The Brannon Center, 105 Riverside Drive, is being discussed as an 'anchor' for Canal Street by city officials like Mayor Adam Barringer shown here in this NSBNews.net / Headline Surfer photo during his 2009 campaign.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- City officials are pinning their hopes for inclusion of Canal Street in a new CRA district with the Brannon Center as its pinnacle.
The Brannon Center was the focal point of a day-long visioning and goal-setting workshop at the Atlantic Centyer for the Arts for the City Commission and top administrative brass.
While sidestepping the issue of Canal Street being part of a new Community Redevelopment Agency that would have U.S. 1 as its main artery, Mayor Adam Barringer said prior to the goal-setting meeting that the Brannon Center was ripe for a major renovation and that would require CRA dollars. "It's a key location along the waterfront," Barringer insisted in an interview prior to Thanksgiving.
While Barringer has previously said a new CRA would likely not include Canal Street, echoing what former City Commissioner Jim Hathaway pledged in his unsuccessful run for a seat on the County Council, there has been pressure from Canal Street merchants like Cindy Jones to allow it, having pushed for more downtown housing units to support businesses.
Deb Denys, who won the election for the dist. 3 County Council seat over Hathaway, said during a public candidate debate sponsored by Headline Surfer that she is not in favor of continued CRA funding for Canal Street. The current CRA district that encompasses Canal, the North Causeway, Flagler Avenue and Third Avenue sunsets in 2015 with a 30-year run.
But with more development along the State Road 44 corridor near the I-95 interchange with the Walmart as its anchor, more and more business owners on Canal are worried about dwindling commerce in what was the city's hub close to a half century ago now.
The solution? The Brannon Center as the pinnacle to continue pumping CRA dollars back into the hands of local control instead of the county.
Headline Surfer did not attend Monday's city visioning session, but the Daytona Beach News-Journal did and reported this morning that Gerard J. Pendergast, the CRA's consulting architect, displayed architectural drawings showing the Brannon Center as a two-story conference center with an outdoor patio, describing it as an "anchor."
The Brannon Center would nearly double from its 13,340 square feet to nearly 23,000 square feet in size with the second floor added, under Pendergast's proposal.
The Brannon Center is used primarily by the Council on Aging for daytime senior citizen activities, but it also has been used for local events including fishing and boating tournaments and chamber hobnobs. Headline Surfer nine public candidate debates at the Brannon Center during the 2012 election season.
There are complications with any structural changes, however. Just who holds the title to the former NSB Library that was converted in the 1960s to the center under a trust for public use, has to be researched. City Attorney Frank Gummey has told commissioners he does not have the expertise to do that. A deed search would have to be done in Tallahassee where older records like this are kept, he has said.
Another issue would be what to do with seniors possibly being displaced as has been discussed in previous years with talk of raxzing the Brannon Center in favor of a multi-story hotel or condominium development.
Even getting a new CRA district might be futile for New Smyrna Beach officials. Both Denys and County-Chair Elect are not sold on continuing CRAs because of the controversy of funding not going for intended blight removal, but rather nighttime street parties like those that are frequent on Flagler Avenue and beneficial to the bars.