Panama City Beach is slowly making progress on Front Beach Road CRA

PANAMA CITY BEACH — The Beach continues to make progress on a comprehensive road improvement project that began more than two decades ago.

According to Scott Passmore, assistant program manager for the Corradino Group, the northbound and southbound lanes leading to the new roundabout at South Arnold Road and Front Beach Road are open after being temporarily closed in April to allow for the construction of a median to make.

The lanes were originally scheduled for alternating closures lasting approximately two days each, restricting traffic flow in the area for a total of four days. However, crews were able to complete the entire median in two days.

“We had to divert traffic … to complete the median work just north of the roundabout,” Passmore said. “We split (the closures) one by one. Initially, the northbound (lane) coming out of the roundabout was closed and traffic was diverted to Carmen Street and up to Innocente Avenue. … And then the southbound (lane) was closed. diverted to Innocente to Carmen.”

The roundabout opened at the beginning of this year. It was built as part of the ongoing Segment 3 of the Front Beach Road Community Redevelopment Area Plan, which was established in 2001 with the goal of installing improved amenities such as sidewalks, improved lighting, new street signs and streetcar tracks along Front Beach Road and the surrounding area streets. connecting roads.

Segment 3 also includes reconstruction of Front Beach Road west of South Arnold Drive to approximately Lullwater Drive, as well as along South Arnold Drive from Front Beach Road to Panama City Beach Parkway (Back Beach Road).

The Corradino Group manages the CRA for Panama City Beach.

“My company adopted this program from the city about two years ago, and one of the things we were hired to do was improve project delivery,” he said. “There are a lot of issues that we had to work through. The project didn’t go the way I think the city wanted, so they hired an outside company.

“We listen to people. We are working on these challenges. It is impossible to do this kind of work and not have a (traffic) impact, but we are doing our best to … deliver the project within the agreed time and within the budgets.”

In addition to Segment 3, which Passmore expects to be largely completed by the end of next year, he hopes the city will also begin construction on three other CRA segments in 2025.

The first two, expected to break ground in early 2025, are:

Segment 4.1, which will reconstruct Front Beach Road east of Lullwater Drive to approximately Hills Road.
Segment 4.2, which was reconstructed on Front Beach Road east of Hills Road to approximately Lantana Street.

The third is Segment 4.3, which Passmore hopes to break ground by the end of 2025. It will reconstruct Front Beach Road from Hutchinson Boulevard to approximately Richard Jackson Boulevard.

All three future segments are projects with a duration of approximately four years, meaning that their construction is expected to be completed around 2030. They are also the only remaining Front Beach Road segments in the CRA.

“The projects on Front Beach are complicated, difficult projects,” Passmore said. “They won’t happen in a year or a year and a half like everyone would like. It will be a multi-year effort with impact.”

In addition to the three Front Beach Road segments, PCB has a few other connector road projects that need to be completed before the CRA is done. This involves the reconstruction of Powell Adams Road, Hills Road and Alf Coleman Road.

The Powell Adams Road project is expected to be completed within the duration of segments 4.1 and 4.2. Construction on the Hills Road project is expected to begin around 2027. The Alf Coleman Road project is expected to begin construction around 2031.

Segment 3: Panama City Beach is completing the roundabout and reopening lanes at South Arnold and Alf Coleman roads

As of May 1, Passmore had no timeline for when work on Hills Road and Alf Coleman Road could be completed.

“I’m not going to tell you that unexpected things won’t happen,” Passmore said. “There’s no way to predict everything (the city) will encounter. We do our best to plan, but I can’t tell you any project I’ve ever worked on didn’t have those kinds of challenges.

“Our job is to manage it, mitigate it and communicate it, and I think we’ve tried to do the best we can.”

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