Hawkshaw Village changes OK'd by development panel

Originally Published by the Pensacola News Journal

- October, 24, 2007

By: Jamie Page

City of Pensacola officials are supporting a group of developers' evolving plans to build Hawkshaw Village much differently than originally proposed. On Tuesday, those changes got a final nod.

A joint venture by Hawkshaw Eastside Inc. and Moulton Properties Inc. is now cleared to build 30 units of workforce housing and 110,000 square feet of mixed-use office, retail and restaurant space on a nearly four-acre site at Ninth Avenue and East Romana Street.

The multimillion-dollar development is touted as a catalyst for a major downtown rebirth.It's a combined project of Pensacola businessmen Jim Reeves, Jim Cronley, Bill Whitesell and Paul Snider, teamed up with Moulton Properties Inc., led by principals Bob and Jim Moulton.

Hawkshaw Eastside originally proposed 96 residential units, 24 of which would be low-cost "workforce housing," something council members strongly favored and a key feature of the city's master development plan.

The amount of commercial, mixed-use space has now quadrupled in the new proposal. First phase plans for Hawkshaw Village now encompass some two acres owned by Moulton Properties, and Hawkshaw Eastside's original 1.92-acre site.The new project was approved by the Community Redevelopment Agency, made up of the 10-member Pensacola City Council, on a 7-2 vote. Marty Donovan and Sam Hall voted against the proposal and Mike DeSorbo was absent.

However, the developers won't begin work until approval is granted by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to build a $1 million stormwater retention lake on a portion of Admiral Mason Park. State approval is not expected until March 2008, and construction will not begin until that happens. Then the lake must get City Council approval.

The council has another reason to support turning the western portion of the park into a lake. Next door to the Hawkshaw project, the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce is proposing a public technology park that is expected to bring 1,000 new jobs to town. The tech park could also benefit from sharing a large stormwater drainage facility at Admiral Mason Park.

Councilman Jack Nobles, who for months opposed the project changes, voted for them because of that potential.

"Without the stormwater element it will make the technology park very difficult to do," Nobles said.

"And to me, bringing 1,000 jobs outweighs the lack of enthusiasm I have about the Hawkshaw Village proposal.

"Donovan said he couldn't support the Hawkshaw changes as a matter of principle.

"The point is this is a publicly owned property and this council decided to follow a process for selecting a project and a developer to build a specific project. Now they are coming back with a project that looks nothing like the one we originally approved," he said. "And that's not right.

"Tad Ihns, owner of Avalex Technologies Corp., an aircraft display system manufacturer in Pensacola, unsuccessfully submitted a proposal last year to build a technology park at the site.

"Obviously, we would like to have prevailed a year and a half ago, but they chose Hawkshaw Eastside," Ihns said. "But the technology park we think is going to be a great opportunity to make something exciting happen here."