Workshop to hammer out beach-to-sound walkway idea

Saturday, November 05, 2011

by Darlene Hammond

From the Pensacola News Journal on November 2, 2011

Five of the six Santa Rosa Island Authority board members on Wednesday agreed to spend an additional $60,000 to move its master land plan another notch along the path from concept to shovels in the dirt.

The additional money will be used to bring EDSA, the Fort Lauderdale firm that hammered out the $330,000 conceptual plan in late 2009, back to Pensacola for a two-day workshop with Escambia County's engineering firm Baskerville-Donovan.

The main reason for the workshop is to iron out engineering issues in the key component of the master plan: creating a beach-to-sound walkway that separates pedestrians from traffic by either building a walkway under or over the main road, said Freddy Donovan, a principal in the engineering firm.

"This is very typical for this type of situation," Donovan said of this juncture of engineering the concepts in the plan. "This task provides for sharing information back and forth. What were they thinking about? What are we thinking about? Why can't we make this work?"

The Island Authority's master land steering committee asked for the meeting because Baskerville-Donovan said some of the EDSA's ideas were not feasible.

The firms are expected to meet late in December or early January. After that, a joint meeting of the Island Authority and Board of County Commission will be scheduled for final input on the plan. Once a final plan is OK'd, site preparation on the core area of Pensacola Beach could begin in February, with the major construction slated for the fall and winter season of 2012-13.