What If It Would Have Been a Town Center Instead? Part I

The 11-parcel, 68 acre Bell-Heritage Oaks Commerce Park sold out to one tenant and was/is a smashing success

That's the question I have asked myself.  It is a question I have asked of others.

As we come closer to acquisition of the OLF 8 Property in Beulah, a look back at the history of one property decision deserves a second look with the benefit of hindsight.

In the early 2000s, a small parcel of land, approximately 68 acres, was acquired by the county from the Matt Langley Bell foundation.  The property was situated in Beulah off of 9-Mile Road next to the Matt Langley Bell 4-H property.  In a joint project with the State, County, and the Greater Pensacola Chamber of Commerce--the decision was made to carve this small parcel into several smaller, individual parcels and market them as a part of the Bell-Heritage Oaks Commerce Park.  I'm told there were a few loud, vocal opponents of this plan that did not want this to happen.  There were better uses for this property, according to these early naysayers.  Luckily for our region--these critical, negative voices were not  taken seriously and the park was constructed despite the objections from a few local residents....

PROJECT TUCKER

At about the same time as the Bell-Heritage Oaks Commerce Park was being developed, an economic development effort was launched to lure about 500 jobs to this newly constructed commerce park in Beulah.  The company was huge, a worldwide leader in their industry--so secrecy was an absolute necessity.  After about 18 months of negotiations back and forth, all the pieces came together, and Project Tucker was publicly identified as a 500 person call-center contingent from Navy Federal Credit Union's (NFCU) HQ in Vienna, Virginia. Although NFCU had branches worldwide--this  represented the first time this company had explored the possibility of expanding their administrative/office/support  footprint outside of Virginia.   The competition was tough, but eventually Pensacola won the jobs and the investment from Navy Federal Credit Union (over another site in Virginia) due to a number of factors to include the area's available workforce, the low wages of the area, and a very generous package of incentives offered to NFCU.  According to many sources intimately familiar with the negotiations with whom I have spoken--the incentives package is what sealed the deal and won this initial investment from NFCU for Pensacola.  Initially, NFCU purchased one parcel in the park, roughly 18 acres, for about $20K an acre.  Then subsequently NFCU bought another.  Eventually, NFCU would acquire all the parcels in the park.  Finally, seeing the great potential in Pensacola, NFCU purchased the Langley Bell 4-H property and began an ambitious growth and building cycle that would ultimately lead to several giant buildings being constructed and  thousands of additional jobs coming to Pensacola.

FAST FORWARD TO 2018

As of June of 2018, I am told NFCU's local workforce is up to roughly 6400 persons, with a plan to go to 10,000.  Several new buildings are going up, and hundreds of millions of dollars in capital expenditures have been injected into the Escambia County economy from this private-sector growth--benefiting not just Pensacola, not just Escambia County, not just Florida--but our entire region.  The growth has been rapid and there have been issues (infrastructure not sufficient for the growth)--but things are coming together and the necessary infrastructure is being built/planned/programmed to accommodate the growth.  All in all this past 16 year history between NFCU and Escambia County has been nothing short of a miracle for our area--an amazing Grand Slam Home Run for our area.  Most everyone recognizes this.  Most everyone does.

THE NAYSAYERS 

Even with the spectacular growth of the NFCU footprint locally, even with thousands of new jobs being imported to our community (a text-book, case study, poster-child for economic development success)--there are still naysayers who do not recognize this success.  I met dozens of them on the campaign trail as I went door to door in Beulah.  Luckily, and thankfully, however--the number of naysayers and cynics about NFCU on a percentage basis is very small.  Most, like me, recognize the tremendous boost NFCU has given our region.  But the number of cynics is not an insignificant number either.  There a a lot of them.  The reasoning they give for not liking NFCU is simple--they liked the open fields and bucolic nature of Beulah prior to the growth; they bemoan the traffic and the


 buildings, and all the additional people.  They dislike the concomitant growth in housing construction in the area, and they simply wish things could be the way they were before. Many of these folks are already retired on a fixed government pension of some sort or variety. They have theirs, and they did/do not want anyone else having a shot at a good career with a great company--at least not anywhere near where they live!   Some of these naysayers are a hoot; one in particular despised NFCU and had said so on multiple occasions publicly.  This person made no bones about it--NFCU coming to Beulah was a MISTAKE and BAD!  But a funny thing happened once this individual was actually fortunate enough to get a job at NFCU.....suddenly there was NOTHING bad about NFCU in this person's eyes--it was all the County's fault for not providing the roads and infrastructure NFCU needed prior to the build out occurring.  Funny how this person changed their tune on a dime and suddenly it was an opportunity to blame someone else--what a hoot!

But on a more serious note--there are those that would, even today, unwind all of this positive growth and investment in our community that came from NFCU's commitment to Escambia County.  Yes, if they had a time machine and an "Easy Button" to make this all go away "like it never even happened" a la a ServPro commercial--these naysayers would pull the switch and erase it all.  They would say "leave it a vacant field, or better yet-build something for the community, a town-center!"  If they had the power, they would erase NFCU's presence in our area.  Just imagine that for a minute, let that sink in and ask yourself this question:  What if strong leaders with vision, commitment, and foresight had lost out to the naysayers back in 2002?  What if Bell-Heritage Oaks Commerce Park had never been built?  What if it would have been a Town Center Instead?  We will explore this hypothetical in part II....