Downtown Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency

The Downtown Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency is the city's only community redevelopment agency, and it works in a single district, the Downtown CRA District (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

Florida law (Chapter 163, Part III) lets a local government designate a community redevelopment area when certain conditions exist, and the Cocoa Beach CRA FAQ describes the agency as a dependent taxing district set up by city government (Cocoa Beach CRA FAQ). Its job, in the FAQ's words, is to reduce or eliminate blight, with examples such as substandard or inadequate structures, a shortage of affordable housing, insufficient roadways and inadequate parking, and to improve the tax base and encourage public and private investment in the district (Cocoa Beach CRA FAQ).

The agency sits inside city government. Its FY2024 financial statements describe it as a blended component unit of the City of Cocoa Beach (Downtown Cocoa Beach CRA FY2024 financial statements), and it keeps the city's fiscal year, October 1 to September 30 (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page). Because it is a Florida special district, Part III of Chapter 112, Florida Statutes, supplies the ethics rules that apply to it (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

The plan behind the district sets goals and project types. The Cocoa Beach FAQ lists the kinds of projects a redevelopment plan can include: streetscapes and road improvements, building renovations, flood control, water and sewer improvements, parking lots and garages, parks, sidewalks and street trees (Cocoa Beach CRA FAQ). The adopted 2012 Cocoa Beach CRA Plan is posted in four volumes on the CRA page (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

Cocoa Beach voters authorized the agency on January 29, 2008, and the City Commission formally established it on November 19, 2009, after a run of city and county resolutions (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

The groundwork is older. The City Commission began focusing on downtown redevelopment in the 1990s, and the city made downtown planning part of its 2005 rewrite of the Comprehensive Plan (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page). In 1999 Cocoa Beach voters approved a referendum under which a CRA could be set up only with the approval of a majority of qualified voters casting ballots (Cocoa Beach CRA FAQ).

State law then required a formal finding. Under Section 163.355, Florida Statutes, a city cannot use redevelopment powers until its governing body adopts a resolution, backed by data and analysis, finding that slum or blighted areas, or areas short of housing affordable to residents of low or moderate income, exist (Florida Statutes 163.355). Cocoa Beach completed its Finding of Necessity in July 2009, and Resolution 2009-20 rested on it (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page). The Cocoa Beach Planning Board, acting as the local planning agency, reviewed the 2012 plan for consistency with the comprehensive plan before the Commission adopted it (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

It does not add a tax: the Cocoa Beach CRA imposes no additional taxes or fees and is funded by ad valorem tax revenue generated from increases in property values inside the district since it was created (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

That mechanism is tax increment financing. The city and Brevard County each pay into the Community Redevelopment Trust Fund the property taxes on the growth in district values above the base year, and the money is reinvested in the district (Cocoa Beach CRA FAQ). The Cocoa Beach FAQ illustrates it with a property valued at $10,000 in the base year that rises to $15,000 after a new building goes up: the CRA receives the taxes on the $5,000 increase (Cocoa Beach CRA FAQ). State law defines each year's increment as 95 percent of the difference between the taxes levied on the area and the taxes the base-year values would have produced, excluding debt service millage (Florida Statutes 163.387).

The figures above come from the audited statements. Tax increment revenue rose by $160,720 in FY2024, which the auditors attribute to higher property values in the district, and the county and city rates used were 3.2619 and 6.1644 per $1,000 of value (Downtown Cocoa Beach CRA FY2024 financial statements).

The Downtown Parking Garage is the project the CRA borrowed for: the FY2024 statements say a Florida Municipal Loan Council revenue bond issued in fiscal 2017 funded its design and construction (Downtown Cocoa Beach CRA FY2024 financial statements).

The city budget describes the garage as a three-story public facility with 241 spaces, electric charging stations, restrooms, an elevator and an outdoor shower (Cocoa Beach FY2025 CRA budget). The city parking page places the garage at 25 South Orlando Avenue and adds the practical rules: 7 feet 2 inches of clearance, no back-in parking, no overnight parking, and two electric vehicle charging stations on the ground floor (Cocoa Beach parking information). At the end of FY2024 the CRA still owed $2,760,000 on the Series 2017B bond, after a $280,000 principal payment that year (Downtown Cocoa Beach CRA FY2024 financial statements). The garage was a prime objective of the CRA Vision Plan, and in 2020 the CRA's focus was continued marketing and maintenance of it (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

The second large project is the old City Hall site. The FY2024 financial statements report that construction continued on the three-quarter-acre area where the old City Hall building stood, with the cultural green space estimated at $1.65 million and the CRA's share of the wash-through estimated at $1.5 million; the statements estimated completion by March 2025 (Downtown Cocoa Beach CRA FY2024 financial statements).

The FY2025 CRA budget shows smaller lines as well: $39,030 for SurfSide Playhouse improvements, $250,000 budgeted for aid to private organizations, a transfer for Centennial Square improvements, and a $40,000 repayment to the Cocoa Beach stormwater fund for the Minutemen project, the same amount in every year the budget shows (Cocoa Beach FY2025 CRA budget). The CRA page now lists a Commercial Visual Improvement Grant for FY2026-2027 under its grants heading (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

The Cocoa Beach City Commission is the CRA Board, and the city has created no advisory board or other governance structure for it (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

The CRA page lists five board members, the mayor and the four commissioners (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page). Day to day, the FY2025 budget funds half of a Director of Projects and Grants position, which also serves as CRA Administrator, from the CRA fund and half from the City Manager's department (Cocoa Beach FY2025 CRA budget). For contact, the CRA page offers an email link to the CRA Administrator, the mailing address City of Cocoa Beach, P.O. Box 322430, and weekday office hours of 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

City sources describe the meeting schedule two ways. The Cocoa Beach CRA FAQ says the board meets regularly on the first Thursday of the month at 6 p.m. (Cocoa Beach CRA FAQ). The FY2025 budget says CRA meetings are held on the first and/or third Thursday before a City Commission meeting, only if needed, starting no later than 6:30 PM (Cocoa Beach FY2025 CRA budget). The Commission and Board Meetings Calendar is where the FAQ sends readers for the actual schedule (Cocoa Beach CRA FAQ).

The FY2024 financial statements say the Downtown Cocoa Beach CRA shall expire on December 31, 2033; the county's 2008 resolution authorized it for a period of 25 years from its creation (Downtown Cocoa Beach CRA FY2024 financial statements).

Everything the agency files is linked from the Cocoa Beach CRA page: budgets from FY22 through the FY27 adopted and proposed budgets, annual comprehensive financial reports from FY21 through FY25, CRA annual reports from 2020 through 2025, and performance measures and standards reports for 2024, 2025 and 2026 (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page). The page also notes that annual financial reports are on the Florida Chief Financial Officer's website (Cocoa Beach Community Redevelopment Agency page).

The FY2024 audit gives a snapshot of the agency's balance sheet. Assets exceeded liabilities by $2,773,305 on September 30, 2024, a decrease of $1,054,505 over the year, and capital assets stood at $4,416,493 net of depreciation (Downtown Cocoa Beach CRA FY2024 financial statements). The statements also caution that repaying the garage debt must come from other sources, since the capital assets themselves cannot be used to pay those liabilities (Downtown Cocoa Beach CRA FY2024 financial statements).

Last verified: October 21, 2026, with every Cocoa Beach figure traced to the CRA's own page and FAQ, its audited FY2024 statements and FY2025 budget, the garage entry on the city parking page, and the text of Florida Statutes 163.355 and 163.387.