Studer Community Institute

Shannon’s Window: Hedging housing hopes

November 25, 2013
/ Shannon Nickinson
/ community-dashboard

I hope we aren’t getting Jubilee-d again. Jubilee was a 2,718 acre site north of Pace that in 2007 was supposed to bring updated, small town concept living to north Santa Rosa County. It was going to have 25 acres of walking trails, bike path paths, a championship golf course and 20 community parks within its borders. It was a more sophisticated Mayberry-esque vision that was supposed to grow in the area between Willard Norris Road, Chumuckla Highway and Berryhill Road. If it ever happens that is. Jubilee, which was renamed Contrada Hills in 2008, became a magnet for lawsuits as partners in the project left and various lawsuits ensued. One thing it isn’t for sure is the veritable mini-city it was pitched to become when The Eagle Group first brought the idea to town. Which brings me to Smart Living LLC. [caption id="attachment_11033" align="aligncenter" width="850"]

The view behind John R. Jones Jr. Athletic Park won’t always be woods if a change to zoning for the property is changed to allow a housing development to be built.[/caption]

Big plans

According to the pnj.com the Huntsville, Ala., company is seeking a zoning change for the property behind the John R. Jones Athletic Complex on Nine Mile Road. They will pay the owner of the property — the Escambia County School District — $1.2 million for the land provided the zoning change is approved to accommodate plans to build a 570 single- and multi-family units there. Smart Living is banking on a population boom coming that way as Navy Federal Credit Union expands and officials come closer together on a commerce park project that aims to lure aerospace related jobs to the area. So far, so good. But then I am given pause. Because there is not exactly a shortage of housing in the Pensacola MLS area — in fact there are nearly 4,000 houses on the market right now. And while you certainly don’t wait until there is clamor for space before you build things like subdivisions, the roadside — and the planning office — is littered with the ghosts of grand plans past that failed to materialize. Like Jubilee. [caption id="attachment_11034" align="aligncenter" width="828"]

Nine Mile Road is one of the area’s busiest roadways. New development will only amplify that.[/caption]

Airway Drive

In fact, just a short distance down Airway Drive, which abuts the property where Smart living wants to drop a subdivision is Airway Oaks, a fairly modest subdivision “with new homes starting in the $120s” according to the sign at the entrance. There were at least four homes for sale, one for rent and one under construction when I drove through recently. Airway Drive is home to a couple of clusters of older trailers and simple brick homes now. I waited for about a minute or so to make a right turn on red back on to Nine Mile Road as I left, not bad for a slow-ish time of day on one of the busiest streets in the area. Certainly a new housing development would bring some needed growth to the area. But Airway Drive is a modest two-lane road now. If approved, the project would bring 570 housing units into the area. And while on wintry afternoon the only thing you can hear at John R. Jones Park is the wind and the hum of traffic on Nine Mile, when soccer and baseball, et al are in full swing, it won’t be that way. There are many regulatory bridges to cross before the first shovelful of earth is ever turned, the first of which is the Planning Board meeting Dec. 2 at 8:30 a.m. at the county’s Central Office Complex in Room 104 at 3363 W. Park Place. So I think it is worthwhile to take a few moments to think about the long-term consequences of sandwiching yet another housing plan into the mishmash of development that is the Nine Mile Road corridor. And thinking about what it will be like if there were 1,140 more cars in the mix near that intersection — two for every one of those housing units. [progresspromise]

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Shannon’s Window: Hedging housing hopes

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