By Ed Offley
The half-century era ended so quietly that hardly anyone noticed.
When contractors broke ground on Tower III of the Calypso Beach Resort next to Pier Park in Panama City Beach in April 2018, the 22-story resort condominium seemed to be just the latest addition to the scores of high-rise rental projects that line the 22-mile Gulf beachfront from St. Andrews Park to Lake Powell.
Nevertheless, Tower III holds a distinctive place in Beach tourism history: It was the first high-rise condo to go up in a decade after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2008 Great Recession upended the area real estate market. And six years later, it stands as the last project of its size to have made the transition from blueprints to completion.
There are about 25 high-rise condominium properties and scores of smaller mid-rise projects along the Front Beach Road corridor, with new developments breaking ground on almost a daily basis. But city and county planners say they have not seen development order requests for a high-rise condominium in five years.
“Those days have come to an end,” said Mel Leonard, PCB Planning Director. Factors creating “headwinds” against making such a project economically feasible range from interest rates and soaring insurance costs to changing public interest in vacation properties, he said.
In addition, the city no longer grants waivers to its 15-story height limit that previously allowed high-rise developments to top out at 22 stories.
Bay County Planning Director Wayne Porter agreed. He noted that the last application to the county for a Gulf beachfront high-rise was in early 2019, when developers applied for a development order for the proposed Palace Sands high-rise condo at 6100 Thomas Drive. The project was never begun, and the property is now a residential subdivision.
A different vacation housing concept has proliferated along the Gulf beachfront in the past decade: The out-sized beachfront rental with anywhere from five to nine bedrooms, multiple kitchens and space to accommodate anywhere from ten to 30 people in a deluxe three- to four-story house.
“If you go to rent a [high-rise] condo that sleeps eight, it will cost about $3,000 to $4,000 for a week, and you have to share the same strip of beach with 1,500 other people,” Beach realtor Bill Thomas said in a 2019 interview. “For practically the same per-person per-night price, you have your own amenities, and a breakout view of the Gulf.”
