One51Main coming on line


  • April 29, 2014
  • /   Shannon Nickinson
  • /   economy

The Community Maritime Park site is about to get busier.

Beck Property Company, a regional commercial real estate firm, announced recently the groundbreaking of One51 Main, a new mixed-used development at the downtown site.

A public celebration of the groundbreaking will be scheduled in the coming weeks.

Justin Beck says the 24,000 square foot, three-story building should be done in early 2015. It includes seven retail spaces on the first floor and four residential condos on the third floor. Beck Properties offices will take up the entire second floor.

Two of the four condos are sold and four of the seven retail spaces are reserved, he says.

Beck says that when the company leased their office on Bayou Boulevard, it left them “homeless.”

“I wanted to be downtown, (but) I knew we would have to build what we wanted,” Beck says. “When you dig into the market, I saw a lack of existing quality property. People look around at downtown and they see vacant lots and they think that translates into vacant office space and that’s not the case.

“We do work in Mobile and Tallahassee and...Tallahassee has a 15-20 percent vacancy rate across board on office space. In downtown Pensacola, it’s 8 or 10 percent.”

“I see a lot of awesome stuff happening over the next 20-40 years,” says Beck. “I’m 32, I’ve got to look out 20 or 30 years. You’re not going to have new office space on Palafox. You’re not going to go east into Aragon or Old Seville. If you want to build new office space, you’ve got to go west.”

Beck also wanted to show that building on the maritime park site is possible.

“I hope people will look and say here are some guys who have been in the community a long time, we’re still bootstrap kind of guys and we could do it.”

One51 Main will feature several green building techniques including geothermal heating, insulated concrete form construction as well as high efficiency lighting and a living wall.

Landscaping will feature native species with minimal water needs. The project will be one of the first to take advantage of the city’s green building ordinance.

Beck has engaged Williams-Brown Construction as construction manager. Kelly Wieczorek and Steve Jernigan of Bay Design will serve as project architects.

Financing for the construction was secured through executive vice president Bobby Fair with Servis 1st Bank.

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