After 10 days, 14 public meetings, dozens of small-group and individual conversations and a massive online engagement effort, the OLF-8 Master Plan Design Team will make their final virtual presentation tonight at 6 p.m.
The team will present updated designs and analysis of four unique scenario concepts for the 540-acre site in Beulah. Each concept, if fully realized, will create different levels of job creation, housing, retail and community space and revenue to the county.
Marina Khoury of DPZ CoDesign, the lead design firm on the project, says those preliminary impacts will be presented tonight, and will be refined over the course of the next month.
“At tonight’s presentation, we hope you will see just what is possible for not only Beulah, but for Escambia County as a whole,” Khoury said. “We have an opportunity, because of the sheer size of this site, to create a resilient place where employers will want to locate their businesses and where the residents of Escambia County will want to spend their time. This is how we make sure that OLF-8 will continue to be an asset to your local economy, to the taxpayers, and to the community for decades to come,” she continued.
The meeting agenda will include a brief summary of the feedback collected so far, updates made to the master plan scenarios since last week, and a round-robin discussion with the planning team members on the advantages and disadvantages of each plan.
Commissioner Jeff Bergosh, who represents the Beulah area and the OLF-8 site, said he hoped the planning effort would yield a roadmap for the county to maximize the potential to create jobs on the site.
“As I’ve said from the beginning, this is a tremendous opportunity to create jobs and economic benefit not just for Beulah, but for the entire county. I’m looking forward to seeing the ideas presented by the DPZ team that can help us attract new jobs to this area, and provide some of the retail and service amenities that the Beulah area needs,” said Bergosh.
The presentation will begin at 6 p.m., and the virtual doors will open at 5:30 p.m. for a recap of the charette and some opportunity for questions and answers with the team. Click here to join the presentation - no registration needed. It will also be livestreamed on the MyOLF8 Facebook page. For more information, visit MyOLF8.com.
