The City of Tallahassee Innovates for Resilience Action

The City of Tallahassee regards resilience as strengthening the reliability of our infrastructure, protecting a robust natural environment and local economy, building up adaptive capacity, and empowering self-sufficiency across the community. It is the largest single provider of municipal services in the community, including police, fire, public transportation, electric, gas, water, parks, and more. To best serve its nearly 200,000 residents, the City prioritized resilience in its Five-Year Strategic Plan. Tallahassee Community Resilience Plan, the first plan of its kind for the community, was adopted by the city in 2019, marking a transformed path toward resilience.

The following programs highlight how the City of Tallahassee is taking unique, all-encompassing action to achieve social and environmental resilience.

Neighborhood PREP (Plan for Readiness and Emergency Preparedness)

With the Atlantic hurricane season lasting from June 1 through November 30, building resilience in the face of natural disasters is top-of-mind across our state. In 2016, Hurricane Hermine made landfall near Tallahassee and became the first hurricane to directly impact Florida’s capital city since Hurricane Kate in 1985. Before the 2017 hurricane season, the City launched Neighborhood PREP (Plan for Readiness and Emergency Preparedness) to help individuals, households and neighborhoods improve their resiliency against future storms.

Neighborhood PREP features annual community workshops each May and June as hurricane season begins, and all eyes are on the tropics. A toolkit gives neighborhood leaders an easy process to work through to help ensure their neighborhood is prepared for disasters and other emergencies. This year, the City published a Step-by-Step Prep guide for residents, complementing Neighborhood PREP workshops. The guide shares what to do before, during and after storms, as well as information about City services.

Resilience Hubs

Beyond preparing individuals and households for natural disasters, the City supports neighborhoods as a whole with resilience hubs, also known as service centers. Resilience hubs augment traditional recreational or public facilities with enhanced social services year-round, environmentally sustainable designs, and emergency preparedness and disaster recovery resources. They are strategically located in neighborhoods where transportation issues or other barriers to accessing services exist, ensuring the most vulnerable members of our community get the services they need.

Achieving this includes reviewing existing facilities in target areas and strengthening them to meet resilience standards. For example, in 2021, the City was awarded $370,000 through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant program for backup power generation at the Jack McLean Community Center. Proactively hardening facilities to withstand and recover quickly from disasters is a major component of developing resilience hubs and is coupled with enhancing services offered day-to-day to holistically meet the needs of residents.

Brownfields Redevelopment Program

By investing resources throughout the organization with a holistic approach, we build our community’s resilience over time and with intentionality to bounce forward no matter the shock or stressor. Assessing, cleaning up and reinvesting in Brownfield sites protects human health and the environment, reduces blight, promotes reuse of properties and takes development pressures off green spaces and working lands. The city’s Brownfields Redevelopment Program is recognized as one of the most successful in the state of Florida and the southeastern United States. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded the city a $500,000 grant for Brownfield redevelopment activities to conduct environmental assessments, cleanup planning and community involvement activities for properties located within and near Tallahassee’s Southside. Implementation of this grant supports the city’s overall strategic plan efforts by incentivizing property owners to assess, safely clean up and sustainably reuse properties, which enhances economic opportunity, public safety and community aesthetics.

Case Highlight: Cascades Park

Stretching out over 24 acres in downtown Tallahassee, Cascades Park has been described as a stormwater management system disguised as a world-class park. Cascades Park plays a role in Tallahassee’s selection as Florida’s capital and the area was a community gathering place for more than a century. It was also home to a gas plant, leading to the site’s closure in the 1980s due to contamination and designation as a Brownfield site. Remediation efforts began in 2005 and Cascades Park opened to the public in 2014. Constructed by the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency in partnership with the City of Tallahassee and Leon County, Cascades Park was built through a one-cent local option sales tax as an investment in the community. It plays a critical role during major storm events, designed to flood – the park can retain more than 30 million gallons of water – and relieve downtown stormwater concerns. What was once a contaminated brownfield is now a crown jewel in the city’s parks system, bringing together arts, entertainment, education and recreation to draw residents and visitors downtown and spur economic activity.

To learn more about the City of Tallahassee’s community resilience work, click here.