Pensacola planning board forwards East Side, Urban Core and West Side CRA plans to City Council

On April 8, 2025, the City of Pensacola Planning Board voted unanimously to find three updated Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) plans — East Side, Urban Core and West Side — consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan and to forward each plan to the City Council for final action.

The three plans, prepared with consultant Urban Design Associates, update long-standing redevelopment guidance and package “special demonstration projects” the consultant said would cluster investments to show how change could happen across land use, economic development, housing, transportation and open space. "We've been in this process now for over a year," Megan O'Hara, principal and partner at Urban Design Associates, told the board as she summarized the engagement, analysis and recommendations that underpin the plans.

The plans include city-scale and neighborhood-scale recommendations: updated design and form standards, potential changes to lot size and density to be explored through the land development code update, targeted economic development programming and expanded housing incentives and acquisition strategies. Demonstration projects cited in the East Side plan include renovating the Crystal Ice House Market into a food-and-arts incubator, launching an infill housing program, advancing an equitable-development framework for Hollis T. Williams Park, converting parts of Haines Street to two-way traffic with improved bike and pedestrian connections and creating an east–west bikeway on Gonzales Street. In the urban core and West Side plans, highlighted projects include small-scale pedestrian-priority streets near Cedar Street, added housing and retail at Belmont/DeVilliers, redevelopment of an underused state parking lot for mixed uses, and corridor and gateway improvements near Gibson Street School.

CRA funding and boundary work were central to the discussion. Victoria D'Angelo, a CRA staff member, described the primary CRA funding mechanism: “The way that the CRA is funded is through a source called tax incremental financing.” She explained that each district has a base year and the CRA receives most of the incremental growth (95% of the increment, as presented) to reinvest in projects. Consultants recommended a potential boundary expansion for all three districts (a purple boundary on the map presented) and suggested the CRA pursue a statutory “finding of necessity” and further analysis to determine whether new areas qualify for inclusion.

Board members asked for details on implementation and timing. Staff and the consultants emphasized the plans are largely visionary — intended to guide roughly a 15-year horizon — and that specific projects would depend on market conditions, interagency coordination and project-level funding analyses. The packet presented to the board removed a previously proposed low‑barrier homeless shelter from the East Side plan after concern from the East Side citizen advisory board; staff said that change had already been approved by the CRA board the night before. A cost estimate for the demonstration projects and priorities is not yet available, and staff indicated that the estimate would be provided at or before the City Council review, not as part of the Planning Board’s comp‑plan conformity review.

Board members and staff also discussed local constraints and partnerships: several project ideas would require state landowner approvals (for example, the underused state parking lot discussed for mixed use), coordination with the school district for use of school-owned parking for an incubator, and remediation planning at a Superfund work site tied to future park uses.

Votes at a glance

• East Side Community Redevelopment Plan — Motion to find consistent with the comprehensive plan and forward to City Council; second not specified in the transcript; vote: 5 yes, 0 no; outcome: approved unanimously. Note: staff said East Side will require two readings in Council because it was adopted originally by ordinance.

• Urban Core Redevelopment Plan — Motion to find consistent with the comprehensive plan and forward to City Council; second not specified in the transcript; vote: 5 yes, 0 no; outcome: approved unanimously.

• West Side Redevelopment Plan — Motion to find consistent with the comprehensive plan and forward to City Council; second not specified in the transcript; vote: 5 yes, 0 no; outcome: approved unanimously.

The board packet, consultant presentation and staff commentary identified next steps: the CRA board (made up of City Council members) will review the plans in May; the plans will then go to City Council for hearings and adoption. Staff said the expedited schedule is partly a response to pending state-level legislation affecting CRAs; the city wants updated plans in place before the state’s new fiscal year in case statutory changes affect funding or eligible projects.

The presentation and discussion will inform upcoming work on Land Development Code updates and capital‑project prioritization, but no project‑level funding or implementation commitments were approved at the Planning Board meeting. The Planning Board’s vote was limited to a comprehensive plan conformity review under Florida Statutes Chapter 163, Part III; final project approvals, rezoning and funding decisions will follow at later hearings.