Pensacola City Council member Diane Mack has sent out this email:
Lacey Collier, Chairman
Community Maritime Park Association Board
Dear Lacey,
The progress of negotiations with Maritime Park Development Partners (MPDP), as detailed in today’s News Journal, appears to be more tenuous than I had previously understood. I believe we have reached the point of saying to MPDP, “Fish or cut bait.†Therefore, I urge you to call an emergency meeting of the leadership of the Board and the City—yourself, the Mayor, the City Manager, the CRA Director, the City Attorney, and the CMPA attorney—to take the following action:
1. Present MPDP with a memorandum listing those still-disputed terms in the development agreement that are deal-breakers unless agreed to by MPDP and give MPDP a date certain by which to accept those terms, failing which negotiations will be terminated. I would suggest February 28 as the date certain.
2. Let it be known that should the negotiations with MPDP be terminated, the CMPA Board will immediately begin accepting proposals that are accompanied by a “signature-ready†development agreement. I would suggest March 16 as the deadline for submissions. I am hopeful that such proposals would come from (a) Trinity Capital Group and (b) a consortium of local firms. It would be to the proposers’ advantage if their teams included an African-American partner or partners from Escambia and/or Santa Rosa County; a minority partner from out of town or recently arrived in the area would not gain the proposer the same advantage.
I sincerely hope that the CMPA Board will take decisive action of some kind in the next few days. A 30- to 45-day further negotiation period as noted by Owen Beitsch is not in the best interests of the project.
Kind regards,
Diane Mack
