I favor having the stadium downtown.  I'm a big believer in revitalizing downtown.  It's crucial to obtaining businesses which helps the entire city.  I hear some say that nothing has happened in 25 years downtown, but I would take that to mean that it is desperately over-due.  Besides, that's not completely accurate.  It's still in the early phase, but downtown has recently begun the process of starting to take off.  Below is a link to downtown projects:

 Major Project Highlights - DIA (investdtjax.com)

For those who don't want to read it, I'll give some highlights.  Recently completed projects downtown exceed $400 million.  There's an even bigger list of projects currently under constructions.  The Rivers Edge project located across the river from the stadium has a cost of $535 million.  Baptist Hospital has an $186 million expansion.  FIS is building a headquarters on the river in Brooklyn for $145 million.  There's a long list of other projects.  Don't under-estimate the small ones either.  An apartment complex of "only" $25 million might not sound like much, but you put a couple of those in an area of town where there was previously virtually no residential buildings and you've created a metaphorical spark that can lead to a big fire.  The long issue has been that no one lived downtown because there wasn't anything there.  The reason nothing was there was because no one lived there.  You have to break cycle and many of these projects will do it.  Once it gets started, it will take off.  There's a long list of upcoming projects including Shad Khan's $300 million "Four Seasons & Offices" project by the stadium.  I know that there are also many other proposals not even listed in the link including a building taller than the Wells Fargo building.

The new stadium needs to be downtown.  If you have one of anything with the exception of a dump or an airport, you want it downtown.  I think it's extremely likely that is the location.  Again, keep in mind that Shad Khan has rights to develop that area of downtown.  He has his $300 million Four Seasons project.  He's not outlaying that money and then locating the stadium somewhere else.

As for the stadium, I prefer a new stadium to a renovation.  We may have memories there, but we'll still have those memories.  It's not Fenway Park with the Green Monsters.  There's nothing iconic about it.  Let's do it right and get a new stadium built right next to the existing one.  I also like the idea of lazy river around the top of it.  If not, something else like that.  Don't just make a boring stadium.  Jacksonville could really use a stadium that is flashy and iconic.  People around the country forget we exist and we need to change that.

---