The first obstacle came before we made it to Palafox Street.
I was at the Center for Independent Living of Northwest Florida with Carolyn Grawi, the organization’s executive director. She had put me in a wheelchair, and we were trying to get from her office to Palafox, just two blocks away.
Almost immediately, I hit a threshold.
“Come over threshold,” Grawi said. “You need a little bit more momentum there.”
I had never used a wheelchair before. It showed.
Grawi’s organization serves people with disabilities from Escambia to Walton counties. She is also legally blind. She had been watching the New Palafox project closely, not just as a downtown resident or visitor, but as an advocate for people whose ability to use public space often depends on details others may never notice.
The New Palafox project was one of Pensacola’s most visible public works projects in years. Mayor D.C. Reeves has framed the work as more than cosmetic.
“It’s a major infrastructure investment that was long overdue," he said last month, "and certainly we’re now more resilient for storm water, safer for pedestrians, more ADA accessible."
The city says the project added more than 1,700 feet of stormwater pipe, widened sidewalks, improved intersections and built new mid-block crossings. The accessibility work includes 46 ADA-compliant curb ramps, shorter crossings and smoother transitions between the sidewalk and street.
That was the promise. Grawi wanted to see how it felt.
The slope you do not notice on foot
On Palafox, the wheelchair made small details obvious.
One older section of sidewalk started pulling me toward the street. On foot, the grade might have seemed insignificant. In the chair, it was immediate.
Under federal accessibility standards, accessible routes are supposed to have very little side-to-side slope — about 2% at most. That side-to-side slope, known as cross slope, matters because too much of it can cause a wheelchair to drift or force the user to compensate constantly to stay on course.
Grawi said the old section we were on was over that threshold.
“Goodness," I said. "You wouldn’t even notice that slope if you weren’t on wheels.”
“What’s greater than 2% is what’s pulling you towards the street,” Grawi noted. “So that’s the old part that you’re on versus what’s new.”
The new brickwork felt different — flatter and easier to move across. The difference was not dramatic visually. It was dramatic physically.
That is part of what makes accessibility easy to miss in a project like this. Many of the most important improvements are not the features people notice first. They are the small corrections that determine whether someone can move through a place without fighting the pavement.
A street rebuilt at the edges
At one mid-block crossing, the pavement rose up to meet the sidewalk. For drivers, that means a traffic-calming feature. For pedestrians, it means crossing without dropping down from the sidewalk and climbing back up on the other side.
“It’s a speed bump for cars, but not for the people,” Grawi said.
That kind of detail matters because accessibility is often decided at the edges: where sidewalks meet streets, where ramps meet gutters, where water collects, where a curb cut is too steep, where a sign, table or planter narrows the route.
Before the rebuild, Grawi said Palafox had bad curb ramps, missing pavers and other trip hazards. Stormwater was also part of the accessibility problem. When water collects at the bottom of a ramp, it can block the very place a wheelchair user needs to cross.
“If you’re trying to come through and you’re coming into a puddle or a pile of sludge and then you get stuck in the water and you can’t come out of it and now you’re soaking wet because you can’t get through it — that’s just not OK,” she said.
The new drainage is intended to address that kind of problem. But Grawi said a street’s accessibility is not settled when construction ends. It depends on how the space is managed once people return to it.
Under city rules, businesses with outdoor seating are supposed to maintain a clear 6-foot pedestrian path when tables, chairs or other items are placed outside.
During our walk, Grawi pointed to chairs outside one business that appeared to push into the pedestrian route.
“We’re already putting stuff in the pathway,” she said.
That is a different kind of test for the new Palafox: not whether the project was built accessibly, but whether it stays accessible after restaurants, events, crowds, and daily commerce return.
Not a favor, a condition for participation
Grawi had been part of the public conversation around the project. She served on Reeves’ transition committee, where accessibility was one of the issues she raised. When the city held a ribbon cutting for downtown businesses, she showed up with people with different disabilities.
She wanted business owners to see them not just as advocates, but as customers.
“We wanted shop owners to know that people with disabilities come down here,” she said. “We can come spend money in the shops.”
That point matters in a downtown corridor built around restaurants, retail, entertainment, and tourism. Accessibility is often discussed as a legal or moral obligation. Grawi does not reject that. But she says it is also an economic issue.
The American Institutes for Research has estimated that working-age adults with disabilities in the United States have about $490 billion in after-tax disposable income. That figure does not include older adults outside the working-age population, nor does it account for the spending decisions of families, friends or caregivers who may choose places based on whether someone with a disability can participate.
For a commercial street like Palafox, the implication is straightforward: If people cannot comfortably navigate the street, some of them will not come.
Accessibility also affects a growing share of the public. The U.S. population is aging, and disability becomes more common with age. The Census Bureau says the population 65 and older rose to 61.2 million in 2024. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says disability prevalence is highest among adults 65 and older, with more than four in 10 people in that age group reporting a disability.
That does not mean accessibility is only an issue for older adults. People can have disabilities at any age. But it does mean accessible design is not a niche concern. It is part of planning for the community Pensacola already has and the one it is becoming.
Grawi said she wants people to understand that access is not about special treatment.
“Many people with disabilities don’t want a pity parade,” she said. “They want to be seen as a person first and they want to be seen as part of the whole community.”
Progress, and a reminder
Grawi’s assessment of the new Palafox is not dismissive. She sees real improvements: flatter surfaces, better crossings, more accessible curb ramps, and a street that is easier to move through than it was before.
But she also sees the project in a wider context.
Palafox is Pensacola’s showcase street. It is a place where major public investments are visible, celebrated and quickly noticed. People with disabilities live across Northwest Florida, including neighborhoods where basic sidewalks, crossings and public spaces remain harder to use.
“A lot of things that we are working on here have been completed in a lot of areas already,” Grawi said. “And so we’re playing catch up.”
By the end of the walk, I had made it down Palafox.
I had not made it back, and I decided to request a special accommodation of my own.
“Would you judge me too harshly if I walked?” I asked.
“No. I will not,” Grawi said. “But realize that a person with significant disability doesn’t get that choice.”
