Pensacola CRA adopts spring 2025 updates to Urban Core, Westside and Eastside redevelopment plans

The Pensacola Community Redevelopment Agency unanimously voted to submit updated redevelopment plans for the Urban Core, Westside and Eastside CRAs to the city council for adoption.

Staff told the board the spring 2025 updates incorporate changes presented in April, add tax-increment revenue projections, and include priority project lists for each area. Those priority lists identify street and intersection improvements, affordable housing objectives, transportation and parking projects, and potential supportive services facilities, with estimated costs, funding sources and time frames assigned to roughly 15–20 priority projects per CRA area.

The urban core update includes language that preserves the option to consider a permanent low‑barrier shelter or day center with supportive services — such as case management, laundry facilities and job-training space — but does not identify a site or operator. That suggested program element was removed from the Eastside plan at the request of neighborhood board members and remains an option in the Urban Core and Westside text as a conceptual project that would require later site selection and partnering with service providers.

Agency staff also added a statutory compliance table in the appendix that maps plan sections to the requirements of Chapter 163, Part III, Florida Statutes; staff said the table is intended to document that the updated plans meet state law requirements for community redevelopment plan updates.

Board members voted on each plan in separate motions. There was limited discussion in each vote; staff said the April presentations and prior drafts had been available for review and that the updates mainly formalize previously discussed priorities and provide more detail about costs and funding approaches.

Each of the three plan updates passed on the CRA floor and will be forwarded to city council for consideration and possible adoption.