Tallahassee Community Redevelopment Agency

The Community Redevelopment Agency, the CRA in every City Hall conversation, is the City of Tallahassee body that collects and spends redevelopment money in two parts of town: Greater Frenchtown/Southside and the downtown core. The city's About the CRA page says the agency was created in August 1998, with its board set up the following month, and that its primary job is carrying out the Greater Frenchtown/Southside Community Redevelopment Plan and the Downtown Community Redevelopment Plan.

It is a small shop. CRA staff consists of five full-time employees, and the City of Tallahassee supplies the accounting, procurement, legal, communications and treasurer-clerk support that a larger agency would hire for itself. The agency answers to an interlocal agreement among the City of Tallahassee, Leon County and the CRA and that agreement sets, among other things, who sits on the board.

The reason the districts sit where they do is legal as much as political. Under Florida law, Chapter 163, Part III, a local government can only designate a redevelopment area when conditions such as substandard or inadequate structures, a shortage of affordable housing or inadequate infrastructure are present. The City of Tallahassee drew its two districts around the neighborhoods north and south of downtown and the office core between them, then steered the new tax growth in those areas back into them rather than into the general budget.

There are two districts, and each has its own trust fund. The Greater Frenchtown/Southside district consists of three distinct geographic sections and is comprised of 1,858 acres of residential, office, commercial/retail, industrial and open land. The City Commission adopted its redevelopment plan and trust fund in June 2000. According to the city's district page, the area borders parts of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and Florida State University and takes in thirteen neighborhood communities and seven major commercial areas.

The Downtown District is smaller and newer. The city's Downtown CRA page explains that downtown Tallahassee had shifted away from retail and housing toward offices with little activity after 5 p.m., so in March 2002 the city commissioned a study. That Finding of Necessity found that 79 of the 93 downtown blocks surveyed met the slum or blight conditions defined by Chapter 163, Part III, Florida Statutes. The commission set the boundary in September 2002 and adopted the Downtown plan and trust fund in June 2004. The district runs about 440 acres in five subareas, wedged between the northern and southern pieces of the Frenchtown/Southside district.

The rule that shapes every budget fight: CRA GFS funds can only be used within the district, and the same goes for Downtown money. A dollar raised by rising values along Gaines Street or on the Southside cannot be shifted to a project around Kleman Plaza, and the reverse is also true.

The CRA does not levy its own tax. Once a redevelopment plan is approved, the City of Tallahassee explains, a redevelopment trust fund is set up and revenue deposited to this fund results from the incremental growth in taxable value within the area after the district was created. In plain terms, the city and Leon County keep collecting what the district paid in its base year, and the extra tax produced by rising values inside Frenchtown, the Southside or downtown is routed to the CRA.

Florida law fences that money in. The city lists the purchase of property to further the redevelopment plan, demolition, affordable housing, streets, utilities, parks and playgrounds, building repair and studies as authorized uses. Social services, community festivals, after-school programs, vocational training and routine private business expenses are listed as items the Tallahassee CRA cannot pay for, even inside its districts.

The pot is modest. WCTV reported in January 2025 that the CRA budget was around $6.5 million, with about $5 million already allocated. Back in 2014, CRA leadership told WFSU on its Perspectives program that the agency does not have millions of dollars a year to work with and that Frenchtown and Southside projects would take years.

The city's district page lists the early Frenchtown/Southside work. Agency funds built a sidewalk along the east side of South Adams Street from Magnolia to Orange Avenue, a heavy pedestrian route next to FAMU, and paid for landscaping along Railroad Avenue in the Gaines Street area. The agency invested $925,000 in the Goodbread Hills affordable apartments, 45 townhomes and 48 garden apartments leveraged with more than $11 million in private money, which the Florida Redevelopment Association named its Outstanding Affordable Housing Project for 2007. A commercial painting pilot offered grants of up to $5,000 for buildings on Gaines Street and Lake Bradford Road.

Planning documents followed. On September 24, 2015, the CRA Board approved the Greater Frenchtown/Southside Investment Plan, four programs and six projects ranked with input from the district's advisory committee, and the Frenchtown neighborhood later joined the city's Neighborhood First initiative with CRA funding behind its plan.

Not every project has been popular. In 2014 WFSU reported that funding for projects on Gaines Street and the downtown Doubletree hotel had drawn criticism that the CRA favored big developers instead of its original mission in under-developed parts of town. Downtown spending continues: on October 17, 2024, the Tallahassee Democrat reported, the CRA voted unanimously to give $516,000 to fully fund Phases 1 and 2 of Bicentennial Square, a park alongside City Hall running down the hill on Jefferson Street to Duval Street, planned with the Knight Creative Communities Institute.

Railroad Square, the arts district between FSU and FAMU, became the agency's biggest test after the May 10, 2024 tornadoes. The Tallahassee Democrat reported that two EF-2 tornadoes converged on the 8-acre property, and in August 2024 its owners asked the city to buy most of it. At a packed CRA meeting at City Hall, the commissioners voted 4-1, with Mayor John Dailey the only no vote, to bring the question back for study at the Citizens Advisory Committee and the October meeting.

The answer came in January 2025. WCTV reported that after more than an hour of discussion the CRA voted unanimously against purchasing the Railroad Square Art District but agreed to keep working with the Railroad Square Revitalization Cohort on a possible partnership. Staff had recommended against buying because of cost, maintenance and insurance. The asking price was $11 million for 6.8 acres, against a value of about $6 million cited by CRA Executive Director Stephen Cox, at a time when the agency had about $1.5 million unallocated.

The CRA Board consists of the Tallahassee mayor and the four city commissioners, the same five people who sit as the City Commission but meeting under a separate agenda. On the City Commission page that is Mayor John E. Dailey, Mayor Pro Tem Curtis Richardson, and Commissioners Jacqueline Jack Porter, Jeremy Matlow and Dianne Williams-Cox. The city publishes CRA agendas through BoardDocs alongside the commission's own. Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the City of Tallahassee website.

Two appointed bodies advise the Tallahassee CRA board. The Greater Frenchtown/Southside Citizens Advisory Committee has nine members, two of them non-voting, representing neighborhood and business interests along with FAMU and FSU, and it can recommend plan changes and set an annual work program. The Downtown Redevelopment Commission, approved in February 2006, has nine members with experience in urban development and recommends how Downtown CRA money is spent. Applicants for either Tallahassee body apply for seats through the city's advisory board application, and the CRA office takes questions at 850-891-8357.