Green Cove Springs aims for pedestrian-friendly, vibrant downtown with more parking

The Green Cove Springs’ planning and zoning board was scheduled to review and approve a draft of the city’s development plan during its Nov. 29 meeting.

The city and Clay County began forming a community redevelopment agency for the city earlier this year.

The draft plan states that the agency’s objective is to revitalize slum and blighted areas by fostering new development, providing necessary infrastructure, creating job opportunities, and focusing public investment within the community redevelopment area to stimulate additional private investment.

The agency’s projects will be financed through tax increment financing, under which property values within the agency’s jurisdiction would be frozen on Jan. 1, 2023.  City and county taxes resulting from any increases in the values of those properties above the frozen amount would then be used by the CRA.

The city’s revitalization plan states that between $19 million and $36 million could be raised with tax increment financing for the agency.

The draft development plan lists 10 objectives. They are -1-, create a multimodal, pedestrian-friendly transportation system; -2- create a vibrant downtown area with a mixed-use development pattern; -3- increase downtown parking; -4- revitalize housing; -5- establish a creative, equitable, efficient and practical funding and financing mechanism; -6- ensure the redevelopment area is safe and clean; -7- deliver additional infrastructure improvements or services within the redevelopment area if those improvements enhance the quality or attractiveness of the redevelopment area; -8- preserve historic facilities within the area; -9- provide support, including funding for the construction and operation of facilities for parks and public spaces that will draw visitors to the CRA district while simultaneously building a sense of place in the downtown area and -10- properly administering the redevelopment agency and area.

The plan states that the final steps to create the agency may be completed as early as mid-January.

The plan describes the city’s redevelopment area as the blocks surrounding Orange and Palmetto Avenues, and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.