Escambia County’s first and only large-scale attempt at long-range planning is on life support after the planning board approved an opt-out for one of the three major landowners who helped create it.
The Escambia County Planning Board voted 3-2 on July 7 to recommend approving an opt-out for more than 800 acres in the heart of the Optional Sector Plan, formerly known as the Midwest Sector Plan, that would have been part of the “town center” area for Cantonment envisioned in the 2011 plan.
The Escambia County Commission will now decide whether to approve sending the opt-out request to the Florida Department of Commerce for review. Opponents of the opt-out view the required state-level review as a mere formality, and the decision to send the review to Tallahassee amounts to approving it.
The “town center” was supposed to be the retail and commercial hub with a small-town downtown feel on 300 acres that would be surrounded by preserved wetlands, suburban neighborhoods and rural “conservation neighborhoods” across the rest of the 15,000 acres north of Interstate 10.
“It makes sense that I think this could have been the center of Cantonment in the future,” Planning Board member Ben Nelson said. “It used to be that the paper mill was kind of the center, then all that changed. This could have been the future hub.”
Nelson joined board member Jonathan Owens in voting against the 800-acre opt-out, but he voted to approve a 160-acre opt-out at another location by the same landowner. That opt-out was also approved during the July 7 meeting in a 5-1 vote.
Nelson said, while noting this may be “unpopular” with the rest of the board, he felt the 800-acre opt-out was different from the others because of its size and scope in the sector plan.
“This one I don’t feel like is consistent with the other parcels that we have allowed to opt out,” Nelson said. “It feels substantially large, too large for me to feel comfortable removing it from that future sector.”
What is the Sector Plan?
The Midwest Sector Plan was approved in 2011 to guide growth around a new central road corridor that would add a new connection between the north and south ends of the county. Since 2016, property owners have been able to get their land removed from the plan; the core of the plan has remained unchanged until now.
The plan covers more than 15,000 acres from Beulah north of Interstate 10. It includes large portions of the undeveloped Cantonment area roughly north of Kingsfield Road and east of State Road 97, and is bordered to the north by Barrineau Park Road.
The plan was driven by the county’s desire to create a new north-south route and by three large landowners who wanted to see the area developed consistently. The county signed a memorandum of understanding that ultimately led to the creation of the sector plan.
At the time, it was a new type of planning agreement in Florida that only a handful of counties had used, and it was the county’s only long-term growth plan for such a large area, beyond its basic zoning regulations.
The plan called for the creation of a town center in Cantonment, about 2.5 miles northwest of the International Paper mill, and a regional employment district to attract industry, with easy access via a new four-lane connection to Interstate 10. The plan also called for east-west connecting roads to alleviate traffic and even the potential for commuter rail access to downtown Pensacola. The plan also attempted to preserve the character of already established rural neighborhoods, as well as environmentally sensitive areas like wetlands.
More than 1,500 land owners included in the Sector Plan, some wanted out
The boundaries of the plan adopted in 2011 extended beyond the three landowners who spurred its creation to include more than 1,500 individual landowners. Although public notices were sent out and a public planning process was held, years later some property owners said they didn’t realize they were giving up development rights in some cases.
In 2016, former County Commissioner Wilson Robertson realized the sector plan wouldn’t allow him to build a paint store on a piece of property he owned on U.S. 29, so he pushed the county to allow him to opt out of the sector plan he had approved while on the board.
Community activist Jacqueline Rogers challenged Robertson’s opt-out and others who followed, who believed they had lost property value with the plan. Rogers’ challenge led to a lengthy legal challenge that required the county to apply more rigorous standards to the opt-out, but the opt-outs were allowed.
At one point in 2021, the county was even considering repealing the entire sector plan, but the county backed away from it.
No movement for a decade
One of the key concepts of the plan was a new connection to I-10 at Beulah Road, and while the new exit has been approved, it hasn’t been built.
Jerry Long was one of the three property owners involved in its creation, and he told the planning board on July 7 that he wants out because the county isn’t working to move the plan forward.
“I don’t think I’m necessarily just balking at some great idea and some things that need to happen in the county,” Long said. “I’m for good growth, I’m part of it. I build a lot of infrastructure and have done for a long, long time.”
Long said he understood the plan as a public-private partnership and eventually the partnership would involve the county bringing financing to pay for the infrastructure. He said he’s brought plans to move forward with the county on infrastructure, but none of those plans have come to fruition. He pointed out there was discussion about building out Well Line Road to connect to Jacks Branch Road, but those discussions ended when Jack Brown became county administrator more than a decade ago.
“I want to do the right thing here, not here to do anything but that,” Long said. “And I think opting out of the Sector Plan is the best thing for us, my brother, in this particular case on this property, my children, and my grandchildren.”
What’s being taken out of the plan?
The removal of more than 800 acres of Long’s property, essentially all of the area designated as a “town center” in the 2011 plan. The only town center area left in the plan is just a sliver of land of a few acres.
The 2011 plan describes the town center as the retail center of the entire sector plan and features designs that would require a more urban-style building pattern with on-street parking and pedestrian-scale buildings concentrated on only 300 acres that are the “upland” portions of Long’s property. The sector plan designated the lower-lying areas of the property as wetlands, prohibiting construction there.
The town center was also designed to accommodate multifamily housing, with developments envisioned as both retail and apartments, and to help attract businesses to locate in the county’s Central Commerce Park on U.S. 29.
Fred Hemmer, who bought property from one of the other three landowners that drove the creation of the sector plan, is opposed to Long’s opt-out and hired Pensacola attorney Will Dunaway to defend the plan.
Dunaway said the property owners signed a memorandum of understanding with the county that predates the sector plan that binds them to supporting the sector plan, namely the major north-south connector road. The MOU requires the landowners to donate the land needed for the road to the county as development occurs along the corridor.
Dunaway said the county has relied on the MOU and the sector plan for traffic studies that have justified state and federal backing of an I-10 exit at Beulah Road.
“It’s the transportation infrastructure that all these people have been talking about is why do we build houses but we don’t build roads?” Dunaway said. “But this plan has all of the roads built into it, and the roads converge right here in the middle, which is the town center.”
Dunaway argued that the county staff didn’t address the impact of removing that from the sector plan in its data and analysis of the opt-out.
“Do not abandon long-range planning in Escambia County,” Dunaway said.
The issue of the MOU brought up concern among the planning board members, but county staff said that the board’s duty was to determine whether opting out of the sector plan was consistent with the county’s zoning regulations and the issue of any past agreement was for the County Commission to worry about.
Board member William Van Horn said the big issue was that Long bought the land before the sector plan was implemented and had the right to have the state review whether he could opt out.
‘He was owning (the land) before (the sector plan) went into effect,” Van Horn said. “He should have that ability, no matter what. If he came in and bought it after the fact, I’d be kind of changing my view on this, and I’d be public about that.”
Planning Board member Tim Pyle said that the sector plan has the same issue that other plans like the Perdido Key overlay, is that they require the private market to make a reality.
“It’s all proposed, and it makes a great picture, and I hope it really happens that way,” Pyle said. “However, the person that’s here petitioning to do what the state mandated would be allowed to do—opt out—isn’t participating in the way that everybody wants, or everybody dreamt of at one point in time.”
Pyle said he doesn’t believe the county has the ability to stop Long from opting out.
“It’s like blaming the owner for this pretty picture not coming to fruition, and it’s not his fault,” Pyle said.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Cantonment ‘town center’ appears dead, gutting plan for developing 15K acres
Reporting by Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal | USA TODAY Network
