City gets $1.3 million grant for ferry dock


  • October 3, 2014
  • /   Shannon Nickinson
  • /   economy

The City of Pensacola has been awarded a $1.3 million federal grant to build a ferry dock and the affiliated infrastructure in downtown.

The announcement came in the Friday afternoon edition of Mayor Ashton Hayward’s newsletter “Upwards.”

“I’m pleased to announce that the City of Pensacola has been awarded a $1,326,000 grant from the US Department of Transportation Eastern Federal Lands Highways Division to construct in downtown Pensacola a dock and associated infrastructure to support ferry boat operations,” the newsletter says.

“The planned service, which is expected to begin operations in March 2017, would connect downtown Pensacola, Pensacola Beach, and Fort Pickens, offering an alternate means of transportation to Fort Pickens and the National Seashore as well as adding a new tourist attraction to our community.

The newsletter says the service is planned to feature two, 100-149 passenger ferries, one running clockwise and one running counter-clockwise between the three destinations.

The newsletter says that the city will be able to use state revenue toll credits to satisfy the match requirement of the federal grant, which means “the City match obligation is zero and the full grant amount is available for the project.”

Pensacola News Journal Staff Writer Kimberly Blair highlighted plans for the ferry service in a story about an open house on the project planned for Tuesday night from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Naval Live Oak National Seashore headquarters in Gulf Breeze. LINK.

The ferry service is one of several projects that were announced for funding by the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustees on Friday. Funding for NRDA projects comes from fines levied against oil giant BP for the 2010 oil spill. LINK

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