The Rubik's Cube of Aragon drainage
- October 13, 2014
- / Shannon Nickinson
- / training-development
At first, David Bailey was trying to solve the mystery of the dying live oaks.
Back in 2005, Bailey, who was then director of Pensacola’s Community Redevelopment Agency, talked to the Aragon Neighborhood Association. Residents of what was then the new, upscale urban infill housing project had concerns that the live oaks planted in the neighborhood wouldn’t survive.
“One thing that live oaks do not like is soil that stays wet all the time,” says Bailey, now the city administrator in Rosemary Beach.
It is no secret that Aragon is low-lying and prone to flooding. From the time it was subsidized housing, the area flooded in rain events. But the issues with groundwater weren’t quite so evident, Bailer says.
“The historical maps and modern street grid don’t exactly line up, but… you can see the historic district was built on the high ground, then higher ground behind it was developed as East and North Hill, then people said we have this land between the two, let’s develop that.”
The limits of development in downtown Pensacola have often been tied to water. The April rainstorm was not the first time those limits were made clear, but that storm did draw some heavyweight players into the discussion.
Ken Ford, director of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, tabled the $8 million expansion of his research facility after the storm. Ford has said he wasn’t comfortable with the project moving forward until he felt the city had a substantive plan in place to deal with downtown flooding.
[caption id="attachment_5949" align="alignright" width="300"]
Architect David Waggoner spoke this spring at the Florida Institute For Human and Machine Cognition.[/caption]
Ford and others worked to bring to Pensacola David Waggoner, an architect of the New Orleans Water Management Plan, which was put in place after Hurricane Katrina to guide development in the Crescent City and her surroundings.
Waggoner shared his vision of water management, which includes a heavy dose of treating water — as much as possible — where it falls, taking volume out of the system upstream and incorporating water into design as opposed to trying to fight Mother Nature with concrete.
Had that approach been at the top of people’s minds for the 2005 Aragon project, it might have looked different, Bailey said.
“If we were to do it today, we might open it up and make it pretty and do a canal,” Bailey said. “We did it the 1950s way. We put perforated pipe in the ground and we directed the water where we wanted it to go.”
City of Pensacola officials have commissioned forensic engineering studies of four drainage basins after the 2014 storm. Three of those studies cover downtown.
The Aragon basin study is done; the Longhollow basin and the downtown area studies should be made public this fall, city officials say.
The Aragon basin study, conducted by Atkins, offers four alternatives to reduce flood potential in the neighborhood. The least expensive is $2 million; the most expensive $13.19 million and includes a pumping station.
The option likely to provide the most substantial relief, according to Atkins, is tagged at $7.15 million and involves constructing new outfalls under Cevallos Street to the bay, as well as two new box culverts under Romana Street from Florida Blanca to Cevallos, where a third 5-by-3 concrete box culvert would be added.
In 2007, Hatch Mott McDonald issued a final report on the 2005 improvements in Aragon. It notes that the pumping station, originally priced at $2.1 million, was deemed too expensive and costly to move forward with.
[caption id="attachment_5950" align="alignright" width="282"]
A map of Cadet Springs in historic downtown Pensacola.[/caption]
It also includes a map of Pensacola circa 1778, that shows Cadets Spring, a natural feature that once ran right through the Aragon neighborhood.
In the report, that map is described as “newly discovered.”
Bailey says it wasn’t until he happened to talk with Dr. Elizabeth Benchley at the University of West Florida about the issue that the link between old and new was made.
“If you overlay that map over the street grid, you see the creek right through there,” he says. City staff had not done that before, he says.
“I know that sounds crazy. It wasn’t obvious at the time,” Bailey says.
Dealing with the every day problem
If the first problem to be tackled was the issue of groundwater drainage, the second was dealing with rainwater that couldn’t get out to Pensacola Bay fast enough.
The developer of Aragon built new piping for the development, but there was no new piping from the development to the bay.
That section of pipe, Bailey says, was an 1890’s era timber and brick culvert. When the city tore it up they found it was blocked and full of natural debris and human refuse.
That was replaced with two modern pipes, because one big pipe would be too low in the ground to drain. The project also included Tide Flex valves to keep the bay from surging back into pipes during storms.
“Aragon is so low in relation to the bay, and stormwater pipes drain by gravity,” Bailey says.
That dealt with the everyday problem, Bailey says.
“None of the other options would work as well if we didn’t do this,” he said.
By the time the pumping station was discussed in 2009, the price tag had risen to $4 million according to news reports.
How Aragon tied to Hawkshaw
Bailey’s time as CRA director from 2003-2007 was a busy one. Aragon was not the only thing on the CRA’s plate.
Finishing Palafox Pier, trying to get the Community Maritime Park project on its legs, streetscape projects in Old East Hill and North Hill all were on the table as well.
As Aragon filled in, a plan coalesced around the Hawkshaw site across Ninth Avenue from Aragon near the Gulf Power building.
[caption id="attachment_5952" align="alignright" width="300"]
The view of the Hawkshaw property looked toward the Gulf Power building.[/caption]
“The CRA had one leftover block next to Gulf Power immediately north of Admiral Mason Park,” Bailey says. “We wanted to develop that...to create a transition between Aragon and Gulf Power, and we thought the best land use would be office and some retail.”
Tad Ihns of Avalex Technologies wanted to build a new headquarters for his company, which he had moved from Atlanta to Pensacola in 2001.
Avalex designs digital mapping systems and rugged displays for military and law enforcement customers in the U.S. and abroad. It seemed that putting a local employer in a high-visibility location like Hawkshaw was a good fit.
“Avalex moved our company from Atlanta to Pensacola with the hopes for an opportunity such as this to continue to grow the ‘high tech’ presence, increase high wage jobs and provide great opportunities for young ‘knowledge workers’ to stay in Pensacola,” Ihns wrote in the company’s June 5, 2006, response to the RFP.
Avalex’s proposal for developing on the Hawkshaw site included A $1.17 million offer for the land. It allowed Avalex, in partnership with real estate developer Opus South Construction, to begin building “immediately” and not wait for tenants to be found because the principal tenant was the proposer of the project. It included space for retail, restaurant and additional offices. It did not include urban apartment-style housing.
“In reviewing the slowdown in residential condominium sales in the area and current nationwide multifamily trends, our direction is to focus on retail, office and restaurant development; thereby positioning this project to immediately achieve success,” the Avalex proposal reads.
But when the CRA met on Aug. 31, 2006, to rank proposals for Hawkshaw, the Avalex project finished third to Hawkshaw Eastside (first place with an purchase offer of $1.4 million) and Technology Bay at Hawkshaw (second), which both included apartments.
In 2007, Technology Bay at Hawkshaw, proposed by Moulton Properties and architect Miller Caldwell and Hawkshaw Eastside, proposed by Paul Snider, contractors Jim Cronley and Bill Whitesell, and developer Jim Reeves, combined into Hawkshaw East.
In 2008, the city was informed that the developers would not close on the deal and it was scuttled.
The city recently entertained offers for the Hawkshaw property. City Council rejected a $775,000 offer to put a development that mixed apartments, townhomes and 4,000 of commercial or retail space.
A legacy of priorities
Hawkshaw as an idea bubbled up in 2005 and gained steam in 2006, about the same time Bailey says the CRA applied for a FEMA grant that could have helped fund construction of a pumping station in Aragon.
“We scored higher than the project to improve the hurricane evacuation route from U.S. 29 to Interstate 65, but we ended up having to give it to the highway,” Bailey says. “Even though it didn’t score as high, the thought was the highway impacted more people. One neighborhood in downtown compared to life and limb or a storm evacuation route.”
The idea that the Hawkshaw project was on the horizon, also meant a possibility remained of getting additional drainage improvements, including the pumping station, funded without the FEMA grant.
So Bailey says that $3 million was given toward the effort of widening the two-laned Alabama 113 into a four-lane hurricane evacuation route north to connect with Interstate 65.
Because, Bailey says the thought was, “How would we come up with the money to make the connector happen?”
One part of Hawkshaw that did survive to the light of day was the vision of a wetland park in the site that would become a focal point for the public.
[caption id="attachment_5953" align="alignright" width="300"]
Admiral Mason Park stormwater treatment pond[/caption]
Admiral Mason Park became such a “wet park” that serves as a stormwater treatment pond. It is considered a model of how to make stormwater treatment attractive. Mayor Ashton Hayward has mentioned it as the inspiration for a planned stormwater project at Corrine Jones Park on Government Street that is being funded with a $2.1 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. It will include walking trails, benches, fountains, aquatic plants, bicycle rack, lighting and other amenities.
“(Admiral Mason Park) is the only thing that happened because of Hawkshaw, that’s where it came from,” Bailey says. “The push to build it came from the (urban planner Ray) Gindroz plan.
“A lot of the success you see now started with the Gindroz plan in 2004 and I’d hate to see that evaporate. The fact that we made it through the 2008 recession with that momentum is remarkable. I think the Waggonner way of thinking about water is the way to keep the momentum going.”
Architect David Waggoner spoke this spring at the Florida Institute For Human and Machine Cognition.[/caption]
Ford and others worked to bring to Pensacola David Waggoner, an architect of the New Orleans Water Management Plan, which was put in place after Hurricane Katrina to guide development in the Crescent City and her surroundings.
Waggoner shared his vision of water management, which includes a heavy dose of treating water — as much as possible — where it falls, taking volume out of the system upstream and incorporating water into design as opposed to trying to fight Mother Nature with concrete.
Had that approach been at the top of people’s minds for the 2005 Aragon project, it might have looked different, Bailey said.
“If we were to do it today, we might open it up and make it pretty and do a canal,” Bailey said. “We did it the 1950s way. We put perforated pipe in the ground and we directed the water where we wanted it to go.”
City of Pensacola officials have commissioned forensic engineering studies of four drainage basins after the 2014 storm. Three of those studies cover downtown.
The Aragon basin study is done; the Longhollow basin and the downtown area studies should be made public this fall, city officials say.
The Aragon basin study, conducted by Atkins, offers four alternatives to reduce flood potential in the neighborhood. The least expensive is $2 million; the most expensive $13.19 million and includes a pumping station.
The option likely to provide the most substantial relief, according to Atkins, is tagged at $7.15 million and involves constructing new outfalls under Cevallos Street to the bay, as well as two new box culverts under Romana Street from Florida Blanca to Cevallos, where a third 5-by-3 concrete box culvert would be added.
In 2007, Hatch Mott McDonald issued a final report on the 2005 improvements in Aragon. It notes that the pumping station, originally priced at $2.1 million, was deemed too expensive and costly to move forward with.
[caption id="attachment_5950" align="alignright" width="282"]
A map of Cadet Springs in historic downtown Pensacola.[/caption]
It also includes a map of Pensacola circa 1778, that shows Cadets Spring, a natural feature that once ran right through the Aragon neighborhood.
In the report, that map is described as “newly discovered.”
Bailey says it wasn’t until he happened to talk with Dr. Elizabeth Benchley at the University of West Florida about the issue that the link between old and new was made.
“If you overlay that map over the street grid, you see the creek right through there,” he says. City staff had not done that before, he says.
“I know that sounds crazy. It wasn’t obvious at the time,” Bailey says.
Dealing with the every day problem
If the first problem to be tackled was the issue of groundwater drainage, the second was dealing with rainwater that couldn’t get out to Pensacola Bay fast enough.
The developer of Aragon built new piping for the development, but there was no new piping from the development to the bay.
That section of pipe, Bailey says, was an 1890’s era timber and brick culvert. When the city tore it up they found it was blocked and full of natural debris and human refuse.
That was replaced with two modern pipes, because one big pipe would be too low in the ground to drain. The project also included Tide Flex valves to keep the bay from surging back into pipes during storms.
“Aragon is so low in relation to the bay, and stormwater pipes drain by gravity,” Bailey says.
That dealt with the everyday problem, Bailey says.
“None of the other options would work as well if we didn’t do this,” he said.
By the time the pumping station was discussed in 2009, the price tag had risen to $4 million according to news reports.
How Aragon tied to Hawkshaw
Bailey’s time as CRA director from 2003-2007 was a busy one. Aragon was not the only thing on the CRA’s plate.
Finishing Palafox Pier, trying to get the Community Maritime Park project on its legs, streetscape projects in Old East Hill and North Hill all were on the table as well.
As Aragon filled in, a plan coalesced around the Hawkshaw site across Ninth Avenue from Aragon near the Gulf Power building.
[caption id="attachment_5952" align="alignright" width="300"]
The view of the Hawkshaw property looked toward the Gulf Power building.[/caption]
“The CRA had one leftover block next to Gulf Power immediately north of Admiral Mason Park,” Bailey says. “We wanted to develop that...to create a transition between Aragon and Gulf Power, and we thought the best land use would be office and some retail.”
Tad Ihns of Avalex Technologies wanted to build a new headquarters for his company, which he had moved from Atlanta to Pensacola in 2001.
Avalex designs digital mapping systems and rugged displays for military and law enforcement customers in the U.S. and abroad. It seemed that putting a local employer in a high-visibility location like Hawkshaw was a good fit.
“Avalex moved our company from Atlanta to Pensacola with the hopes for an opportunity such as this to continue to grow the ‘high tech’ presence, increase high wage jobs and provide great opportunities for young ‘knowledge workers’ to stay in Pensacola,” Ihns wrote in the company’s June 5, 2006, response to the RFP.
Avalex’s proposal for developing on the Hawkshaw site included A $1.17 million offer for the land. It allowed Avalex, in partnership with real estate developer Opus South Construction, to begin building “immediately” and not wait for tenants to be found because the principal tenant was the proposer of the project. It included space for retail, restaurant and additional offices. It did not include urban apartment-style housing.
“In reviewing the slowdown in residential condominium sales in the area and current nationwide multifamily trends, our direction is to focus on retail, office and restaurant development; thereby positioning this project to immediately achieve success,” the Avalex proposal reads.
But when the CRA met on Aug. 31, 2006, to rank proposals for Hawkshaw, the Avalex project finished third to Hawkshaw Eastside (first place with an purchase offer of $1.4 million) and Technology Bay at Hawkshaw (second), which both included apartments.
In 2007, Technology Bay at Hawkshaw, proposed by Moulton Properties and architect Miller Caldwell and Hawkshaw Eastside, proposed by Paul Snider, contractors Jim Cronley and Bill Whitesell, and developer Jim Reeves, combined into Hawkshaw East.
In 2008, the city was informed that the developers would not close on the deal and it was scuttled.
The city recently entertained offers for the Hawkshaw property. City Council rejected a $775,000 offer to put a development that mixed apartments, townhomes and 4,000 of commercial or retail space.
A legacy of priorities
Hawkshaw as an idea bubbled up in 2005 and gained steam in 2006, about the same time Bailey says the CRA applied for a FEMA grant that could have helped fund construction of a pumping station in Aragon.
“We scored higher than the project to improve the hurricane evacuation route from U.S. 29 to Interstate 65, but we ended up having to give it to the highway,” Bailey says. “Even though it didn’t score as high, the thought was the highway impacted more people. One neighborhood in downtown compared to life and limb or a storm evacuation route.”
The idea that the Hawkshaw project was on the horizon, also meant a possibility remained of getting additional drainage improvements, including the pumping station, funded without the FEMA grant.
So Bailey says that $3 million was given toward the effort of widening the two-laned Alabama 113 into a four-lane hurricane evacuation route north to connect with Interstate 65.
Because, Bailey says the thought was, “How would we come up with the money to make the connector happen?”
One part of Hawkshaw that did survive to the light of day was the vision of a wetland park in the site that would become a focal point for the public.
[caption id="attachment_5953" align="alignright" width="300"]
Admiral Mason Park stormwater treatment pond[/caption]
Admiral Mason Park became such a “wet park” that serves as a stormwater treatment pond. It is considered a model of how to make stormwater treatment attractive. Mayor Ashton Hayward has mentioned it as the inspiration for a planned stormwater project at Corrine Jones Park on Government Street that is being funded with a $2.1 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. It will include walking trails, benches, fountains, aquatic plants, bicycle rack, lighting and other amenities.
“(Admiral Mason Park) is the only thing that happened because of Hawkshaw, that’s where it came from,” Bailey says. “The push to build it came from the (urban planner Ray) Gindroz plan.
“A lot of the success you see now started with the Gindroz plan in 2004 and I’d hate to see that evaporate. The fact that we made it through the 2008 recession with that momentum is remarkable. I think the Waggonner way of thinking about water is the way to keep the momentum going.”
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