A view of Site 8 of the Community Maritime Park.

It is the crown jewel of downtown Pensacola’s development and future progress.

But the absence of a formal process for leasing parcels at the Community Maritime Park has created bumps in the development’s progress.

The absence of that has derailed efforts to build a YMCA on the park, as well as a conference center, daycare facility, sports museum and campus for the University of West Florida’s Center for Entrepreneurship.

Beck Property and Quint and Rishy Studer have navigated the lease process successfully.

One51 Main, the development that will house Beck Property Co., retail and condos, at the Community Maritime Park is nearing completion as of Aug. 14, 2015. Photo credit: Shannon Nickinson

Beck’s One51 Main is nearing completion on one parcel; the Studers Maritime Place office building houses the Studer Group offices, as well as offices for Emcare, a national provider of emergency room doctors. 

The Beck lease is linked here. The Maritime Place lease is linked here.

But the Studers’ latest proposal for three of the remaining parcels dissolved in uncertainty and acrimony, prompting city officials to say on July 31 that the city needed to create a better path forward for people who want to develop the park.

City Administrator Eric Olson said John Daniel of Beggs & Lane is working on creating the template lease, but has not been given a deadline for it.

“We’re working through this now, the concept, the timeline, all of that,” Olson said. “We know we have something we need to work on.”

Once the template is ready, Olson said Daniel, Mayor Ashton Hayward III, City Council President Andy Terhaar and city staff will get together and work on creating a vision for a common lease going forward.

“The goal is to set the right expectations for future developers who may want to bid on the properties,” Olson said.

Terhaar is focused on getting a template lease created.

”It will happen again, I know it will,” Terhaar said of the confusion that resulted after the Studers leases. Questions there about the terms of the lease frustrated the Studers, who felt they were being asked to renegotiate a lease they had finalized with the CMPA.

In a letter to Council dated Aug. 6, Daniel outlined the issues he had with the terms of the Studer leases. He also says Hayward has asked him draft a template lease for Council’s consideration.

“So this letter may also provide a basis for future discussion of pertinent sublease issues with Council,” Daniel wrote. Read the Aug. 6 letter here.

Of the 24 items Daniel marked for discussion in the Studers’ leases, many were language tweaks — “changing ‘shall’ to ‘mays’” Terhaar said.

Points from Daniel’s letter Terhaar thought could carry over into a template lease moving forward included:

— A set length of the lease. Terhaar said he would like to see a 60-year term in the template lease.

— A specified time to start building.

— A regular reappraisal schedule. Terhaar said the property would be reappraised every 10 years, and the rent would re-adjusted based on that.

— A clear parking plan for leases. Parking seems to be a perennial point of discussion with parcels at the park. Terhaar said he looked to see a template lease that allocated spaces to  each parcel. Tenants who didn’t opt for shared parking would have to provide their own, either offsite or, as in the case of the Beck building, incorporated into the design of their planned use.

If a parking structure were to be built, there would be terms in the lease for participating in the financing of that structure.

— A voice for City Council in the final use of a parcel. While the template lease would not require a specific use of a parcel, “once you did decide, it would be approved by City Council,” Terhaar said.

That would give Council — not the CMPA Board, which now acts as the city’s leasing agent for the park — the final word in the use of the property.

Terhaar said who approves the use of a parcel is important because the CMPA is not required to exist after 2017.

“I think the city needs to make the decision on what goes down there,” Terhaar said.

Terhaar said the template would be a starting point, and aspects would would be open to change “like any normal commercial lease.”

He also said the mayor’s office would be the main gatekeeper of the process for potential developers.