Finding $20 Million to Demo Baptist Hospital
At his weekly presser on Tuesday, Mayor D.C. Reeves said that he has met with Baptist Hospital leaders twice in the past 30 days to discuss their plans for the West Moreno District campus after they leave for Brent Lane next month.
“They have had a lot of interest in people looking at opportunities to repurpose buildings, but there’s also a lot of difficulty to that with the original hospital built in 1951.”
Reeves said to demolish the hospital would be expensive. “The price, we think it would be about a $17 million, and with other infrastructure, we’re looking at a ballpark right now of about a $20 million lift.”
He added, “This has the potential for a generational opportunity of what could happen at that place, but it’s leaving a neighborhood and what are now the gaps in that neighborhood that we can help fill.”
“The city’s not trying to be in the development business, but I do think that with the amount of acreage in the heart of our city and close to some of the most underserved areas of our city, it would be foolish of us to not play an active role.”
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21K Recycling Cans
The City of Pensacola ending its curbside recycling at the end of September has created another headache: What do you do with 21,000 recycling cans?
- “We’re going to our vendors to see if there are some options to get some funding back with those,” said Mayor Reeves. “We obviously have some uses, such as events downtown, but not to the volume of 21,000. So, we will talk with our vendors and potentially other municipalities.”
The mayor said the black cans cost about $64, and the brown ones used for recycling are a little less expensive.
“I think there’s an opportunity for us to generate some funds to modernize the equipment that we have in Sanitation.”