A year after Jacksonville City Hall yanked a contract for building a restaurant at Palms Fish Camp off ..., Northside residents are still wondering when someone — anyone — will finish construction and start serving fish platters.

In the downtown area, the restored Brewster Hospital building and partly completed Sax Seafood & Grill restaurant are likewise waiting for city action to get them ready for tenants and customers.

At the junction of Moncrief Road and Myrtle Avenue, the North Point Town Center, financed partly by city grants and loans, opened in January and does have the lights on. But the building’s owner, nonprofit Northwest Jacksonville Community Development Corp., is still seeking tenants to fill up the two-story building.

Though the buildings are in different stages of completion, they all represent failed attempts by the city to spark neighborhood-based economic activity through land donations and millions of dollars in grants and loans.

The freeze at the Palms Fish Camp could be thawing. The city, which owns the property, has talked with the original investment group about restarting construction. But the long layoff in work at the restaurant, off Heckscher Drive beside Clapboard Creek, has puzzled and galled Northside residents.

Heckscher Drive Community Club President Bobby Taylor said action can’t come soon enough.

“It was a very integral part of the fabric of the community,” he said. “The city needs to do something.

“At a time when we’re trying to maximize revenue for the city, to have a brand-new building sitting there unoccupied and not generating any kind of contribution to the community is just a waste of resources. It just looks bad,” Taylor said. “We got enough empty structures on this road now, and the city doesn’t need to be contributing to the decline of our retail.”

Former City Council member Glorious Johnson has similar thoughts when she drives by the Brewster Hospital, which sits vacant even though the city paid to restore it in the La....

“I’m a little, let’s say, concerned that nobody seems to care,” she said.