Councilwoman Jennifer Brahier expressed her concerns about the project proposed by Inspired Communities of Florida for the Community Maritime Park on “Real News with Rick Outzen” yesterday.
“The design we see is just aspirational,” Brahier said. “They know that it’s not accurate. They know that they haven’t done the fine-tuning of it.”
Inspired has said the ground floor cannot be activated because parcel 5 is in the flood plain. She disagrees.
“This parcel they’re dealing with is 13 feet above sea level in that particular location would have to be nine above sea level, plus the three feet that the city asks for as a buffer to be able to have ground floor activation, so this parcel is absolutely prepared for ground floor activation,” Brahier said.
“They don’t have exact numbers of anything. It’s not been drawn out to that point, so that’s troublesome to me,” she said. “They were given 18 months to do this. We’re now at two years asking to sign a lease that still doesn’t have those things in it, and it won’t come back before counsel again.”
Brahier added, “Once we let this go, it’s out of our hands. That’s troublesome to me. If we let this go this week, we won’t see it again.”
Mayor: Controls in Place
At his weekly presser, Mayor D.C. Reeves pushed back against this view of the project. He said the project would not come back to the city council if the developer doesn’t ask for variances or any deviations from the lease.
“Like any lease, if the council approves it and we follow the letter of the lease, then no,” he said. “I mean, how many times would a lease need to come back? The council that’s already been approved.”
The mayor believes there are controls in place within the land development code right now. He said, “It is not the Wild Wild West where they can just build any building they want that doesn’t follow code.”
The mayor continued, “At the end of the day, they’re going to be able to follow the normal rules that everybody else has to follow for that area.”
He isn’t concerned that the final project might look different than the rendering shown to the Pensacola City Council last month because the ground lease has firm benchmarks.
“There’s a reality in development that, sure, there could be modifications that are made to that. I think it’s showing naivety on how development works to say this exact building must be built four years from now, and you better not change the window tint. I mean, that’s an unrealistic expectation,” said Mayor Reeves.
“The scare tactic of, ‘Oh man, this isn’t going to come back and forth. It could end up being something massively different,’ I believe, is misleading,” he said. “There are controls in place—-the number of units, a certain quality of the hotel—-but we also have to be realistic in the constraints that you’re going to put on the developer.”
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