Pensacola looking to 'reimagine' Palafox Street as part of repaving project

Pensacola is working on a plan to "reimagine Palafox Street" at the same time as Florida Power and Light pays for the repaving of the iconic city street.

Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves said Tuesday that the city is working on putting together up to three options and will let the public weigh in on which one they prefer this summer.

"We're working through to come up with multiple-option visionary plans for Palafox," Reeves said. "And maybe it's a good, better, best type of situation where we can say, what do we want Palafox to be?"

The project arose out of the completion of Florida Power and Light's $86 million upgrade to downtown Pensacola's power grid that was completed in 2022. As part of that project, FPL was set to repave Palafox Street in 2023.

Reeves said when he took office in 2022, he started talks with FPL for the city to work to improve Palafox Street in what he called a "once-in-a-generation opportunity."

"This is our iconic street that we brag about that was considered one of the 10 greatest main streets in the United States," Reeves said. "Let's make sure that we're taking a good look at this when we're going to go in and do millions of dollars of work, even if it's FPL doing it."

Unrelated to the city's discussion, the repaving project was among several projects that FPL delayed until 2024, according to Reeves.

"As the world turned, it was, I think, helpful," Reeves said. "It allowed us to get our feet under us and not have to move too quickly into how we want to potentially reimagine Palafox."

Reeves didn't provide much detail Tuesday about the plans, but he mentioned reconfiguring parking spaces on the street or adding more sidewalk space.

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He said he doesn't expect all downtown business owners to agree with the plans.

"I can bring 10 downtown business owners in here, and five of them will like one (plan), and five will like the other," Reeves said. "That's part of this job, and I appreciate very much our downtown business owners' investment in the city. I used to be one of those, and I know what it takes. And how it is the lifeblood of your family, of many families that work at these small businesses. So, I don't mean that in jest. I mean that it's just a difficult situation to navigate and to make everybody happy. And I don't think that we will."

Reeves said he hopes that renderings of the different ideas of what the changes to Palafox could be will be presented to the public this summer along with the all-important cost estimates.

"We can design something really nice," Reeves said. "We've got to figure out a way to pay for it."

Reeves said along with FPL paying for the repaving of the street, parking revenue funding was earmarked in the city's annual budget for the project.

"These are the types of projects that it's the city's obligation to share with the residents what they get for their (parking) money, for their user fee," Reeves said. "And this is a perfect example of that."

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Palafox Street could be reimagined as part of FPL repaving project