Reconnect Redo Undone?

By Jeremy Morrison…

Citizens will have one more opportunity tomorrow night to weigh in on plans for the city of Pensacola’s historic district and, more specifically, the reopening of East Government Street. Where the process goes from there remains uncertain.

“There’s not really a ‘next step,’ as of yet,” said city spokesperson Derek Cosson. “It really depends on what happens tomorrow.”

Throughout the month of July, the public has been invited to a series of meetings hosted by the city and the West Florida Regional Planning Council. The meetings were held as a result of the Pensacola City Council requesting that public input be gathered before it allowed Mayor Ashton Hayward to pursue the reopening of East Government Street onto Ninth Avenue.

The series of meetings have been labeled as Restore the Grid workshops, and involved discussions on a broader ‘complete streets’ concept. Though the public has stuck primarily to the subject of Government Street, facilitators have stressed that the meetings are meant to address the overall historic district.

Alan Gray, a regional planner with the WFRPC, said that he suggested the expanded scope— “I put this grandiose title on this thing, I called it ‘Restore the Grid’”—and that he was approaching the issue from a planner’s perspective. He felt city officials were coming from an engineer’s perspective and focusing too heavily on the East Government reconnect.

“I think city officials listened to me on a lot of things as to what we should do and they kind of went with me,” Gray said. “—I mean, the mayor’s not an urban planner.”

The public input sessions have covered a much broader area than the reconnect. Participants have split off into smaller groups and attempted to arrive at an overall vision for the city’s historic district. During the first meeting, the public was treated to a lecture by nationally recognized complete-streets guru Dan Burden; he’s back again via Skype for the final workshop.

While the public has been somewhat responsive to crosswalks and roundabouts in the historic district, they have not expressed much enthusiasm for the East Government reconnect. It has become what Gray calls “the elephant in the room” or “certainly a focal point” or “the crux of the entire discussion.”

“I mean, they don’t want their street opened to an express way,” the planner said. “But they do like these ideas of safety and lighting and bicycle lanes—they like all those things.”

The end result of these public workshops was to be a presentation to the city council, which had requested as much back in March when asked to address the East Government reconnect. Gray’s not yet sure what that presentation will entail.

“We’re actually hammering that out tomorrow,” he said. “We’re gonna sort of circle the wagons and come up with our presentation to city council.”

The planner said that he would essentially be passing on the input gathered throughout the month of workshops.

“I’m just basically giving them the power to make an informed decision based on what these people think,” Gray explained.

While the WFRPC will present its findings to the city council in August, it is not clear what the board is to do with the information. According to Cosson, the mayor’s original reconnect proposal the council was to consider is no longer in play.

“We don’t have any plans to bring that original proposal back unless that’s what comes out of these meetings and I don’t suspect that’s what’s going to happen,” Cosson said. “I can’t imagine the original proposal is coming back.”