Thousands came for the opening of the new food hall, forcing some to get creative with parking only to discover their cars were towed while they were eating.<\/p>\n
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 A new attraction has brought a new conundrum to Jacksonville’s Southside.<\/p>\n
The owner of The Block Jax, a new food hall, dog park and music venue, says thousands turned out for the opening weekend.<\/p>\n
That turnout brought an unexpected number of cars, and not enough parking to go around.<\/p>\n
At one point Sunday, a series of tow trucks pulled up to the curb across the street, and within minutes, left with several cars.<\/p>\n
“People are just like, ‘Eh, whatever, no one is going to tow me.’ Until they get towed, now it’s a problem, but we will help out however we can,” The Block Jax Owner Daniel Moffatt said.<\/p>\n
Moffatt says he was prepared for a big opening weekend at The Block Jax, and he put in a 125-space lot to handle a big crowd. However, the crowd wound up quite a bit bigger than those 125 spaces would allow, with visitors excited to see what was inside.<\/p>\n
“I’m really glad we have a cool place in the neighborhood that’s permanently here,” one visitor said.<\/p>\n
“Variety of foods, different ethnic groups of people,” added another. “The music was good.”<\/p>\n
It led folks to get creative with parking \u2014 perhaps a bit too creative.<\/p>\n
On top of running his business, Moffatt was tasked with running around trying to prevent his customers’ cars from getting towed, warning them about what areas they couldn’t park in and paying for towing expenses.<\/p>\n
“I feel bad that it happened,” said Moffatt. “Wasn’t my decision, but they were here enjoying our place so it’s the right thing to do.”<\/p>\n
Moffatt says the bank next door provided its lot to help with the overflow Sunday, and will allow cars to park there after they close.<\/p>\n
Moffatt is looking at adding another lot somewhere with a shuttle if the parking keeps overflowing.<\/p>\n
“We had a couple people who got towed with young kids and car seats. My wife, personally, drove them to the tow yard, got them their car, paid for their towing,” Moffatt said, “It’s a work in progress.”<\/p>\n
He’s also noticed people parking across Gate Parkway and walking across the road, which he feels could be an accident waiting to happen.<\/p>\n
Moffatt said he plans to reach out to city leaders to explore a crosswalk or a light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands came for the opening of the new food hall, forcing some to get creative with parking only…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-201986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}