By Ed Offley
The summer of 2026 has brought several new businesses to Panama City Beach – and a firm City Council push to ensure one particular business never comes to the city.
Pier Park will soon have expanded dining and entertainment attractions thanks to two planned projects on Panama City Beach Parkway.
The developers of Pirates Voyage are planning to build a 4.5-acre amusement park adjacent to the dinner theater that will provide “an additional entertainment facility” for its customers, the developers told City Council during a hearing for a conditional use permit on July 9.
When constructed, the Bonny Read Fun Park will include a one-story amusement arcade, an outdoor electric go cart track and an eighteen-hole miniature golf course.
No date has been announced for the groundbreaking and planned opening. Developers Pier Park Holdings LLC and WCI Holdings LLC could not be reached for contact.
Just several hundred feet to the est, construction crews are building a new Ruby Tuesday restaurant on a 1.35-acre lot at the southeast corner of Pier Park Drive and Panama City Beach Parkway. Developer of the project is JMK Development LLC of Plano, Texas.
No opening date has been announced for the restaurant.
In a separate move, City Council on July 23 took the first steps in enacting a ban on AI data centers within the city.
After a first reading, Council voted 4-0 (Councilman Mike Jarman absent) to enact Ordinance No. 1687, which will amend the land development code to ban AI data centers requiring five megawatts of electricity.
Í don’t think they {data centers] are a good use for the city’s limited land,” Mayor Stuart Tettemer told PCB Life. “They use a lot of power and create no jobs.”
Council agreed to modify the proposed ordinance to remove other “large [electrical] load customers” from the text after Councilwoman Mary Coburn noted that future projects like the new FSU Health medical center at Ward’s Creek could inadvertently fall under the ban. Council is expected to hold a second hearing on the ordinance and formally enact it this month.
The city’s move comes just weeks after the Bay County Commission and Panama City Commission enacted twelve- and six-month moratoriums, respectively, prohibiting AI data centers pending enactment of formal ordinances banning the facilities.
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