Panama City Beach is making slow progress on Front Beach Road CRA. About 6 projects left

PANAMA CITY BEACH — The Beach continues to make progress on a comprehensive roadway 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 during April to allow for the construction of a median.

The lanes originally were slated to have alternating closures that would last for about two days each, limiting the flow of traffic in the area for a total of four days. However, crews were able to complete the entire median in two days.

"We had to detour traffic ... to get the median work completed just north of the roundabout," Passmore said. "We split (the closures) one at a time. 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) diverted to Innocente down to Carmen."

The roundabout opened earlier this year. It was built as part of ongoing Segment 3 of the Front Beach Road Community Redevelopment Area Plan, which was formed in 2001 with the goal of installing upgraded features such as sidewalks, improved lighting, new street signs and tram lanes along Front Beach Road and its connecting roadways.

Segment 3 also includes the reconstruction of Front Beach Road west of South Arnold Drive to about 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 firm took this program over about two years ago from the city, and one of the things we were hired to do was to improve project delivery," he said. "There's a lot of issues that we've had to work through. The project was not progressing the way that I think the city wanted, which was why they hired an outside firm.

"We're listening to people. We're working through these challenges. It's impossible to do this kind of work and have no (traffic) impact, but we are doing our best to ... deliver the project within the time commitments and within the budgets."

Along with Segment 3, which Passmore expects to be mostly complete by the end of next year, he hopes for the city to also begin construction on three other CRA segments in 2025.

The first two, which are slated to break ground toward the beginning of 2025, are:

• Segment 4.1, which will reconstruct Front Beach Road east of Lullwater Drive to about Hills Road.

• Segment 4.2, which was reconstruct Front Beach Road east of Hills Road to about Lantana Street.

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

All three future segments are approximately four-year projects, meaning their construction is projected to be complete by about 2030. They also are the only remaining Front Beach Road segments in the CRA.

"The projects on Front Beach (are) complicated, difficult projects," Passmore said. "They don't happen in a year or year and a half like everybody would like. They are going to be a multi-year effort of impacts."

Apart from the three Front Beach Road segments, PCB has a few other connector road projects it must finish before the CRA is a wrap. They involve the reconstruction of Powell Adams Road, Hills Road and Alf Coleman Road.

The Powell Adams Road project is scheduled to be complete within the duration of segments 4.1 and 4.2. The Hills Road project is estimated to begin construction in about 2027. The Alf Coleman Road project is estimated to begin construction in about 2031.

Segment 3: Panama City Beach finishes roundabout, reopens lanes on South Arnold and Alf Coleman roads

As of May 1, Passmore did not have a timeline for when work on Hills Road and Alf Coleman Road might be complete.

"I won't tell you that there won't be things that happen that are unanticipated," Passmore said. "There is no way ... to predict every single thing that (the city) will encounter. ... We do the best we can to plan, but I can't tell you a project that I've ever worked on that didn't have those kinds of challenges.

"Our job is to manage it, to mitigate it and to communicate it, and I think we've tried to do our best."

This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Panama City Beach is making slow progress on Front Beach Road CRA