• V O L U M E 1 9 • I S S U E 1 • condo ownerwww.condo-owner.com 23

Fourteen years after establishing a major redevelopment plan, seven years since the

national economy began a downward spiral, and five years after the oil spill, Panama City

Beach keeps slow but steady progress forward as abandoned condos and motels are

redeveloped or razed and a new roadway redevelopment segment will soon break ground. ‰

Front Beach Road Segment 2 now and an artist’s rendering after

construction

By T. Wayne Waters

Slow but Steady Panama City Beach:

special feature

BEFORE

AFTER

• condo owner • V O L U M E 1 9 • I S S U E 1 www.condo-owner.com24

Panama City Beach (PCB) is looking spiffier

than ever, helping residents and visitors move

around more easily, and seeing the slow, fitful

beginning of resurgence in hotel renovation and

condominium development.

PCB has about 14,000 permanent residents

and miles of gulf beachfront and draws hundreds

of thousands of vacationers and part-time resi-

dents each year. Now, many of those PCB resi-

dents and visitors may find it easier to get

around the city thanks to the 2013 completion of

Segment 1 of both the Front Beach Road and

South Thomas Drive Reconstruction Projects.

Portions of these major roadways now offer new

lanes dedicated to transit trolleys and bicycles,

landscaped medians, sidewalks, underground

utilities, additional roadway lighting, and storm

water retention ponds that also serve as public

ponds in walking parks with pathways, lighting,

seating and landscaping.

These reconstruction projects were part of

PCB’s Front Beach Road Community Redevel-

opment Plan initiated in 2001. Segment 2 can

now move forward, according to Panama City

Beach Director of Building and Planning Mel

Leonard.

“It should kick off in two to three months and

would take the Front Beach Road improvements

from its intersection with South Commerce

Drive west to Jackson Boulevard,” Leonard said.

“It’s estimated to be about an 18-month project

and then would probably take another 18

months to get cranked up. The time frame for

the segment after that, though, could be reduced

if the economy stays strong.

“People will be able to park at their condo-

miniums and easily walk, ride a bike or take a

trolley to get around the city that way,” Leonard

explained. “That will help improve the

capacity of the city because once the roads are

clogged up with cars there are other ways for

people to get around. The combined bicycle and

trolley lane is designed to allow some people to

bypass all the Front Beach Road traffic in its two

existing roadway lanes.”

Slow but Steady

The primary focus of the 2001 Front Beach

Road Community Redevelopment Plan was to

create the Community Redevelopment Agency

(CRA) tasked with implementing improvements

in local “transportation, parking, beach access

and safety issues on Front Beach Road and des-

ignated connecting roads.” The plan expected to

not only improve transportation for residents but

also encourage new tourism.

The pace of the redevelopment is dictated by

Panama City Beach’s economy. The CRA plan

is a long-termed project funded through Tax In-

crement Financing (TIF) within the designated

Front Beach Road Redevelopment area and de-

signed for gradual implementation over three

decades.

“We don’t borrow anything to make those

projects happen,” Leonard said. “We wait until

we have enough cash on hand, and each project

is costing about $12 to $13 million. The funding

is based upon assessed values by the county.”

Segment 1 was completed about two years

ago and centered on improvements on South

Thomas Drive and Front Beach Road (SR 30A)

from South Thomas to Hutchison Boulevard on

the south side of the city.

“At the peak,” Leonard said, “we were getting

$10 million a year, and at the very bottom of the

market we were close to only $5 million. So, we

weren’t able to do as many things as quickly as

we had hoped but still we were able to take that

time to get some engineering reports done and

do some of the things we could afford to do until

the money builds up.”

Leonard said Segment 3 is tentatively planned

to include work from the State Road 79 im-

provements to Panama City Beach Parkway

south to Front Beach and turning east to through

Pier Park, a shopping and entertainment hub in

the heart of the city.

Condo/Hotel Upside

After the economy took a dive in 2008, Panama

City Beach, like many cities in Florida and other

states, saw proposed condominium develop-

ments falter, in many cases bailing out before

beginning construction or in some cases ceasing

construction, perhaps going into foreclosure.

PCB officials took measures to give such

developments the best chance to keep their

options open.

“We had a lot of development orders that

went through when the economy was strong,”

Leonard said. “Those development orders would

typically only run for about six months, so we

had a lot of condominiums that were approved

but then the development orders expired and the

projects went away. The city council, on the

coattails of what the state did in the last few

years, adopted an ordinance to preserve the right

of some condominiums that were previously

special feature

Churchwell Drive and the City Parking Lot

(before and after)

AFTER

• V O L U M E 1 9 • I S S U E 1 • condo ownerwww.condo-owner.com 25

approved and met certain requirements to keep

their development orders. We ended up having

six of those condominiums meet the require-

ments and got their development orders ex-

tended two to four years before they would have

to submit for a building permit. They have this

period now so that if the economy keeps turning

around, we might have one of these six be one

of the first ones to get restarted. We’re hoping

that this will soon spur some redevelopment.”

At least one PCB real estate professional,

Chris Arnold, wrote in a blog last year that the

biggest change he’s seen recently in the condo

market is in the new condominium owners and

management whereby many “…condominium

associations have ousted the old management

and have begun focusing on the structure and

property. As such, it is very common to see

buildings getting new paint colors and grounds

being improved.” Arnold summed up by noting

that a “beach full of solid condominium associa-

tions gives us a maturing Panama City Beach.”

Meanwhile, some older hotels and motels de-

teriorated over the last decade, but the number

has dwindled.

“We’ve had resurgence the last couple of

years of people buying these motel and hotels

and putting money into remodeling them,”

Leonard said. “A lot of them have been brought

back up and are kind of quaint, kind of nice right

now.”

Leonard mentioned only two mom-and-pop

motels that have had to be razed in the past few

years. One that caught considerable unfavorable

PCB Council concern and regional media atten-

tion is the Beach Club Motel, an older property

that caught fire about two years ago.

“A crew will be out there in the next day or

two to start demolishing it,” Leonard said, before

this issue went to print. “What we will do is end

up taking the cost of that and putting it on the

next tax bill so that as the owner pays taxes on it

we would be paid back from that.”

Overall, Leonard has been pleased with the

way motels and hotels have been rehabbed in re-

cent years and the way the condo landscape has

seen a modest improvement. He also said that

city officials don’t feel any sense that PCB has

reached a limit to condominium or hotel devel-

opment and that the city typically runs out of ca-

pacity during the major holidays and busiest

times of the year. n

special feature

South Thomas Drive (After)