Pensacola celebrated a public building boom 40 years ago. We’re paying the price today.

In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the Pensacola city government found itself flush with cash and undertook a building boom unique in the city's modern history – the initiative was dubbed "Direction '85," named after the year when most of the projects such as Bay Bluffs Park, Plaza Ferdinand and City Hall would open to the public.

But after the pomp and circumstance of the many shiny new buildings and public amenities wore off, little to no maintenance followed and the inevitable decay took its toll.

Fast forward to today, and the city is grappling with how to deal with years of that deferred maintenance on its infrastructure, including many of those 40-year-old projects. Simultaneously, the city is also in the process of another round of building while trying not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

City Hall, Pensacola Police Department headquarters, Plaza Ferdinand, the Jefferson Street Parking Garage, the Cecil T. Hunter Pool, Bay Bluffs Park, the old Pitt Slip Marina, a large portion of Spanish Trail, the Bayou Texar boat ramp, and several city sports fields were built with $18 million as part of Direction '85.

The $18 million spent by 1985 is the equivalent of more than $50 million in 2024.

Bay Bluffs Park: Pensacola may have found the funds to reopen Bay Bluffs Park, but there's a catch ...

Deferred maintenance haunts city

The potential danger of falling into a maintenance trap was noted at the time. A 1985 News Journal article about the program noted the increase in the demand for the Parks and Recreation Department, then known as the Leisure Services Department, which it was operating with the same number of employees as it did in 1959.

"Direction '85 has stretched me so thin now I have to be a lot more overbearing on my staff than I would like to be just to keep my head above water," the long-time parks Director William "Red" Vickery said in 1985.

Deferred maintenance on many of those projects came to a head in the early months of new Mayor D.C. Reeves administration, and he's been forced to confront the issue, sometimes resulting in anger from the public over losing beloved amenities.

"It's not a fun position to be in," Reeves said. "I don't want to tell our citizens that Bay Bluffs Park is closed. I certainly don't want to knock down buildings that once had value that have been condemned."

Reeves said it's not a single mayor or city council that's caused the problem, but a culture of not prioritizing maintenance. When the city has surplus funds, Reeves said, it's easier for a city leader to be focused on building a new thing rather than taking care of what it already has.

"We've gone with the easier thing, we've gone with the new thing, and we've gone with doing nothing when it's time to step up," Reeves said.

And that has to stop.

Direction '85 building boom changed course of city

The Direction '85 program was conceived by the former city manager Steve Garman, who put together the plan after he became city manager in 1978 when he was 37.

Garman restructured city finances, cutting city staff from about 900 employees to 700 and taking the city from running a $1.3 million deficit in the late 1970s to running surpluses in the 1980s. The biggest change was selling the city's sewer system along with its sewer debt to the newly created Emerald Coast Utilities Authority in exchange for a $20 million payment.

"If you want to walk from the port to the city limits line, there is not a block not affected by his leadership," City Councilman Cecil Jones told the News Journal in 1985 on the impact of Garman's tenure as city manager and his Direction '85 plan.

Garman, who died in 2019, told the Studer Community Institute in 2014 that Direction '85 changed the course of the city.

"It gave the city enough income to look at a pretty massive capital improvement program, more massive, as it turned out than I had envisioned. And interestingly enough, a lot of what we did really didn't cost that much. There was a lot of bang for the buck."

While Direction '85 was underway, newspaper accounts note that at the time, Garman was also heavily involved in facilitating non-city projects such as the county's construction of the Pensacola Bay Center, the Port Royal development, the Harbourview on the Bay office building on the city's waterfront, and the Grand Hotel on Gregory Street.

"The bottom line is if the city government isn't investing in itself, nothing is going to happen," Garman said in 2014. "I've made this point over and over. But having said that, most of the positive results of Direction '85 came from the private sector that became engaged and excited about the city's potential and future."

40 years later projects fall apart

One of the most popular Direction '85 projects was the creation of the Bay Bluffs Park and boardwalk. In dozens of articles written about the projects over the early 1980s, the Bay Bluffs was usually the first to be mentioned.

By 2023, the boardwalk was in such bad shape from years of poor maintenance and hasty repairs that the city officially said it was off-limits. The closure of the beloved park was the first public backlash to any decision from the Reeves administration.

The city is now working to reopen the park, though it may look different from before. The Florida Legislature approved a $2.2 million appropriation to aide funding the demolition of the boardwalk and restoring public access likely through the creation of nature trails.

Pensacola's modern City Hall was one of the most expensive projects of the program. The building serves as the headquarters of the city administration and the main meeting place for the city government. The building took a beating from Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and has received updates and changes over the years.

However, despite its location as the main city building, the city's "culture" of deferring maintenance caught up with it. The city had a lifeline thanks to funds from the federal government's pandemic response, which provided funds for local governments to update their buildings.

Despite that, an assessment conducted last year showed that those pandemic funds would not be enough to address the building's issues and that City Hall needed $536,000 worth of emergency repairs.

In 2022, the Cecil T. Hunter pool building was in such bad shape that the city opted to tear down the 1980s building and build a brand new structure.

Making maintenance a priority

Like in the early 1980s, the city government was overseen by someone who entered office in their later 30s, and the city was in the middle of another building boom. Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves was 38 when he was elected.

The first phase of Bruce Beach Park is likely to open soon while phase two is under construction, and the planning phases of the hashtag project that will improve the pedestrian and bike connections around the intersections of Main Street with Palafox and Jefferson Streets are still moving forward. Both were funded by an $18 million bond refinancing in 2020. Bruce Beach will have a specific plan to maintain the infrastructure for years to come, while projects such as the hashtag will be included in a new line item in the city budget for maintenance projects for each city department.

The city is also in the process of accepting more than $72 million in grants awarded in the last year and half, including $25.1 million for design and construction of the Hollice T. Williams Park greenway under Interstate 110 and $15 million to construct a headquarters building for the American Magic sailing team at the Port of Pensacola.

Reeves said he is beginning the process of changing the culture to think about maintenance. He's set up a new city fleet and facilities maintenance department and hired Russell Sweat as its new director, he wants maintenance built into the city budget and he's also asked for a deferred maintenance plan to be drawn up for the city's Park and Recreation Department.

"As I've come into this office in 16 months, we've just taken things as they come, as they hit us in the face," Reeves said. "We've taken Bay Bluffs Park. We've taken Malcolm Yonge. We're taking on Cobb Center right now. They're so blatant in their need or that we've lost them all together that we haven't had a chance to come up for air."

The condition assessment of the city parks will help the city prioritize what needs to be fixed first and how much funding it will take, Reeves said.

"It gives us that roadmap that we don't have right now," Reeves said. "The only roadmap we have is which item is falling apart that we've got to go close. And that's not a roadmap that's sustainable, long term."

Reeves said more than the funding, the bigger change he hopes to implement is a change in the culture of how the city looks at its assets so that 40 years from now, the city is in better shape than it is today.

"If the work we're doing today will continue to be valued and resonate 40 years from now, it's not about the funding that will get us there, it's about setting the culture, of taking care of the things that we own," Reeves said.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola grapples with the legacy of its 1980s building boom