Pensacola wowed Strongest Town voters with its remarkable turnaround in the years preceding its contest win. The city is growing in population, dramatically expanding its local economy and tax base, and doing so largely by focusing on the city’s heart and soul: its historic downtown, which was first built in the 18th century. Pensacola understands that mixed-use, walkable development is a gold mine for cities, and it has encouraged the rehabilitation of vacant sites and amended its codes to promote pedestrian-friendly design, resulting in a lively downtown that is once again the pride of the Florida Panhandle. Strong Towns documented four categories in which Pensacola was addressing its challenges and charting its future.
Pensacola is a great place to start a business. Local entrepreneurs can take advantage of a wealth of resources, including business incubators, networking, and leadership training events. Pensacola gets the value of home-grown economic development, a more resilient and powerful long-term strategy for growth than trying to lure jobs from outside.
While presenting the award to the city’s representatives, Chuck Marohn told them,“You’re actually at a point where it’s not just the region that is looking at you; it’s the state, it’s the country, and, to some extent, it’s the world that’s looking at you. People are getting lessons from Pensacola today.
Pensacola has a 400-year history that includes rule by several colonial powers, and it has the historic downtown charm to show for it. But it’s not riding on that legacy: Pensacola has taken concrete steps to revitalize its downtown in recent years, luring in new businesses and events, and making the physical changes necessary to create a place where people want to stroll and linger. For example, the city improved the walkability of its downtown streets by requiring that parking lots be hidden behind buildings. They get that people are the indicator species of a strong town.
Pensacola is growing, but it’s doing a lot of it through redevelopment in the city’s core neighborhoods, where there is already infrastructure and a community in place. The city’s tax base rose 36% in the five years preceding its contest win, with new homes and businesses to show for it. Vacant lots have been filled in. Leaders in Pensacola understand that what is needed to achieve financial resilience is for communities to thicken up, not spread out.
Perhaps the thing that bodes most well for Pensacola’s future is its active citizens, business leaders, and philanthropic groups who are determined to create an amazing place, and who work together to find opportunities to move toward that goal. Just one example: a waterfront revitalization and resilience plan developed by private citizens that emerged out of discussions at CivicCon, and was later presented to the City Council.