The Pathstone Development on 9-Mile Road will not Connect to Klondike for Day to Day Commuters....

Pathstone is a massive mixed-use development that is being planned for Beulah just south of 9-Mile Road--across from the Navy Federal Credit Union Campus.  Some neighbors feared this development would hook into Klondike Road for southbound egress.  This is not happening.

This view of the southeastern portion of the proposed Pathstone Development shows a 50' Public Emergency Access Easement (highlighted in yellow) that will be included with the development.  This easement will connect Pathstone to Klondike Road but it will only be utilized in emergency situations by emergency vehicles..the gate will be locked and only first responders will have the key

Numerous  residents  that currently live off of Klondike Road have expressed to me their concern that the massive development coming in just to the north of them will dump traffic onto Klondike Road--a road that simply could not handle this sort of an increased load of traffic.

I have confirmed this week that the Pathstone mixed-use development will be utilizing the soon to be 4-lane 9-Mile Road exclusively for ingress/egress of residents and visitors.  There will be no "day to day" commuter traffic diverted downward through this development and on to Klondike Road.

I was asked the following hypothetical question by a concerned resident that lives nearby.  "What if the Pathstone developers purchase a piece of property that already connects to Klondike--could this allow them to build a road through to Klondike that would allow traffic from Pathstone on to Klondike?  The answer, which I received from county staff today, is that such a scenario--if it were to come to pass--would not be approved by the county's road staff.  Klondike, as it sits, cannot handle the additional traffic.  There will be a roadway connecting Klondike to the southern portion of Pathstone--but it will be gated and locked and only utilized in emergency situations and only by Fire, EMS, or Sheriff's Office personnel.

How it Happened, Part III: How Beulah Exploded

Several factors led to the exponential growth of the northwest portion of District 1 over the last decade.....

The exponential growth out in the Northwest portion of District 1 and Beulah has had several causes.

I discussed them in parts one and two of this series.

This area is the home for a growing contingent of employees at what has become one of our county's largest employers, Navy Federal Credit Union.

Navy Federal Credit Union has been an absolute grand-slam home run victory in our community from just about every metric from which one utilizes to measure the success of an economic development project.  Once completely built-out over the next three years--this company will support $500 Million yearly in annual payroll, and will have made an economic impact in our area of $5 Billion dollars.

This has been a huge success story for Escambia County, Pensacola, and our region.

But it has put a lot of stress on the community of Beulah.

With Beulah's relatively close proximity to the interstate, and with an abundant supply of land that sellers were willing to part with-this area became a magnet for the home builders.

In 2011, coming out of one of our nation's worst recessions, the legislators in Tallahassee passed the Growth Management Act of 2011 which essentially ended the state requirement for local government concurrency;  at that time, as a member of the Board of Education in Escambia County--we had negotiated Interlocal Agreements with Escambia County, Pensacola, and the city of Century. I voted against the Interlocal in 2008 because I felt it was too lenient on the builders 

But Tallahassee legislators wanted to take down some of the regulatory hurdles of government in order to stimulate growth in the then-sluggish housing sector to help Florida's economy.

Concurrency was a method for orderly growth that mandated that builders and developers plans had to be reviewed by the county, city, and school district to insure the contemplated developments were in areas that had the infrastructure necessary to accommodate such development.  Not exactly like an impact fee--this method induced building where infrastructure was already sufficient and mandated certain requirements be met before building could be completed in areas where the infrastructure was not sufficient.

Like impact fees--builders did not like the burdensome and often costly concurrency requirements.  It served to limit growth where builders wanted to build to maximize profit.

After the state did away with the requirement for concurrency in 2011, the Escambia county commissioners at that time moved concurrency over to the county's Land Development Code (LDC) and kept it in force locally--albeit for only a short period of time.  A few years later, in 2013, after several new commissioners joined the board, and after the county and the nation moved out of the recession and as our economy improved rapidly locally--a new comprehensive plan was adopted by the commission. The direction was given to "do away with concurrency in the land development code, so as not to have any local standards to be applied to builders more burdensome than what was required by the state" according to a staff member with whom I spoke that was at the county at the time.

So now, with no impact fees locally and with no concurrency requirements to meet--the pendulum had swung strongly in the favor of the home builders and the developers starting in 2014---subdivisions were planned and platted, and we have what we have seen now out in the Northwest portion of District 1.

By the time I took my seat on the Escambia BCC at the end of 2016, the Beulah area was inundated with planned subdivisions, condominiums and townhomes in the planning pipeline--because there were minimal requirements to meet in order to get these sorts of developments approved.  No impact fees, no traffic or school concurrency requirements, and a land development code that savy builders knew very well how to navigate successfully.

And this is where we are in 2019.  This, combined with what I discussed in part I and II, is how it happened.

In my next entry on this subject, I will discuss ideas for fixing this issue going forward--now that we know what the problems are....

How it Happened, Part II

This is what the zoning map for the Northwest portion of district I looked like prior to 2015.  In speaking with county staff--the impetus at the time the decision was made to simplify and consolidate the zoning designations--- was to not diminish the property rights or zoning rights of existing property owners.  So, when we went from this zoning, below,

There existed a panoply of zoning designations for properties located in the Northwest Portion of Escambia County's District 1 prior to 2015.  After 2015--these designations were consolidated.  The plan was to not diminish the property rights of existing land owners while simultaneously simplifying the zoning designations.  This change in 2015 was a contributing factor in the out of control growth of this section of District 1

to what the zoning districts look like today, below, we now know what the thought process was that drove the decision making.  This is, below, what the zoning for this same section of District 1 looks like today.

Today's current zoning in District 1 is much less complex than it was before 2015.  This was done by the board deliberately in an attempt to streamline the zoning designations while simultaneously NOT taking any rights from, nor diminishing, property rights from existing area property owners....

The decisions were driven by noble intentions--e.g.--not diminishing existing property owners' rights.

Unfortunately-----this well-intentioned, well-meaning strategy also led to the conditions that we are seeing today in Beulah.

Growth that is out of control.

Below is a table describing, in detail, the "before and after" zoning designations and changes.

A quick read of these will illustrate, very quickly, the conditions by which the growth was facilitated by this well-intentioned action.

What we see today in 2019 is a result, in part, of this change.  See the before/after zoning changes below....

How it Happened, Part I

Beulah has grown exponentially over the last 10 years.  "How has this happened?" is a question I am hearing a lot.. so we are looking at all the reasons and factors that have led to where we are today with the growth in Beulah...

I attended a community meeting on Saturday in Beulah.

The subject of the meeting was another subdivision being contemplated out in this fast growing community of Escambia County--and more importantly--what the impacts of this new subdivision would bring to the existing residents.

As the meeting began, the developers unrolled construction drawings illustrating the vision for the subdivision off of Hurst Hammock Road.  Several residents had questions about the impacts on drainage, the wetlands, and traffic.  Many wanted to know where the retention ponds for this development would be placed.

Several asked rhetorically--"When will enough be enough?"

"When will "they" say we don't want or need any more subdivisions out here?"

"And how did this area's growth get so out of control anyway?" was a recurring question we heard from the assembled group of about 15 nearby residents.

The answer to these questions requires that we look back in history and also that we look at some votes that have been made by the county over the last 10 years.

Everyone knows that growth is happening and that economic forces and the economy drive the market for housing--- which is the catalyst for growth and for impacts on the existing infrastructure of a community.

But growth is inevitable--here in Escambia County and in America as a whole.

We will get into some of the specifics of this in follow-on posts...

Getting Facilities Plans Right Part I

I appeared on Pensacola Speaks late last week discussing the school district's current plans to address population growth in the north-west area of the county, in Beulah, near the new Navy Federal Credit Union.  The segment went well, you can listen to the podcast here.

My continuing concerns are multi-fold.

1.  We must ensure our plan and the associated expenditures remove all portables from the back yards of these north west corridor schools (Beulah, Pine Meadow)

2.  We must include a realistic solution toward easing the over-crowding at Jim Bailey Middle School.  We cannot leave the over-crowded southwest schools (Caro, Blue Angels, Bailey) out of this plan.

3.  We must involve an unbiased, unaffiliated third party consultant in the planning of this massive $75Million dollar expenditure--to ensure we are spending this money in the BEST manner possible to achieve the best results for the maximum number of students for the tax-money we're spending.

4.  We must better utilize our existing capacity (e.g. Molino Park was designed and built as a K-8--however for political and other reasons it was never utilized appropriately, and continues to be massively underutilized)

5.  Why must we build a brand-new middle school?  Brown Barge is a solid school; with the addition of a gym, a track, and some modest renovations that facility can continue to serve its population well while simultaneously saving taxpayers millions of dollars.  Also- moving BBMS takes the last Middle School out of district 3, meaning all of district 3 middle school students will be bused out of their district to attend school.  This is not the answer.  Swap Woodham and WFHS and there is plenty of MS capacity in the corridor.  Utilize Molino Park appropriately and/or draw Ernest Ward's southern attendance boundary further south, and there is even more MS capacity where the growth is coming.

We have made, in the past, numerous facilities mistakes in Escambia County---everybody knows this;  this next set of moves, re-zonings, and building projects must be made void of political implications and timelines that are manipulated.  The only sure way to make this happen is to hire a firm to make independent recommendations in an open, transparent manner.

We certainly do not want the public to think politics or election timelines are driving these decisions.

In Leon County--their facilities blunders have led to the media turning on their elected superintendent.

 We don't want what is happening in Leon County to happen here or even the appearance of this sort of a thing to be allowed by not getting our building/re-zoning plan right.  Let's do this right.

Do We Really Need to Build a Brand New Middle School?

...Or should we plan prudently, address the issues in a different way, and save $30+ Million?

Do we really need to build a brand new, $35 Million Dollar Middle School in Escambia County right now?

 

Is this the best way to spend $35 Million Dollars?

We desperately need, at a minimum, two new Elementary Schools, in order to alleviate the current massive over-crowding at Helen Caro, Blue Angels, Beulah, and Pine Meadow Elementary Schools.

We need these elementary schools yesterday—and everybody knows this!

(Beulah elementary has 18 portables out back; Pine Meadow has at least 10!)

But why build a brand new middle school to fix this elementary school problem? 

We could solve all of these facilities  issues with an immediate WFHS site-swap with Woodham middle and the construction of two brand new K-8 facilities (one to address overcrowding at Beulah, Pine Meadow, and Ransom---and one to address  lingering overcrowding at Helen Caro, Blue Angels, and Jim Bailey)  --but apparently K-8s are no longer considered as viable alternatives, even though we had a West-side K-8 facility in the 5 year work plan for a decade until it was removed from the facilities work plan in 2012.

I think a K-8 out near the new Navy Federal was/is a solid idea.

So on July 11, 2013, after meeting with the top brass at NFCU-- I brought a proposal to the board to build a state of the art K-8facility in Beulah by the ever- expanding NFCU headquarters in order  to address  expansive growth at Beulah, Pine Meadow, and Ransom. 

We could have partnered with NFCU, and potentially lured some newly transplanted employees of NFCU into buying here in Escambia County instead of moving to Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, or Baldwin County—as had been the trend for most of those incoming employees with school-aged children according to NFCU officials.

 

Nope, that idea was shot down—but I was told (and it is inthe minutes) that plans were in the works to get an elementary school built out there to address the overcrowding at Beulah and Pine Meadow.

Two years later ---and the new elementary school was never built.  Beulah and Pine Meadow are still