Keeping the State Downtown
Savills Study Occupational Services recently completed a study on behalf of our state’s Department of Management Services (DMS). The report is a full study of our state’s real estate portfolio in Leon County. It does all of the stuff that one would hope a study does: assessments of state properties and their facilities, optimization of state land/property use, and recommendations for what the state should do with their portfolio going forward. The report is thorough and offers reasonable suggestions that the state will likely incorporate in planning their footprint in Leon County and our city. There is one caveat- the suggested plans for consolidation of the state's workforce might do more to harm our city than help it.
The study recommends that the DMS sell off most of their aging real estate in downtown and move state workers to satellite office centers, one in Southwood, and one by I-10 and Capital Circle NW. This follows a consistent path that DMS has shown: build where it is cheapest to do so, and it seems that DMS makes these decisions before seeking input from our city. You can see that evidenced in past projects such as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Building, a perfect fit for our downtown corridor, and the 1st District Court of Appeals building, which would have been an architectural must-see for anyone who visits our city. I don’t take issue with older state buildings being sold to be repurposed or redeveloped. That idea presents a lot of economic opportunity downtown. I am, however, worried about our state workforce being relegated to the distant corners of our city.
Our main street is outdated. The city has been attempting to revitalize our downtown corridor for about half a century. Our story reflects a common theme across America. Cities needed growth, and developers met that demand by expanding outwards, giving birth to suburb developments and shopping malls. With the advent of these developments, people had fewer reasons to do things downtown.
Despite this, a band of restaurants, bars, and coffeeshops continue to operate in our downtown. In many ways, they are reliant on the foot traffic they get from being in close proximity to the state campus. If the state workforce moved elsewhere, these businesses would probably suffer as a result.
People want to live close to where they work. If state jobs stay downtown, people will naturally tend to reside closer to our downtown. That sort of population aggregate makes an area more attractive for residential development. You can see evidence of this in other cities, such as Des Moines. Their downtown essentially functioned as a big office park, and when the city pushed for housing in and around those jobs, the end result was a lively and walkable mixed-use neighborhood. Keeping our state workforce close to the urban core almost seems necessary to sustain the burgeoning vibrancy of our downtown, and build upon the progress already made. Moving them elsewhere would be antithetical to all of the growth planning our city has done in recent years.
The solution? I’m not entirely sure. I hope that this letter starts a dialogue about the eventual relocation of our state’s workforce. I feel that we need to focus our dollars and our development on the urban core of our city to attract other millennials like myself to Tallahassee. Cheap land is cheap land to DMS, and the burden that comes with building on that land wherever it may be eventually falls on our shoulders. That goes for future infrastructure requirements, and issues pertinent to growth being diverted away from our urban core. We should be using state redevelopment as a catalyst for growth: if the state wants a new building, we should lobby them to put it somewhere that needs a positive development, why not South Monroe instead of out by I-10? I don’t think it is far-fetched to say that Tallahassee should benefit from being the capitol of our state. I do not see the state consolidating its workforce in a manner that stretches our city beyond its capacity as a benefit.