Hall, Mack on St. Louis trip
Pensacola City Council members Sam Hall and Diane Mack have both posted about their trip earlier this week to St. Louis. The two were part of a delegation of local government and business officials who travelled to St. Louis to meet with McCormack Baron Salazar, a nationally-acclaiming housing redevelopment firm. Local leaders have bee trying to lure the firm to Pensacola to create a mixed-income housing development.
What did I take away from the trip? I should manage my expectations. There is a clear interest in coming to Pensacola but everything must fit. That MBS is interested in no way means that this is a done deal.
So I asked the take-away question at our final meeting, “What must we do as a community to get MBS to come help with our redevelopment?” They said, the city and county governments must work better together, petty political posturing must stop, the school board should come on board.
When asked what it is the local governments are doing right, they said cooperative funding for moving the waste water treatment facility was extremely positive, plans for opening up our waterfront, our new CRA plan, and that such a broad base of community leaders came to meet with them (more than double than normally get).
Their biggest criticism was the school board operating in a vacuum, working on strictly a business model and not an organic community model.
I really like this group. When they invest in a community, they come with money and they come to stay. They have three components of their group. One does development, another management, and the third ties the first two together with a multiplier in that it goes after multi-level government funding from outside the community, foundation grants, and local investment into community centers, schools, libraries, arts centers, etc.
This past Monday a seven-member delegation from the City of Pensacola along with ten others representing Escambia County, the Downtown Improvement Board, Belmont-DeVilliers, and downtown business, flew to St. Louis, MO, to meet with McCormack Baron Salazar (MBS). In business since 1973, MBS is nationally acclaimed as a for-profit residential development company specializing in the revitalization of urban neighborhoods. Their success has placed them in the position of taking on only those projects that they believe in and know can succeed.
If Pensacola could achieve a MBS class of housing development within the Pensacola CRA area, it would transform not only the urban landscape but the way we think of public housing. That revelation is what I took away from our trip to St. Louis.
Our delegation did not have the opportunity to walk around several of their developments due to time constraints and the rainy weather. But we learned, and saw enough from our minibus, to be amazed.
The development that most impressed me was Westminster Place, a neighborhood of what look like North-Hill size homes, beautifully designed and built and landscaped (no cookie-cutter style there). Yet they were, in fact, buildings containing four to six rental units each, with a third of the units renting at full market rate, a third partially subsidized for working-class families, and a third for poverty-level residents.
Westminster Place has been in operation for over 15 years and the homes are as pristinely maintained today as the day they were built. The development is a true social “salad,” in the tradition of small towns of another era when people of diverse circumstances lived side by side.
All we need to do to persuade McCormack Baron Salazar that they can achieve success in partnership with us is to:
- Set aside Council district territorial envies for the good of the whole.
- Convince Commission Chairman Marie Young that the development we contemplate would in no way be another New Aragon.
- Remind Superintendent of Schools Malcolm Thomas that school properties are public assets and that there are times, such as this one, when good stewardship of vacant properties is best fulfilled by investing them in a transformative community project, rather than sitting on them, perhaps for years, waiting for them to appreciate in value.
- Show the general public that housing for poor people does not have to look like nor be managed like Pensacola Village.
That would have been a tall order for old Pensacola, but I choose to believe that it is achievable for progressive, up-and-coming Pensacola!
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We would be a blessed community if these folks could come here. The school board does an awful job managing its surplus properties. A prime example is the block between C and D Streets, on Gregory. An entire city block with two large brick buildings (former schools) that the school board sold as an add on item during their meeting for $5,000. The guy who bought it let the property further deteriorate, 10 years of code enforcement complaints by area residents, and then he sold it for $425,000. Now, a millionaire owns it and its sits there breeding rats and pigeons, bringing down the entire area. The school board should have had an appraisal, and then sold it on the market. Not a GOB deal for $5,000.
The school board properties are prime examples of how government takes care of its properties.
What is the plan for the USO building on Spring Street?
It’s a blight to the area and adds no taxes to the till.
Sell it!
I’m not the James that posted earlier today.
I have some questions. How is this group funded? Wouldn’t we need to send out an RFP in order to consider all options, or are we willing to annoint this group without competition because we like them — much as the city council annointed one group for the airport deal? I think the housing department does a good job with the limited funds they receive. Is there a way we can leverage their efforts?
I do agree that the school district needs to be brought into the fold, but being critical won’t bring them to the table. Engage them & persuade them to participate. Let them know how it will help them as well as the larger community.
James: RFP? Perhaps. But, most of the land they are looking at is privately owned.
I agree that being critical of the School Board will not bring them to the table, yet it needs to understand that the criticism is out there and that outsider investors recognize that the board operates too much in a vacuum.
The board needs to think strategically.
With that said, the School Board’s non-participation alone will not queer the deal for Pensacola, but there has to be an educational component to this development. They say schools, libraries, and community centers are central to building healthy neighborhoods, all of which this team has a long track record of building through government funding, foundation grants, and private investment.
McCormack Baron Salazar is not just any developer that builds buildings then leaves. It comes for the long haul and leaves its management team. MBS has stuck with projects for as many as 30 years, which is as long as it has been in this business.
If MBS comes to Pensacola, it will because there is broad community support from all sectors.