“Lodging planned for Maritime Park site”

Posted: 12 Nov 2010 11:13 PM PST

The Community Maritime Park development team says that it's close to signing letters of intent with two hotel companies that would be part of private development at downtown Pensacola's waterfront park.

Scott Davison, vice president of development for Maritime Park Development Partners, told the park's board Friday that he expects the businesses to sign the letters of intent within two weeks.

The group also is in early talks with a third hotelier for the park off Main Street in Pensacola, he added.

The news came as the development team revealed that tentative plans to bring modestly priced apartments to the park first, in addition to the multiuse stadium.

Development Partners President Jeff Galt said providing the area with a 24-hour-a-day presence would help make the park site more attractive to private business developers.

"These are going to be very desirable," Galt said. "This is going to be the place to live in Pensacola."

Community Maritime Park Associates Interim Director Ed Spears questioned how affordable the apartments would be since they would sit on prime waterfront real estate.

"To make it viable, it has to fit economically with the people in Pensacola," Galt said.

Brian Spencer, an architect working with the development team, said residential development would be beneficial.

"It will bring a different energy to the center than if we were to start with office and retail," said Spencer, who recently was elected to the Pensacola City Council.

The earliest that construction could begin on the apartments is late 2011, Galt said.

A public portion of the park is funded by $40 million in taxpayer money and $11 million in tax credit proceeds. The remainder of the development will come from the private sector.

A disagreement between the development team and the Studer Group at Friday's meeting resulted in a testy exchange between Galt and Charles "Chuck" Tessier.

Tessier represents the Studer Group, which owns the Pelicans baseball team that will play at the multiuse stadium beginning in 2012.

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The Studer Group, which has made sizable financial contributions to the Maritime Park project, was promised a 20,000-square-foot parcel to develop a 60,000-square-foot, mixed-use, retail and office building on the site.

Tessier complained that his organization was shut out of talks to bring a restaurant to a piece of land that would sit on the north side of the stadium.

"We've tried to be a player here," he said.

Galt and Davison said that, as the developers, their only obligation was to provide a single parcel of land for the originally proposed development. If the Studer Group is interested in additional land, it would have to negotiate for it like any other private developer, they said.

"If they would like to do more than that, we would like to speak with them," Davison said.

Eddie Todd, chairman of the Community Maritime Park Associates, which oversees the project for the city, said it's important that the development team and the potential developers not bicker in public and remember what the project is about.

"This property and all of this potential future glory belongs to the community," Todd said, bringing the issue to a close.

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