County, Navarre push forward with new Town Center
BY FRANKLIN HAYES Gulf Breeze News franklin@gulfbreezenews.com

Navarre residents, with the support of Santa Rosa County Commissioners, are pushing to revitalize sections of Navarre with the creation of special districts labeled the Navarre Town Center and the Heart of Navarre District. Both of these plans were initiated in spring of 2004 at a public workshop where residents expressed a specific need to instill a sense of pride in the aesthetic beauty of their community.

The resulting plan and districts, largely known as the Navarre Town Center Plan, are an accumulation of new building codes, architectural guidelines and infrastructure improvements.

Many changes await the community of Navarre in the future as Santa Rosa County prepares for higher population and future storms.

Infrastructure improvements are said to include local transportation improvements, sewer and water improvements, underground utilities and additional streetlights. Of all the improvements mentioned, the most ambitious recommendation made by the plan is to incorporate all of the area’s utilities underground, a move several nearby municipalities have rejected due to cost. According to the area’s County Commissioner Gordon Goodin, the residents of the town center will incur the costs of the utility burial, but it is a trade off that is well worth the cost. While Goodin said the main reason for this move was aesthetics, the people will benefit from the buried resources during storm season. Underground facilities are much less likely to be taken out by a hurricane, which can take several weeks to repair. Funding for the improvements will come from diverse sources. The county plans to incorporate their talented grant writers to assist in the allocation of funds, and will also employ revenue from special assessments to property owners, private funding, impact fees, private public partnerships and the enactment of a tourist development or bed tax.

"It is a wonderful opportunity to push forward this kind of improvement with a public-private partnership as there are a few individual major land owners and only a few small property owners involved and they are very much in agreement," Goodin said. "We are definitely working on some grants, and economic development incentives and assistance, but the majority of the funding will come from special assessments and the county bond issue."

From a zoning and planning standpoint, the plan calls for more restricted land use, architectural review for proper design and color, more stringent sign regulations and incentives and increased requirements for landscaping.

A recommendation that caused some controversy was the proposal to allow 100-foot buildings along some waterfront sections of Highway 98. Residents were concerned that the tall buildings would give the area an overdeveloped look, taking away from the scenic beauty of the gulf. Adjustments in the new building code were made, making the water more visible from the roadway, by leaving more space between the buildings, which will offer greater water views. The zoning was changed from high-density multi-family to neighborhood commercial to maximize the benefit to the entire district as well.

“The way the code was written before, someone could basically build a solid wall all the way across the property. Now, there is a trade off. With a building that is 100 feet tall, there are limitations on how far they have to be from their property line, allowing people to still be able to see the water from the road,” Commissioner Goodin said.

Other additions to the building code place many new requirements on building owners in an effort to capture a more historical setting. There will be no metal, vinyl, aluminum siding or exposed cinder block allowed as construction materials inside the town center. Architects will also be limited to a few styles including Neoclassical, Caribbean Vernacular, Cracker, Georgian, French Colonial, Bungalow, Queen Anne and Masonry Vernacular building styles. No bright neon colors will be permitted on any building.

"The process of creating these districts came from two meetings a week for six months of several committees," Goodin explains. "Community meetings which gathered the community input and received only guidance from county staff. The residents and committee members came up with these architectural standards, and they are tough."

The creation of the attractive, cohesive, walkable districts is already gathering interest from nationally known, high profile restaurants and stores, according to committee members.

"The Navarre Town Center district will spread east of Highway 87 north of Hwy. 98 up to the Library," Goodin explains, "and the Heart of Navarre will be on Williams Creek parallel to Hwy. 98 along both sides of Hwy 98."