Palmetto Community Redevelopment Agency sets goals for the next five years
PALMETTO -- On Monday, the Palmetto Community Redevelopment Agency will submit an updated five-year plan, its second under Director Jeff Burton, who inherited an embattled agency in disarray.
Burton assumed the top position in 2010 and said it took a full year to delve into everything the agency had been doing wrong before writing its first five-year plan in 2011.
Since then, however, it has been five years of celebrated successes such as:
Enticing It Works! Global to move its headquarters into a dilapidated waterfront building.
CRA renovated its Riverside Park West boat ramp and docks with more improvements coming in soon in the form of a concessionaire, bait shop and deck overlooking the Manatee River.
Sutton Park improvements made it a key destination for visitors and event organizers.
The Fifth Street improvement project, considered a model for upcoming projects, begins in 2016 and will change the landscape of the city's historic district.
Burton predicts the next five years will be no different.
"When we had to rewrite the CRA plan, which hadn't been changed since 1993, we did it through self-inspection," said Burton. "We had to figure out where we are and what we are doing and decided the CRA didn't need to be tweaked. It needed to be rebooted and start from scratch."
Burton said no law requires a CRA plan to be updated, but the law says you can only do things in the plan, "which is why we decided to do ours every five years."
Burton said a CRA plan is broken down into public improvements, economic development and some internal accountability to make sure the CRA never went down the road it did before.
"But we also included that there is a high level of training involved, which is why our mayor is CRA certified, one of our commissioners is certified and there are two other commissioners and key city staff members that are taking their certification classes," he said.
Burton said the more knowledge everyone has, the better the process and he looks forward to what the CRA can do under those circumstances in its next five years.
"The new plan takes things a step further," he said. "Some will be a carryover with continued redevelopment of Sutton Park to include a full walkway around the park. The other is seeing the Old Main Street Complete Street Project through to 2021, and we to continue to work hard on that."
Another possible highlight in the next five years is the proposed hotel at the Bradenton Area Convention Center. Manatee County pushed the project last year and Burton said a letter to negotiate to hotel developers has been released.
"We should get the results of the ITN soon and we're pretty excited about that," he said. "We've had a number of nibbles and it's an interesting project because you have a private hotel on public property with public facilities so we've never had that property on our tax rolls. But we will when the hotel is built and 95 percent of that tax value will come back to the CRA. That's how we pay our CRA incentives so we're excited about that project helping us to attract even more projects."
Affordable housing is a new goal for the CRA plan. Burton said he would like to see the CRA involved with upgrading blighted neighborhoods and turning them into housing for seniors and millennials.
"Palmetto needs to do something in that direction," said Burton. "And there are ways to use creative financing through state housing and work with the Palmetto Housing Authority to begin changing some neighborhoods. It's community redevelopment. It's an area that the CRA needs to get more involved with."
Mark Young, Herald urban affairs reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7041 or follow him on Twitter@urbanmark2014.
This story was originally published November 1, 2015 at 5:59 PM with the headline "Palmetto Community Redevelopment Agency sets goals for the next five years ."