By Jeremy Morrison
With his two deputy city administrators all decked out for Halloween — Amy Miller as a tiger, and David Forte as a character from the film “Monsters, Inc.” — Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson was moved Monday morning to talk a bit about the notion of having fun and how such plays into his overall team-building efforts among city employees.
“We do very serious stuff here, and we take it very seriously, but it does not mean we cannot do things and have fun at the same time,” Mayor Robinson said during his weekly presser, crediting his leadership team with maintaining an atmosphere endued with a spirit of play. “They’re ability to embrace things and have fun and a good time with it and their employees, it’s what it’s all about. You’re not going to have engaged employees, you’re not going to make a difference if you don’t have people who are willing to do their jobs but do it with some fun.”
Forte noted that it was nice to work in an environment where the necessity of levity is recognized.
“I appreciate the mayor allowing staff the ability to have some fun and bring some levity to the team, but we work very hard, day-in and day-out, to provide a great service to our citizens, so having the opportunity to be here and bring some levity, it goes a long way, it shows the culture and environment that we have here,” the deputy city administrator said.
Before being hustled away from the lectern in his one-eyed Mike-Wazowski costume, Forte also tried out a couple of Halloween-themed jokes.
“I’ve got a joke for you. Why did the ghost stop studying for his exams? He was too ghoul for school,” Forte said to mixed reviews from the assembled press and city staff before going trying out a second, arguably funnier, joke: “What is a ghost’s favorite desert? Ice cream.”
“We’re gonna get David back doing public works,” Mayor Robinson laughed.
Pickleball’s Port of Call?
There are efforts afoot to diversify operations at the Port of Pensacola. In addition to more traditional, industrial-based tenants, the city is looking to welcome aboard ventures that will enrich the port’s portfolio and lend a different feel to the landscape, such as recently with the addition of American Magic’s sailing operations.
Soon, the port might also add a premier waterfront pickleball facility to its list of offerings.
“Certainly pickleball is one of those things that has been out there that people are seeing all over, and the opportunity to have those courts and have them in an indoor facility, we thought was a good thing,” Mayor Robinson said Monday.
While the details of the deal are still being worked out, and the terms currently fall under a confidentiality agreement, the mayor said that the city was in talks with a developer who is seeking to develop an indoor pickleball facility within a warehouse which is located near the ferry landing and can be removed from the fence line encompassing port operations. The proposal will be presented to city council members next week.
“This is a fairly old warehouse; it’s not really been utilized very much,” Robinson said, identifying the port’s warehouse four as “the one the railroad cars dead-end to.”
Deputy City Administrator Miller, who use to oversee the port, explained that the 48,000-square foot facility is currently used as storage by various port tenants and that a developer is looking to transform it into an “indoor, sports tournament facility” that is capable of hosting not only pickleball, but also other sports such as basketball and volleyball.
“It’s a warehouse that we’ve had picked out for quite a while for — I’ve kind of latched onto the phrase, I’ll actually give credit to former city councilman Brian Spencer, for calling what we want to do there an adaptive reuse,” Miller explained. “So, basically keeping the structure of the warehouse, because it’s kind of a cool looking building. But it can be taken out of the fence line very easily. And we’ve had it tagged for some time for a reuse that’s consistent with the ferry terminal, the new hotel that’s supposed to go in over there, and that whole area that, frankly, was always kind of a dead zone over there on the waterfront, really becoming an activated area.”
Mayor Robinson said that this proposed pickleball facility would act much like Roger Scott Tennis Center.
“It would be run, in a sense, very much like Roger Scott, where the building is our’s, but the operations and all will be run by another company,” the mayor said.
Miller added that though the pickleball facility would be run as a regular public facility, it would also act as an attractant for tournament events.
“That’s exactly what the plan is,” Miller said. “That’s where the money is in that. The money in that is not in the local memberships that they’re going to sell or the paid employee hours in the facility, it’s in those traveling tournaments.”
Mayor Robinson noted that though the city could look to repurpose its tennis courts for the use of pickleball — a sport which is seeing a spike in popularity — but that the tennis courts are already in high demand and that the port proposal could represent an opportunity to partner with private interests and also enliven and diversify a stretch of downtown waterfront.
“You can turn tennis courts into that, but we haven’t done that because our tennis courts have been fairly well utilized, so from this standpoint, rather than us having to take money to create a new athletic amenity, we’re actually partnering with somebody else to help bring it into a building that we knew we didn’t really have use for and reactivate and reactivate a space,” Robinson said.