By Ed Offley
Slowly but surely, Panama City Beach is building a modern street grid to service its residents and visitors.
This year, the focus is on a 1.2-mile span including SR-79 (Arnold Road) from Panama City Beach Parkway to Front Beach Road, and a stretch of Front Beach Road running east to Lullwater Drive. The corridor is a primary entryway to the city for thousands of tourists visiting the beach every year, whether driving down from Interstate 10 or from Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport.
Since 2003, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) has been carrying out an ambitious and complicated plan to transform the street grid from inadequate two-lane roads and open ditches to a spacious network of multi-lane streets with sidewalks, storm drainage, modern lighting, landscaping and underground utilities.
A unique aspect of CRA Segment 3 will be the construction of a multi-lane roundabout at Front Beach Road that replaces the old “Y” intersection. Workers demolished the former pizza restaurant and gas station at that site at the start of work in June.
Every effort is being made to minimize hardships for those using the busy corridor during the planned 18 months of construction, said CRA Manager David Campbell. Working under a $28 million contract from the city, GAC Contractors Inc. has been authorized to proceed with construction on a 24/7 schedule.
“We’re building a temporary (two-lane) roadway on the east side of 79 and will shift traffic onto it while working on the west side,” he said. Once the western half of the corridor is completed, traffic will shift to the new roadway and the contractors will repeat the process on the eastern side.
Other features of the new corridor will include landscaped medians, transit/bicycle lanes, sidewalks, signalization, stormwater retention, signage and pavement markings, according to PCB spokeswoman Debbie Ward.
Campbell said that City Council has directed that top priority be given to completing the transformation of Front Beach Road. The next three construction segments will transform about 4.5 miles of the beachfront street between Lullwater Drive and the intersection with Hutchinson Boulevard. The city hopes to complete those three segments by 2025.
Subsequent phases include Front Beach Road between Hutchinson Boulevard and Richard Jackson Boulevard; Front Beach Road west of SR-79 to the city line; and modernizing a half-dozen north-south connector streets including Alf Coleman Road, Hills Road, Nautilus Street, Clara Avenue and Cobb Street.
“There was a push” by City Council to accelerate construction along Front Beach Road, Campbell said.
With the completion of “Segment 3” in early 2023, the city will have reached the one-third mark on modernizing its street system. Campbell said the work is expected to be completed by 2049. Segments already constructed include Churchwell Drive, Richard Jackson Boulevard, the loop comprising North and South Thomas Drive, and Front Beach Road from Hutchison Boulevard to Richard Jackson Boulevard.
Under the CRA program, the city is authorized to use tax revenues from within the program boundaries to pay for long-term bonds used to finance the land acquisition and construction. City Council decided in 2019 to accelerate the remaining construction projects and approved a $40 million bond issue to supplement the tax increment financing that covers the construction costs. Tax revenues dedicated to the CRA normally come in at $10-12 million annually.
