Joseph Loretta, FL/GA Director – Planning and Landscape Architecture, Halff

June 2026 — In an interview with Invest:, Joseph Loretta, FL/GA Director of Planning and Landscape Architecture leader of full service engineering and design firm, Halff, discussed the firm’s downtown park projects, the growing role of resilience in infrastructure planning, and opportunities tied to Jacksonville’s growth. “In 10 years, downtown Jacksonville is going to be completely different, but even in five years, it is going to be vastly different,” Loretta said.

What have been Halff’s key milestones in Jacksonville over the past 12 months?

We have been working through the completion of the engineering plans for the Hogans Creek restoration, which is a huge $150 million project with Groundwork Jacksonville. We are looking to finish permitting within the next six months. As the city looks to find financing to develop phases, or potentially the whole project, it will be a huge transformational project.

Locally, we have had the opportunity to work on other transformational projects within the city of Jacksonville, including St. Johns River Park at Friendship Fountain, the Music Heritage Garden just outside the Performing Arts Center, and Metropolitan Park. Between those projects and Hogans Creek, we have had a nice stamp on some park projects throughout downtown Jacksonville.

We also have a good, growing balance of recreation and environmental resilience elements on recreational based projects. Those projects have allowed us to be involved in work that blends parks, public spaces, and resilience in ways that are important for the future of the city.

How is Jacksonville’s growth shaping demand for engineering, planning, and transportation services?

There is a wide variety of demand. The Outer Beltway is opening up Clay County, and that is going to create a major new expansion. We will see how well Clay County is prepared for that growth. It seems as though they are trying to get a little bit ahead of it, maybe better than where St. Johns County was, which was probably more reactive.

Clay County and St. Johns County are making development a little more difficult, so we will see how that shapes things. If the Outer Beltway expands into St. Johns County and makes a full loop in the next five years, that is going to make the southern portion of St. Johns County continue to grow, and it will really expand the Clay County portion.

From my perspective, Nassau County is not prepared very well for substantial growth. They do not have the number of accesses needed, though I believe they are looking to incorporate one new interchange.

The city of Jacksonville is also investing significant amounts of money into the downtown park system. We are hedging our bets that these investments will generate the desire for people to come downtown. That will open up opportunities for people to live there and really transform the area.

I feel as though downtown is very near success. The Pearl Street District is coming in, and that is close to a billion-dollar project. Assuming people move in, it is going to be transformational for the area. In 10 years, downtown Jacksonville is going to be completely different, but even in five years, it is going to be vastly different.

How are environmental resilience, coastal resilience, and storm preparedness influencing infrastructure in the region?

It has close to a 100% impact. Every project needs to be contemplating resilience. Every municipality in Florida has, is developing, or is updating a resilience plan. The city of Jacksonville has a resilience coordinator, and resilience is top of mind for everything.

JEA has its own resilience plan, which is really about hardening infrastructure or getting certain things, such as wastewater treatment plants or lift stations, out of flood zone areas. What you do not want is a lift station in a flooded area that then creates backups and all sorts of problems.

Infrastructure is hugely important. The utility infrastructure is primarily done by JEA, so others could speak more directly to that, but when it comes to the downtown core, the city is focusing heavily on roadway infrastructure, resilience, road diets, and bicycle and pedestrian connectivity.

What role do technology, data-driven planning, smart infrastructure, and digital engineering tools play in improving project delivery?

It is a work in progress. I am the Planning and Landscape Architecture practice’s Technology and Innovation Committee chair, and it is complicated because there are so many legal elements involved. People are nervous about what you do in AI not actually being your own work, how you make it yours, and how open to the public it is.

Our company is working to invest in AI, and I am also working to invest in AI. I went to a presentation where the head of Tavistock in Orlando gave a good example: You can think of AI or Copilot as an administrative assistant who knows everything about anything you want to ask from a research standpoint.

For research and data collection, it is big. From the perspective of helping create conceptual design and programming, it can also help. I recently put together a proposal for a master-planned community retrofit of a park. I talked through the project with AI and described what we were thinking about. It helped me create a pretty strong thought process around a program that would be worthy of selling to the community when I wrote the proposal and approach.

Within the planning and landscape architecture practice, we use AI for graphics, generally to enhance graphics or tweak something we have already created. I am also using it to generate quick graphics from scratch. For example, I am working on a fairground project where they are looking at putting in a new performance pavilion. They want it to look similar to another city’s pavilion, but smaller. I used AI to talk through the sizing and create quick sketches of what it could possibly look like without going into significant detail.

It does not take you to the finish line on a lot of things. You still need people who know how to use graphics, people who know how to talk to AI, and project managers who can get through the process. But it can definitely save a lot of time when trying to explain things.

What are Halff’s key goals and priorities for the next two to three years?

We are focused on growth and expansion, primarily through diversity of project type and client. That is the No. 1 goal: building a diversified, resilient client portfolio across public and private clients and multiple project types.

Within the office space, transportation and water and wastewater are huge focuses. Transportation also aligns with landscape architecture and planning, trail master planning, complete streets, and similar work.

Another goal is to become the feared competitor in the region. We also want to create a more scalable delivery system and focus on quality assurance, quality control, specifications, details, and AI, and how we can integrate those tools to make us more efficient.

We also want to dominate a few growth arenas with high-value services. That includes resilience, water-focused landscape work, sports and entertainment, and trail master planning.

Finally, we are focused on growing a deep leadership bench with a high-performing culture. That means growing our people, growing our senior people, and keeping them engaged and happy.