Attorney Bruce Childers, husband of County Clerk Pam Childers, has qualified for the GOP primary for Supervisor of Elections. He will face interim election supervisor Robert Bender in the August primary.
Three others have pre-filed for the supervisor of elections race but have not completed the qualification process:
Stan McDaniels (LPF)
William Peterson (NPA)
Carrie Young (DEM)
Who else qualified yesterday?
Escambia County Commissioner – (Partisan)
District 1 – Tyler Jon Aulger (WI)
Emerald Coast Utility Authority – (Partisan)
District 5 – Kevin W. Stephens (REP)
Santa Rosa Island Authority – (Nonpartisan)
Jeremy Johnson
Governor’s veto pen hits our area hard
The PNJ reports more than $60 million for Escambia and Santa Rosa was cut from the budget. I will have more on this later.
- State Rep. Alex Andrade had a perspective take on the votes: “The veto number only looks big because Broxson got BIG numbers. Both counties did great.”
Mayor D.C. Reeves is happy. He got money for the Baptist Hospital bail-out:
Three City of Pensacola Projects Receive State Funding
The City of Pensacola’s funding requests for Baptist Hospital, Pensacola International Airport and Bay Bluffs Park have all been approved for state funding as part of the budget signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, Wednesday, June 12. The three projects will become part of the state budget effective Monday, July 1.
Awarded Project Total: $14.2 million
$7 Million: Baptist Hospital Legacy Campus Reimagining
$5 Million: Pensacola International Airport Expansion
$2.2 Million: Bay Bluff’s Park Revamp
“It’s a great day for the City of Pensacola,” Mayor D.C. Reeves said. “The $14.2 million investment in all three of our legislative priorities will help transform our airport, our city parks system, and set the stage for Pensacola’s largest attainable housing investment ever. I appreciate Gov. DeSantis, Senator Doug Broxson, Rep. Andrade, Rep. Salzman and Conservation Florida for their advocacy in these projects, and we look forward to getting all three started soon.”
The city will use the $7 million in state funding awarded for the Baptist Hospital Legacy Campus to begin reimagining the property for affordable housing. Currently, the city is in the process of identifying the buildings and areas that will not require demolition.
The initial steps toward Pensacola International Airport’s new terminal featuring five new gates are underway with preliminary planning and conceptual development. The $5 million in funding will be used to advance the approximately $70 million project through design and into construction.
The city has partnered with Conservation Florida, a statewide land conservancy, to keep Bay Bluffs Park in the public sector and prevent future city administrations from selling it on the private market. The $2.2 million in funding will allow for the demolition of the condemned boardwalk and pave the way for discussion with the Pensacola community and Conservation Florida on the design of the revamped park.
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#notreadbypamchilders
My main concern with Pensacola Airport expansion, and I do believe we need airport expansion, is FAA height limitations on buildings within a certain distance of airports, as this has constrained the development of high rises in Birmingham and has always been why I did not want main passenger service at Brookley Field in Mobile.
At one time I favored generally the area that was ruined by Mobile Gas generally in the Eight Mile sections of Prichard being turned into a new international airport, as part of generally a plan that then this would be within 4 miles of what I proposed for a new central business district in Mobile bordered roughly by Cottage Hill, University, Airport, and I-65 and would note the several decades plan of the South Alabama Regional Planning Commission in the 2000s called for extension of Grelot Road, name for an ancestral family of mine, out to I-65 and generally through some kind of merger with Michael Blvd.
I speak a bit about edge city development and this is, rather common in Houston and Greater Atlanta, in a lot of our area edge city style development is a way to greater densification, there are not many lots downtown suitable for a high rise, one such exception is generally bordered by Garden, Baylen, Chase, and Spring and it right now has a somewhat low rise building there with a flat top parking lot and flattop outside parking lots are the worst use of urban space ever, I encourage all to read The New Urban Crisis by Dr. Richard Florida which pointed out most of the capital created in the San Francisco area in the 2010s was in little sort of neighborhoods, you think of the San Fierro level in San Andreas, you know the kind of neighborhoods I mean in architecture, as opposed to say the Transamerica Pyramid and that area and it was in these areas not in Contra Costa County in the 2010s but that generally since 2000, over half of all new capital has been created in the San Francisco Bay area since 2000 and much of that is defense driven, that is why Silicon Valley is there.
Having said this, it should be considered that when one thinks of the counties of Marin, Alameda, San Francisco, Contra Cost, etc, and one looks at the development pattern to where Oakland was basically the Detroit of the West at one time, you basically have San Francisco as a historic district, much of it cannot be torn down, thusly renewal came to Oakland, and San Jose is rather low rise, it must be remembered that No Limit Records began in the Bay Area, ultimately in Richmond, which Master P often refers to in songs, yes I had Get Away Clean and Mama’s Bad Boy on cassette tape in the 1990s, there were no edited versions of those albums.
But in terms of our area, I think it is sad that we have an expanding jail in a grid pattern area, taking up flat top parking spaces, we didn’t have to lose the Family Dollar there, it might be better for a new jail facility, with more land and green space, with transit rides guaranteed for releases back to the main terminal, because my fear is, the jail will keep expanding till you have bridges over urban blocks, but in that area, you have lots of flat top parking spaces and truthfully, 10 story parking garages are more conducive to smart densification than flat top lots, they are the worst uses of urban space and hurt revenue collection, in terms of what the land could be developed for relative to land value.
There are areas of the city of Pensacola not appropriate for the tallest buildings due to neighborhood style, but when one considers how Buckhead developed and how Houston developed and even densification pressures in Spring Hill in Mobile where Buckhead was basically was a Spring Hill like area and where in Miami, as I wrote about in my book, low rise one story neighborhoods were literally bought out, and then on top of them when 50 story buildings, there was no in between stage, as Miami city proper is locked into small borders, and had incentives for such development.
I will say generally that keeping much of mainland Monroe and mainland Miami-Dade has been proper, my concern is that our Florida Panther not go extinct, but for example, there was no reason to put much of New Orleans East on the non-development list as you see that big stone sign on I-10 saying New Orleans East, where more subdivisions should have been built, but suburban retrofit including generally street hierarchy style neighborhoods is critical, though there is much more grid pattern territory here in Pensacola and in the unincorporated territory, but right now, there is great demand for high rise residential buildings, and that building in that wide space of acreage, there in the heart of Garden Street, it is no where near maximum use and that building is short of tenants half the time.
That is one of the best locations for a signature mixed use high rise and where I believe, that Hope VI is misapplied in much of the country, it was never meant to de-densify, it was meant for mixed income and mixed use, New York City has gotten this right, other cities have not, because with Hope VI funding my view is, if you will have so much designated Hope units, you can immediately get purchase cost of any parcel from HUD, and then you can put in the affordable units, mix in retail, residential, commercial, to where it is a profitable building, and then pays back into where it came, the best use of Hope VI money is for density projects, where it can fund density in markets which it never would have occurred before, and I think this can be an answer to affordable housing including in Pensacola.
It is widely acknowledged that chasing away Water Street Landing was a long term mistake for the City of Mobile, it is not going to be appropriate for a 500 foot tower in many parts of Pensacola, but the Cordova area by the airport, we need more airport lanes and what not, think of Aerobiz and how the point of that game was get airline slots, add more flights, then get more slots, then more flights, expansion is needed clearly, but within FAA guidelines, it is possible to densify in the Cordova corridor, with Hope VI funding, to create mixed use buildings with commercial, residential, office, and then affordable units where market financing might not provide the capital, but where Hope can help us densify and rectify the affordable housing crisis.
And with Jesse Casey getting on the ticket for D1 today, now we see whether
(1) Steve Stroberger gets off the ballot as part of an orchestrated plan; and
(2) whether the Pam Clan throws their weight behind Jessie either now, Steve or no Steve.
Excited to see how Bay Bluffs parks will look as the walking trails are reworked. It really is a hidden gem in many ways.