billion more will watch it on TV. For most, it will be their first glimpse of the place.

City leaders hope they will see plenty of aerial shots of the waterfront, the port, the towers of commerce, the bridges over the St. Johns River with colorful lights for the occasion. Business is booming, downtown is sprouting and the weather is just starting to get nice.

"This is an opportunity for us to introduce ourselves to the world," said John Peyton, the current mayor.

Downtown, where most visitors are clustered this week, the necks of construction cranes crisscross the sky. Scaffolding frames buildings. In the past two years, Jacksonville has netted two relocated Fortune 500 companies, Fidelity National Financial and CSX Corp., in buildings overlooking the St. Johns River.

"A lot of construction has been going on ever since they announced the Super Bowl," said Joe Hill, a distributor for the Florida Times-Union, the daily newspaper in Jacksonville. "We're making the right strides, but slowly."

Business isn't doing the only building. In 2000, then-Mayor John Delaney won voter approval to increase the sales tax to pay for a $2.2-billion, 10-year construction plan for roads and other amenities. Among them: a new arena near Alltel Stadium , where today's game is being played, as well as a minor-league baseball park. An equestrian center has been built and a 31,000-square-foot library is under way downtown.

The St. Johns runs through the heart of the city . Four bridges connect the two sides, and a two-car commuter train crosses it. Along both shorelines are the city's pride and joy: ribbons of riverwalk fast becoming downtown's twin focal points.

Godbold, the former mayor, started the first stretch on the south bank in the early 1980s, and Peyton just christened the latest leg of a 3-mile brick and paver path on the north side.

"How convenient," he said during the recent ribbon-cutting, "it was done before the Super Bowl."

Those who arrived this week by plane descended into Jacksonville International Airport over a canopy of pine trees, like the ones that once fed mills that no longer foul the air here.

Driving south on Interstate 95 toward downtown, visitors traveled a stretch once known for its toll booths, a drawbridge that halted traffic a half-dozen times a day and views of a city center that, back in 1980, resembled a bombed-out Baltimore.

Back then, Jacksonville called itself "Gateway City," and that's what it was. Tourists passed through, windows rolled up, on their way to Orlando's theme parks, Daytona's racetrack or Miami's South Beach.

Jacksonville was once called Cowford, a place to herd cattle across the river. Renamed after Andrew Jackson, Florida's first territorial governor, much of it burned to the ground in 1901.

"We've kind of been a city of overcoming challenges," said Kristen Key, aide to Peyton.

A political corruption scandal netted the arrest of 75 city and county officials in the 1930s. Another scandal in the 1960s resulted in 10 indictments of city and county officials.

Business leaders ultimately won approval to combine the Jacksonville and Duval County governments, putting the power in a strong mayor.

Like many small, Southern towns, racism has played a part in its history and continues to bring unwanted attention today. A march on New Year's Day protested the death of two men in police custody for minor charges.

"Racism is everywhere," said Pat Lockett-Felder, a City Council member whose district includes the Super Bowl stadium and some predominantly black neighborhoods near it. "As a black woman who grew up on the east side and was part of the 1967 race riot (here), I can see that we've made steps forward."

From the river, Jacksonville sprawls out over 840 square miles, the largest-sized city in the continental United States. Surrounding counties bring the metro-area population to 1.2-million, about half what the Tampa Bay area boasts.

Northeast Florida has more than 100 golf courses, another likely draw for transplants. The Atlantic coastline less than 20 miles from downtown offers good fishing, and Jacksonville claims more park or preserved land than any other city in the country.

If the New South is awakening in Jacksonville, signs of the old one remain. A Confederate memorial is the main feature at Hemming Plaza, across from City Hall. Churches are prevalent, and if you can't find guidance in one of them, the Times-Union offers a daily Bible verse on its editorial page.

Jacksonville's most famous sons may be the guys who formed Lynyrd Skynyrd, a Southern rock band whose best-known song pays tribute to Alabama. Slim Whitman makes his home here.

Where Jacksonville has come up short, at least in Super Bowl terms, is in nightlife, particularly compared to other big game hosts. Tampa has Ybor City. New Orleans has Bourbon Street. There's South Beach in Miami and Buckhead in Atlanta.

This year's host has Jacksonville Landing on the north bank riverwalk, a minimall of restaurants and shops, a dated version of Tampa's Channelside.

On non-Super Bowl weeks, the lunch crowd makes a decent showing there, but on most weekends Jacksonville Landing is largely vacant by 11 p.m. Even Hooters, the wings-and-waitresses restaurant, is dead, despite what the out-of-town columnists have written.

"We don't have the entertainment infrastructure here" like in Tampa, said Mike Kelly, who heads Jacksonville's Super Bowl Host Committee, a job he held in Tampa four years ago. "We have great pockets, but no destination that we don't have to spend a dime on."

So Super Bowl organizers laid out $3-million to build a temporary entertainment district, using the Landing as a hub and erecting a tent city of watering holes and musical venues.

Jacksonville also didn't have enough "quality" hotel rooms by NFL standards. So the host committee took advantage of the city's ample waterfront and arranged to have five cruise ships serve as floating hotels, adding 3,600 rooms.

But Jacksonville does have football.

Back in 1979, Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay was thinking about moving his pro football team. So then-Mayor Godbold invited him south for a visit and asked the citizens of Jacksonville to greet him. He called it Colt Fever Day.

Business leaders feared certain embarrassment. But when a helicopter dropped Irsay onto the Gator Bowl field that August night, some 50,000 people stood cheering in the stands.

"My idea of getting a football team wasn't so much for economic development. It was to bring pride," said Godbold, now 71. "We had to make this town believe in itself."

Of course, Irsay stiffed Jacksonville and the Colts later stampeded into Indianapolis. But Colt Fever Day lit something: A city's desire to define its image beyond, "No, we're not in North Carolina."

It took 16 years and at least four failed romances, but Jacksonville finally landed its football franchise in the expansion Jaguars, and along with it the perceived gold card to becoming a real city. "One of the things that I think has been a problem for Jacksonville is that people don't really know where it is," said Dan Kleman, Hillsborough's former county administrator who is now the chief operating officer for Peyton. "The Jaguars put us on the map. The Super Bowl will put us on the world map."

For better or for worse. As this city puffs out its chest a little, some of the visiting media have obliged to thump it.

Washington Post columnist and ESPN personality Tony Kornheiser drew first blood with a column that asked, "What, Tuscaloosa was booked?" He said the city still smells, that it could be described with the phrase "Welcome to Hooters" and that Tampa is Paris by comparison. Others have echoed his sentiments.

Jacksonville has been through worse.

After landing the big game, the city paid a consulting firm $91,000 to develop and promote a new city slogan.

Letter writers offered their own suggestions to the firm and newspaper, including "Giant Cockroach Capital of the South," "Like Mayberry, Only Bigger," and "It's Not That Bad."

The official slogan now is "Jacksonville: Where Florida Begins."

Times researchers Cathy Wos, Kitty Bennett and Mary Mellstrom and staff writer Kris Hundley contributed to this report, which includes information from Times archives and the Associated Press. Bill Varian can be reached at varian@sptimes.com or 813 226-3387.

METRO POPULATION: 1.2-million.

CITY OF JACKSONVILLE POPULATION: 747,516 (estimated 2002), the largest population among cities in Florida.

AREA: Jacksonville and Duval County merged in 1968, creating a city that covers 840 square miles, the largest city in the continental United States.

MEDIAN AGE: 34.4, the youngest of major cities in Florida.

BUSINESS: Home to three Fortune 500 companies, Winn-Dixie, Fidelity National Financial and CSX Corp.

DEMOGRAPHICS: The city's population is 63 percent white, 32 percent African American, 4 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Asian, less than 0.5 percent native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander and less than 0.5 percent American Indian and Alaska Native.

MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME: $41,167

PEOPLE IN POVERTY: 14 percent

GOLF COURSES: 62. The Tournament Players Championship at Sawgrass is located in nearby Ponte Vedra.

FAMOUS AREA RESIDENTS (PAST AND PRESENT): Band members from Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38-Special, Molly Hatchet, Limp Bizkit, Mofro; singers Slim Whitman, Pat Boone and Ray Charles.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, jacksonvillesuperbowl.com, City of Jacksonville, National Golf Foundation.

[Last modified February 6, 2005, 10:57:04]