When Brian Hooper dove into the downtown redevelopment think tank last year, he was awaiting the arrival of his first child. That baby sat and listened in the public gallery on Thursday as his father presented the Urban Redevelopment Advisory Committee’s final report to the Pensacola Community Redevelopment Agency board.
Hooper outlined the mayoral committee’s work, which focused on how best to stimulate growth in the city’s urban core. The committee head said downtown growth would benefit the city as a whole.
“If downtown Pensacola succeeds and thrives,” Hooper said, “there will be a spillover effect.”
CRA Chairman Brian Spencer said he thought many of the recommendations in the advisory committee’s report could be “embraced and initiated.”
“Many of them can be completed, in my opinion, more than 90 of them,” Spencer said.
Mayor Ashton Hayward’s URAC began work in February and approved a final report in late October. The final report is a collection of recommendations addressing issues such as economic development and job creation, housing, neighborhoods, mobility, and tourism.
The report contains 150 recommendations, ranging from long-range vision items to less-involved “action items.” It’s a lot to wade through. Hooper joked that someone had told him it took “two nights and three bottles of wine” to read it. It is meant to offer officials, as well as community and business leaders, choices.
“We wanted to provide you with an array of options,” Hooper told the CRA board. If we had said, ‘These are our Top Three,’ that would have locked you in, and that wasn’t our interest.”
The URAC chairman said downtown’s growth would be driven primarily by the private sector. He stressed the need for minimal government red tape and said the growth would take time.
“It’s going to be slow, gradual, glacial, and it’s not going to happen overnight,” Hooper said.
During his presentation, Hooper said not to expect a “silver bullet.” He encouraged varied approaches, including capitalizing on currently vacant, publicly owned land and fostering a diverse stock of downtown businesses—” You don’t just want the hipsters going downtown to Hopjacks, or the yuppies going to the World of Beer,” he said—and accommodating affordable housing.
The committee chairman painted a picture of a vibrant urban hub that both accommodated and attracted people, a place people wanted to be.
“Young people do not want to live somewhere unless it has some sort of urban feel,” Hooper said, ” a place where there is a lot of activity.”
One current proposal, which the Pensacola City Council will discuss Monday, is building a new YMCA on a parcel at the Community Maritime Park. Hooper and CRA board members who also sit as city council members discussed the Y-proposal and how it might serve to generate more activity downtown.
“We need more reasons for people to come downtown,” Hooper said, adding that the Y-proposal could make sense due to its financial momentum. “Right now, the Y is the only game in town; it’s the only offer on the table.”
Chuck Tessier, a consultant involved with the committee’s process, told the CRA board that RESTORE money fines stemming from Clean Water Act penalties levied against BP for the 2010 oil spill should be considered when considering downtown redevelopment efforts.
“It is one of the largest blocks of money this community has seen in a very long time,” Tessier said. “It needs to be used in a way that adds up to something.”
Hooper also told CRA board members that he had discussed the report with various groups, such as the Pensacola Young Professionals, members of which were in attendance and found the organizations to be “receptive” and “pleased.”