Bluffline, Inc. will host open house from 5 to 6:30 p.m. July 30 at Lexington Terrace Community Center
PENSACOLA, Fla. (July 22, 2024) — An ambitious, grassroots effort to build a public greenway connecting east and west Pensacola is seeking the community’s input to help design the project’s initial phase. The nonprofit spearheading the project, Bluffline, Inc., will host an open house from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on July 30 at the Lexington Terrace Community Center, in West Pensacola.
The Bluffline — as the project is known — would knit together existing public parks via neglected rail and utility rights of way to create one continuous, multi-use path stretching from the University of West Florida to “Jackson Lakes,” nearly 70 acres of county-owned land located between Navy Boulevard and Jackson Street that are home to three enormous, freshwater lakes.
The first phase of the Bluffline would focus on the western end of this route and would include constructing a new public park at the lakes and connecting this park to surrounding schools, neighborhoods and healthcare facilities to the east via a mile-long greenway corridor within the Florida Power & Light rights of way.
Bluffline, Inc. was selected to participate in a federal technical assistance program earlier this year, which paired them with New Orleans landscape architects Spackman Mossop Michaels to apply for $10 to $20 million in federal funding through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Community Change Grant Program. Were they to receive the funding, the project would be completed by 2028 at no cost to the county.
Bluffline, Inc. is working closely with Escambia County to develop an interim partnership agreement, which will be crucial for applying for federal funding. A formal agreement is expected to be presented to the county commissioners for a vote in the next several weeks.
Jarah Jacquay, co-founder and president of Bluffline, Inc., said the project would fulfill a decades-old vision of giving the public access to the lakes, while also addressing issues of blight and transportation safety that were identified as threats to the county’s cybersecurity mission in a military study published earlier this year.
“West Pensacola is the cradle of Naval Aviation and the nerve-center of our nation’s cyber defense capabilities,” Jacquay said, “but we haven’t always treated it that way.”
He noted that Warrington and Brownsville struggle with low educational attainment, high poverty and unemployment rates, legacy pollution, chronic disease and low life expectancy.
“We envision the Bluffline being a world-class amenity that will catalyze a new era of safety and prosperity for these neighborhoods,” he said.
Though the Bluffline has gained public traction only recently, it builds on ideas that have been circulating for decades. This week’s development is the result of years of patient lobbying by the Bluffline, county officials and others in the community.
The idea of converting Jackson Lakes to a park has been discussed since at least the early 2000’s, when the county purchased the surrounding property. This vision is now a centerpiece of the Warrington Community Redevelopment Area Plan, which outlines the kinds of projects to be funded with revenue from the Warrington CRA, expected to be renewed for another 30 years this September.
Similarly, the idea of a greenway within the FPL rights of way goes back to the early RESTORE Act Committee hearings, when a similar project was proposed but failed to receive public funding. Connecting Jackson Lakes to surrounding neighborhoods via a multi-use path was also one of the recommendations of the Reimagine Jackson Street Initiative, a joint city-county effort to plan for the future of the Jackson Street corridor.
These ideas have gained renewed momentum in recent years, thanks to the public’s growing desire for healthy, active transportation options and the coincident growth in traffic-related injuries and fatalities on high-speed, car-dominated roadways.
Jacquay said it was important for people to show up to next week’s meeting.
“The Bluffline is a grassroots initiative,” he said, “and we want to ensure that it reflects the hopes and desires of as diverse a cross-section of our neighbors as possible. If you want to help unite our city’s neighborhoods around a shared vision for a safer, healthier, more sustainable and more equitable future, we want you involved.”
Bluffline, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization advancing a 20-mile multimodal corridor connecting the University of West Florida to Naval Air Station Pensacola. As the Corridor Management Entity for the Pensacola Scenic Bluffs Scenic Highway, the Bluffline is building safe, connected infrastructure for walking, cycling, and water transit that will reconnect communities to Pensacola's waterfront.