Pensacola was recognized Tuesday, Aug. 20 for being voted America’s Strongest Town earlier this year, celebrating progress the city has made toward being financially strong and resilient. 

Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn visited the Rex Theatre in downtown Pensacola to celebrate Pensacola’s victory and give a free Strong Towns presentation to a packed audience as part of CivicCon. 

Mayor Grover Robinson accepted the award Tuesday evening on behalf of the city, along with Councilwoman Ann Hill, Councilman Jared Moore, Escambia County Commission Chairman and District 3 Commissioner Lumon May, District 4 Commissioner Robert Bender, Emerald Coast Utilities Authority District 4 Board Member Dale Perkins, City Attorney Susan Woolf and Pensacola Fire Chief Ginny Cranor.

Pensacola beat out 16 other towns for the honor in April, winning with 58 percent of the vote against Portsmouth, New Hampshire in the final round. The first Strong Towns champion from the South, Pensacola joined a pantheon of winners that includes Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Traverse City, Michigan, and most recently, 2018’s champion, Muskegon, Michigan.

From the Strong Towns winner announcement: “Pensacola impressed us from the start with a Round One application that emphasized its remarkable turnaround in the past decade. The city is growing in population, it is dramatically expanding its local economy and tax base, and it’s doing it largely by focusing on the city’s heart and soul: its historic downtown, which was first built in the 18th century.”

Read more about why Pensacola was selected as the 2019 Strongest Town.

Pensacola's Strongest Town entry was submitted by Quint Studer, Anna White and Dottie DeHart. 

Strong Towns is an international movement that’s dedicated to making communities across the United States and Canada financially strong and resilient. The Strong Towns approach advocates that in order to truly thrive, cities and towns must value resilience over efficiency, embrace a process of continuous adaptation and stop building the world based on abstract theories, among other recommendations. 

Visit strongtowns.org to learn more about the Strong Towns movement.