More citizen input on waterfront’s future at January 24th FBCC meeting

Submitted by Suanne Z. Thamm
Reporter – News Analyst
January 26, 2017 7:12 a.m.

Once again the Fernandina Beach City Commissioners (FBCC) hosted a Special Meeting to hear public comments on the city’s waterfront and ideas for improvement. And once again, commission chambers were filled to overflowing with concerned citizens. The January 24 meeting differed markedly in tone from the contentious meeting of January 10, 2017. Fewer people spoke; many more seemed content to listen to their fellow citizens and their elected representatives.

Mayor Robin Lentz thanked the attendees and advised the audience, “We are here for respectful and meaningful discussion. Last meeting was spent discussing the possible closing of Centre Street. Tonight we want to hear what you would like done with the waterfront—the things you would really like to see approved and worked on. We are here for a positive discussion.”

Closing Centre Street off the table

Much of the tension that characterized the previous meeting seemed to disappear at the beginning of the second meeting when City Manager Dale Martin updated the audience on what had generated the major public outcry at the previous meeting: FDOT’s suggestion to close the Centre Street rail crossing as a precondition for opening the Alachua rail crossing. “As I’ve told the city commissioners, following the last meeting I did contact the state transportation official and indicated that based upon that public meeting the closure of Centre Street has been taken off the table. Following the direction of the commissioners, I also indicated it was my belief that the commission still wanted to actively pursue the reopening of Alachua Street [rail crossing]. We’ll keep you informed of further discussions. Now the state will reach out to CSX to resume discussions with them. I thought it was critical that you be made aware of these communications.”

Following Martin’s statement several audience members left the meeting. Twenty speakers addressed the commissioners, ten of whom had also spoken at the January 10 meeting.

Fix the city marina

Many speakers contended that the most important problem that needed to be addressed was the city marina: recovering from Hurricane Matthew, reopening the boat ramp, implementing the plans to move the marina north in accordance with ATM plans developed many years ago. Several charter boat captains focused on marina development and improvement as a way to improve not only their business, but also the financial health of the city marina. Suggestions included building a bulkhead or seawall and dealing with marina issues first, as opposed to opening Alachua Street.

Many speakers said that currently there is nothing attractive about the waterfront to draw tourists or businesses to the location. “It should be a treasure, but it looks like a bomb site,” opined waterfront business owner Kevin McCarthy, who said he has lived locally for 50 years and watched the waterfront continue to deteriorate. In considering the city’s track record, waterfront property owner Lou Goldman said, “It’s the same old thing, the same old way. Nothing changes.”

Build a waterfront walkway/park

Several speakers supported the creation of a public walkway along the riverfront, extending from Rayonier on the south to the port on the north. Examples from other communities cited included St. Marys, GA; Georgetown, SC; Beaufort, SC; and Chicago, IL. Some speakers suggested that the city should buy up all the land west of Front Street and convert it to parkland; others suggested a combination of park and low-rise commercial and residential development.

Railroad needs to be involved

Chip Ross cited the railroad as “the elephant in the room.” He said that the city should acknowledge that the railroad would always be part of the waterfront and develop constructive approaches to making a partnership with them work. He noted that as with the previous meeting, no railroad representative was in attendance or had submitted any data to back up their safety concerns. He raised again the question of who should pay for railroad safety improvements.

Costs

Some speakers asked questions about cost of various waterfront improvements versus their value to the city, wondering if the city would be spending significant money to benefit developers, tourists and transient boaters as opposed to the taxpayers.

Status of Parking Lot B plans

Former City Commissioner Charlie Corbett addressed the FBCC with his criticisms and questions. He dismissed calls for an overall waterfront plan. “We actually have a plan called Parking Lot B,” he said. “And I’d like to ask where that is. If three of y’all would like to start that, there’s several reasons for that. One, we’ve already got the money; we’ve got the funding for that. We’ve got the plans; we’ve got the engineering. It’s just sitting there, and I’d like to know where that is. If any of y’all want to bring it up, vote it up or vote it down. We’ve already got a plan. We don’t need a consultant. Two, it would be a brick-and-mortar thing. It would show the citizens that the city’s actually doing something. And three, you can use that as a model to do Parking Lots A, C and D. I’d like to see someone bring this up and vote it up or vote it down. It’s in the budget and ready to go.

“The other thing I’d like to ask is, I’d like to ask the city manager, you know, you keep talking about the commission wants the Alachua Street open. Can you give me a reason why we’re doing that? The only reason I’ve heard is the economic viability of Alachua Street, which sounds to me like the two developers on either side. That’s the only people I know that would benefit economically. Is that the reason why we’re doing it? Or can you give me another reason? Safety, or something like that?”

Martin responded, “Basically, it’s because that’s the direction the city commission has given me, and that’s who I work for. If they keep saying ‘pursue the opening of Alachua Street,’ that’s my job to pursue it.”

Mayor Lentz also responded. “For me the advantage is, there is no access to North Front Street from Centre Street to the port. [The area surrounding Alachua Street] is the last area that can be developed in an area that doesn’t have business and hasn’t had for a long time. But there is a very difficult flow of people and traffic currently. With Alachua dead-ending [at the railroad tracks] people have to turn around on private property or back up. It doesn’t make sense. The city was built on a grid to create that flow of traffic. People could continue north on 2^nd to Dade Street, but they think they are not supposed to access that area [around the port]. I think opening Alachua would benefit any of the businesses there and allow for redevelopment.”

Vice Mayor Len Kreger addressed the Parking Lot B issue. “Parking Lot B was held up because of the hurricane,” he said. He asked the city manager to address how the issues being considered during the public meetings will proceed.

Corbett asked one final question. “Do you think it will be worth $800K-1M to the citizens to proceed with the Alachua opening?”

Commissioner Roy Smith addressed Corbett’s question saying, “That question is a big one to me, too, for a block of road. That came out of a visioning session. That’s not a done deal, believe me.”

Corbett said he was glad to hear that, and that the commissioners should look toward having the developers pay the costs.

Lentz cited things that have happened—Hurricane Matthew, the city’s purchase of the Vuturo property on the waterfront, and plans to move the marina northward – that have changed the dynamics of Parking Lot B. Lentz said, “That’s why when there are so many pieces to this puzzle, that we are looking at bring in [a consultant] to help us pull all of those pieces together and look at it as an overall picture and plan. We can address the flooding on North Front Street, so that we can hopefully build a park downtown and create safety with the railroad. So that’s where we are, and I hate it because I’d like to see some things done, too. But sometimes we have to slow down and come up with a good plan.”

Smith said that while it’s true that the Parking Lot B plan has been approved, that area is the staging area for the work that must be done to repair the marina. “There’s no sense to tear up a new park to get all the construction material out there. That would be a waste of money. It needs to wait until that area can reopen. It didn’t go away.”

Commissioner John Miller agreed with Smith. “Our priority needs to be to get that marina reopened and to move it where it ought to go [to the north of the current location].” Miller added that he believed that once the marina was completed, the city needed to be prepared to go with the park plan in stages. “As soon as the marina is completed, it should be our top priority to break ground on that park,” he said.

Keeping Fernandina special 

Other speakers talked about preserving what is unique about Fernandina in moving forward with changes. Longtime resident Norma Acosta said that when her grandchildren visit, the first thing they do is run off to the waterfront where they can watch the trains and the boats. Charter captain Lawrence Piper spoke to tourists and visitors being drawn to the waterfront to watch both the boaters and fish cleaning. Some speakers urged commissioners to pay attention to the needs and wants of local boaters and citizens over those of transient boaters and tourists.

Ann Thomas, who lives downtown and serves on the CRA Advisory Board, said that she wanted to be positive. She recapped the committee’s work over the past years in reviewing all the problems of the waterfront area. She said that opening Alachua Street would be a big benefit to the area and marina. She endorsed the concept of creating a master plan. She cited a 19^th century agreement between the railroad and the city in which the railroad agreed to open Alachua if the city requested, and also pay the costs. “I don’t know how we came to the position that the city would pay $800K. We have an extremely good negotiating position that the railroad should pay in full.”

Front Street flooding and sea level rise

Attorney Clinch Kavanaugh thanked the FBCC for holding the meeting and demonstrating openness and candor. He said that while most speakers are drifting off onto one project or another, the city should look at the problem holistically in light of increasing flooding and land subsidence. “It is sinking, and we are flooding, because sea level rising is real,” he said. “We’ve got huge issues. You are going to have to raise the grade on Front Street. You can’t have people driving down Front Street in a river. The water is bubbling up from underneath: that’s the river. CSX is not here to help us. They don’t care. They have a completely different concept of time. They try to tell you they own that land out there, but they don’t. They have an operating easement, and that’s all. By Florida law, those tracks [along Front Street] are supposed to be level with the road. The only one who can enforce that is the city. I ask you to advertise nationally, to get a consultant via RFP or RFQ, to look at the waterfront, the flooding. It’s much bigger than the marina.”

Call for a holistic approach, keeping a sense of place

University of Florida professor Bill Tilson, who authored the city’s first Historic District Design Guidelines and the CRA Design Guidelines, commended the city for looking comprehensively at the waterfront problems during its recent visioning session and in considering input from citizen meetings. “For the first time,” he said, “I see a commission that supports a comprehensive plan to address all the problems, and I support that.” He referred to a draft letter the city manager has circulated calling for firms to express interest in working with the city on such a plan. “There have been a lot of ideas and plans advanced over the years, and the are all excellent,” Tilson said. “But until you look at all those things holistically and how they go together … anyone of the pieces could be great, but as they work with other pieces, they may not. And frankly, the future of the city, the waterfront, is a key feature of that. I encourage you to look for the best people, whether locally or any teams around the country that know waterfront development and have a success rate. We should go after those people. They are the kind of firms that work with local governments, with individual citizens, to make things happen. I think the commission has that in mind, and we support you.”

Environmental activist Julie Ferreira said that while perhaps the city does need a comprehensive plan, the city has spent thousands of dollars on consultants in the past. “I do know if we are going to spend money on a consultant, we’ve never used a plan brought in by a consultant yet, so why would we do it this time?” she asked. “I don’t know what’s changed. Maybe you [commissioners] are the ones that have changed.

“I think that people want to see the integrity of our town, the culture of our town, preserved,” Ferreira said. “I think its small town identity, historic identity … There’s a certain power in the fact that we have an industrial waterfront. It’s a style that creates an identity. We’ve never had the political will to pursue that and make something happen that preserves what our ancestral culture is.” Ferreira said she supported saving as many waterfront buildings as possible and repurposing them. “That takes ingenuity, it takes money, but it creates a sense of place. It’s really easy to lose that sense of place and become something generic. And I don’t think anyone in this room wants Fernandina to become generic. Let’s keep the city intimate and quaint and protect its heritage.”

Vice Mayor Kreger supports referendum

Following about an hour of public comment, commissioners began their own discussion with comments from Vice Mayor Len Kreger, who thanked speakers for their positive input. Kreger said that he particularly liked ideas about the park. He said that the infrastructure portion of Front Street is actually part of a consultant plan that the city is working on. Kreger said that the city has asked the state for an additional $850K to deal with stormwater and other issues along Front Street. He said that the city is working with other agencies to get information on effects of stormwater rise in Fernandina Beach. “It will be sort of piecemeal,” he said, “by virtue of that’s the way things are done.”

Kreger expressed his personal belief that development in the CRA and waterfront area is dependent on economic conditions, which will drive the pace.

Kreger said, “Something was said tonight that is really important: you [the citizens] will have to approve any plan. To me, that means putting it out to referendum. If you say aye, it’s a go.”

Poynter supports wide discussion, comprehensive approach

Commissioner Tim Poynter said that he did not want to take anything off the table at this stage of information gathering. “It’s fine that Centre Street is taken off,” he said, in response to a side comment from Commissioner Miller. “We talk about Alachua opening. At one time it was open; then it was closed. I still haven’t gotten an actual reason as to why it was ever closed. No one seems to know why.

“Now this commission has purchased land to move the city marina to the north. It makes a whole lot of sense to open Alachua to facilitate access to the new location.”

Poynter acknowledged citizens asking why the city should spend money on actions for developers. “This is not uncommon for a city to put in infrastructure to make things happen, because the future revenues in the form of increased tax revenues and new jobs are the payback. This is done all over the country.”

Poynter turned his attention to the development around Alachua Street, which is part of the Community Redevelopment Area (CRA). He explained that because of the low tax base set for the area, any increase in city taxes or county taxes on CRA property accrues to the city. These funds are then used to repay money advanced by the city upfront to pay for infrastructure.

“We are looking at a whole plan here,” Poynter said. “I am against just doing Parking Lot B, just as I am against just opening Alachua Street. And I’m certainly against just raising Front Street. I want to see a whole plan and then come back to this community and say it’s the will of the commission to do something. But there is a cost associated with this, it needs to be articulated to the community.

“I was on a commission the last time that had actually borrowed money to start the infrastructure, to start looking at this stuff as part of Forward Fernandina. We had an agreement with the railroad to open up Alachua. We got thrown out of office, the new commission stopped the project, gave back the borrowed money, and here we are going back to the railroad, demanding that they reopen the agreement that we already had. You’re right; it just seems to go around in a circle here.

“But I think what this commission is trying to do is to listen to the people, lay out a plan that makes sense, get actual, legitimate costs. We need to do all that. If we want to buy all the land going north along the river to the port, then we have to work with property owners to see how it could work. But yes, this is why I want to use a consultant that’s not from here, that doesn’t have all these preconceived ideas [on what works and what doesn’t]. I want fresh eyes to keep the integrity of our town. But you can do this very smartly and very attractively.”

Smith: costs depend on plan adopted.

Commissioner Roy Smith said he thought a linear park along the river would be excellent. He said that at this point he didn’t know what was doable, adding that everything costs money. “We really do need to get a whole picture of this thing,” he said, “otherwise we keep piecemealing and nothing happens.” He acknowledged problems with flooding and the related costs to solve them. “Everything’s got to fit together, no doubt,” he said. “But we can’t come up with cost figures until we have a plan. Maybe some of the Front Street property owners would like to donate land to the city for a tax break. [Laughter from audience]. Most of the parcels along the water are very small.”

“If the people don’t want to do it, that’s fine. This is a beautiful town and why I moved here. But I will say that looks like a trash dump on Front Street. You are only dealing with a little spit of land west of Front Street. We’ve got to figure out what works best there.” Smith agreed with Poynter on the need to get fresh eyes to look at the problems. This meeting has been good tonight.”

Miller supports park, plans for sea level rise

Commissioner John Miller concurred that the meeting had gone well with the closing of Centre Street off the table. He also said that he did not understand why Alachua Street had closed. He wondered if it was because trained destined for the port stack up in that area. “Maybe the opening was blocked so much that the railroad just got tired of hearing the complaints,” he said. “But maybe the trains are sitting there because the street is closed. I don’t know.”

Miller supported the concept of a linear park along the river. “But the water’s coming, whether we build a park or not. The whole Eastern Coastline is dealing with this, and we are going to have to figure out a plan to keep that water from coming up over the road. It’s just a matter of time.”

Lentz:   improve public input process by using consultant

Mayor Robin Lentz spoke last. “The great thing about this town is your passion. We love this place. My vision is the same as your vision. The marina is number one. We need to move it north and fix the dredging problems. I definitely support creating a park on the waterfront. I really am in favor of opening Alachua Street, and would like to learn from a consultant what that would [look like].”

Lentz said that she has not seen the railroad back up, but she suggested that the railroad may be using the track to store cars “because it can.” She added that opening Alachua, the flooding on Front Street, and parking/traffic circulation were all issues that “go hand in hand.”

She said that she supported bringing in an outside consultant to improve public input by conducting focus groups in specific communities of interest, such as charter boat captains or downtown residents. She emphasized that she wants a consultant that is really qualified, whether local or not, who can come to the task with great objectivity.

Lentz agreed that the project should go out to voters on a referendum. She opined that without such action, changes in commission composition can derail plans and efforts supported by previous commissions. “I personally feel that if we need to accomplish this, it needs to go out on referendum. It’s a gamble for the commission, because you’re putting it to the voters, but it should go to the voters. I would urge this commission—and if I’m not on it, I will be the person out there advocating and urging people to vote for it. If you want something done, you must say, yes, we want this done. I’m tasking all of us on the commission, once we get a plan, to get out and rally support for that plan. I think the referendum is the only way we are going to get it done. Once the voters have decided, it will move forward regardless of whether we are still on the commission.”

Poynter: downtowns critical to a community’s success 

Poynter asked to make a final point. “This is our community. The downtown is vital to this community. As additional properties get developed off the island with additional restaurants and housing, there’s going to have to be a compelling reason to want to come to Fernandina and to live in Fernandina. And you look at any research they talk about, from little towns or big cities, and the downtowns are the critical things to keep their downtown and their tax base working for the people. We have taken the most valuable property we own and made it into a parking lot. The reason that I want to go out and find a consultant is that we don’t have all the answers in this room. I want to find someone who knows all about going out to get grants, able to show how they were successful in using a CRA–all the things we have in place. We need to have a “kick butt” plan that we can all be proud of, that we can take to the voters and say, this is why we want this and this is why you need to support it. Because we won’t all be here when this stuff gets done. Just think about that. It’s your town, our town.”

Mayor thanked everyone for attending, expressing the commission’s gratitude for the input.

Editor’s Note: Suanne Z. Thamm is a native of Chautauqua County, NY, who moved to Fernandina Beach from Alexandria,VA, in 1994. As a long time city resident and city watcher, she provides interesting insight into the many issues that impact our city. We are grateful for Suanne’s many contributions to the Fernandina Observer.