Pensacola City Councilman and CRA board member Larry B. Johnson has placed an item on the agenda for next week’s CRA meeting that asks the board to continue the Request for Proposals (RFP) process for the City-owned Hawkshaw property. With offers from three finalists on the table, the CRA voted abruptly last month to scrap the process.
In the agenda item, embedded below, Johnson says the August 17 vote took place “in the absence of any agenda item and without warning to the public or the firms invested in their proposals.” According to Johnson, as a result of the vote, “the public has lost confidence in the CRA’s ability to responsibly manage its assets.” Johnson’s item asks the CRA to reconsider its prior action and consider the offers from the two highest-ranked RFP finalists.
The two highest-ranked finalists included Texas-based ITEX Group, which proposed construction of a five story building and 180 rental apartments, along with a Pensacola-based group led by Granger Development, which proposed a nine-story mixed use building with 47 condos for purchase. The third-ranked finalist was Pensacola-based Whitesell-Green & H+H Building Group, which proposed building 37 townhomes and two, 20-unit condo buildings on the site.
The 2.2-acre Hawkshaw property, located just along South 9th Avenue directly north of Admiral Mason Park, has been vacant for nearly 20 years. The recently-scrapped RFP process is no less than the City’s third attempt to develop the property since 2006 and the second in the past eighteen months.
