JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- This isn't your typical bus ride, one with a city council member and about a dozen bankers in tow.

Celia Miller said the ride means everything.

"It's like the birth of new life for the city of Jacksonville," said Miller, a local resident.

Some men and women got a first-hand look at the city from the Ritz Theater in La Villa to Durkeeville.

It's a tour Councilwoman Glorious Johnson said was two years in the making. Johnson is hoping to bring some positive attention to some impoverished parts of town.

Johnson, along with several other community leaders, toured sections of Jacksonville as part of the Tale of Two Cities Community Revitalization Initiative.

The group is pushing to bring more businesses to the areas. Johnson said she wants to entice the potential investors to help restore some of the neighborhoods in the area to what they used to be.

"We had our own grocery stores. We had our own cleaners," Johnson said. "We had every infrastructure you could think about."

Johnson wants to bring new jobs, new industry and new opportunities to the community, but she said the point is to get the community involved from start to finish and to keep the potential investors accountable from the get-go.

"To me, it was an eye-opener to, one, learn a little more about Jacksonville, but even moreso about the plight of the people who are in need," said Rosanna Jacobson, of BB&T Bank, who went on the bus ride.

The tour concluded with Johnson and the bankers coming back to City Hall to come up with some long-term plans.

For long-time resident Eunice Barnam, this is the change she said she's been waiting for for years.

"To actually see the dots being connected and the key people being in place to make it happen was just overjoying," Barnam said.

Miller agrees.

"To return our community being part of the city back to the traditional family, working, safe village it used to be," Miller said.