Aaron Bessant Park Improvements Workshop Date Set

In a city commission meeting yesterday, a date for the first public workshop was set to discuss the improvements slated to be made to Aaron Bessant Park in Panama City Beach. The park improvements were voted on and approved to begin planning at the last commission meeting. Originally, three members of the commission voted for and two members voted against the improvements. The tension from the disagreement seemed to be present at yesterday’s meeting.

An accelerated schedule

Panama City Beach City Manager Richard Jackson presented what was later dubbed an “accelerated schedule” for project construction and completion. The schedule included awarding the construction contract in October and beginning development in November. The goal, in the schedule, is to be complete and ready for the Seabreeze Jazz Festival in April.

Details about the park improvements

60′x40′ amphitheater with permanent roof and walls suitable for theatrical productions, orchestral performances and musical events
Expanded amphitheater lawn area (see diagram below
Vegetative buffers around the parameter to prevent the need for temporary fencing
The Festival Lawn (the sandy area that’s used as overflow and vedor parking behind the park) will be improved to the quality of Frank Brown Park’s festival area
This area will support parking, play fields, and will have sod and irrigation
Additional bathroom facilities

Information about the public workshop

The public workshop is an opportunity for your voice to be heard. The intention is to hear feedback from community residents and interested parties to get feedback on the project, it’s future use, implementation and development. I would urge anyone that is planning on going, not to go with the intention of stopping this project. The point is to get public feedback, and if you come with your argumentative hat on, your input will be difficult to hear.

The workshop will be held on Wednesday August 31, 2011 at 6 pm.

The issues on the agenda to discuss at the workshop:

These are bullet points provided from Panama City Beach City Manager Richard Jackson.

FCT (Florida Communities Trust) Management plan and their view of “passive park”
Parking
Access
Soccer fields
Number of bathrooms
Long term maintenance responsibility and cost
Environmental respect for Lullwater Lake (wetland)
Sound attenuation
Operational Standards
Traffic
Pedestrian access
Lighting

Opinion

I have an opinion on this development, as well as the new Walmart development, as I know many of our readers do. You can read it here.

Sheltair Opens FBO at the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport

This summer, Sheltair opened it’s FBO (short for fixed base operations) at the new Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport. They are the only FBO at the new airport, and they also operated an FBO at the old Panama City Airport (PFN).

“We are so thrilled to have opened our beautiful, new facility in order to better serve our based, as well as transient customers in the Florida panhandle,” said Danny Walsh, Vice President of Aviation at Sheltair, “This location is truly one of the flagship FBO’s in our network and will now be a gateway for many to some of the most gorgeous beaches and scenery that this state has to offer.”

What is an FBO

An FBO is a Fixed Base Operator that provides aeronautical services at commercial airports. The Federal Aviation Administration defines an FBO as A commercial business granted the right by the airport sponsor to operate on an airport and provide aeronautical services such as fueling, hangaring, tie-down and parking, aircraft rental, aircraft maintenance, flight instruction, etc..

In other words, if you’re a private pilot or a member of the general aviation community, you would use this new facility to come and go from the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport.

About the new facility

Sheltair had been operating at the new Panama City Beach airport out of a temporary space on the airfield, but they just moved into their new 5,000 square foot facility end of July. The building was build to LEED Certification standards and is currently in the approval process with the U.S. Green Building Council.

Some of the amenities at the new facility include:

Spacious passenger lobby
Conference room
Pilots lounge
Flight planning and weather room
Complimentary interior cleaning
Catering
Crew cars
Cafeteria/vending area
Complimentary refreshments/snacks
Wireless Internet

In addition to the main building, Sheltair also offers 1,680 square feet of office rental space and a 9,100 square foot hangar that’s available for lease.

For more information about Sheltair, visit SheltairAviation.com

More pictures

Powell Adams Walmart is Official

In a meeting this morning with Mel Leonard, the Planning Director for Panama City Beach, it was confirmed that a new Walmart coming is official. The location will be at the corner of Powell Adams Road and Panama City Beach Parkway (Back Beach Road) and the store size will be 156,000 square feet, roughly 70% the size of the existing Panama City Beach Walmart Supercenter.

At this point, the type of store this will be is just speculation. Although it has been said that this will be a higher-end store that would better compete with Target than the current Super Center.

Recently a new Walmart store was opened on the west end of South Walton County. I personally suspect the new Panama City Beach store would be similar to this one.

Improvements to Powell Adams Road

In order to get approval for construction of a new place of business this size, an extensive traffic study had to be completed. As a result of the traffic study, Walmart is required to pay for the infrastructure improvements that are needed in order for this area to handle the increased load that will come.

Improvements include:

Powell Adams Road widened to 4 lanes with center turn lane (5 lanes total)
Widening to be taken 1700 feet down Powell Adams from PCB Pkwy
PCB Pkwy and Powell Adams Road intersection to be signalized
Three PCB Pkwy entrance points into plaza

CRA-grade improvements to Powell Adams

The part where Panama City Beach (and us as residents) come out on top is that Walmart has agreed to “over-improve” Powell Adams Road to the same standard as R Jackson Blvd and Churchwell Road.

Improvements that come with this “over-improvement” include:

Sidewalks
Curbs
Underground utilities (a huge added bonus)
Landscaping
Street lights

The requirement for construction doesn’t include many of these aesthetic improvements, but the city has agreed to reimburse Walmart up to $790k for adding those improvements in their infrastructure construction.

The CRA would have done this eventually, and will finish off Powell Adams Road on down the road, but for now, we’ll get an upgraded roadway for a fraction of the cost it would normally be.

Development timeline

At this point, a concrete start date on construction has not been set, but officials are optimistic (and on target for) a construction start date of spring of 2012 with a projected open date of spring 2013.

Keep the comments coming, they’re read

Past articles on this subject have resulted in a very lively discussion. I can assure you that our local officials read PCBDaily and read the comments. Keep ’em coming.

Walmart to Pay for Expanded Powell Adams Road

Although final plans or a formal commitment for a new Walmart has not been made, an agreement between the Panama City Beach CRA and Walmart has been made for them to pay for road improvements.

The Panama City Beach CRA, or Community Redevelopment Area is a mechanism by which our local roads and infrastructure are being improved over time to look better, be more beautiful and to better handle increased load and demand. Past CRA projects include the Churchwell road improvements, R Jackson Blvd improvements and the currently ongoing South Thomas Drive improvements.

The Powell Adams improvements include all the treatments you’d find in a normal CRA project, including underground utilities, sidewalks, street lights and landscaping. In addition, of course, the road way will be widened to four lanes. The improvements are projected to be around $2 million.

The CRA had existing plans to treat Powell Adams road, but it was several projects away – the CRA is working it’s way west from it’s current development location. This agreement with Walmart stipulates that they will pay for the improvements and the CRA will reimburse them at a later date. By doing the improvements this way, the City is expected to save almost $500k.

There is no expected start date just yet, but you can expect more information on this in the coming weeks from us.

This topic has created a very lively discussion on our other post, how do you feel about this improvement now?

City Moving Forward with Aaron Bessant Park Improvements [Amphitheater]

Looks like the improvements we were discussing for Aaron Bessant Park are, indeed, coming. Last week in a city council meeting, an “inter-local” agreement with Bay County was agreed upon to allow the City of Panama City Beach to take the lead on planning and development of this project. Although two of the council members were adamantly opposed to the improvements, there was still an affirmative majority vote – 3 to 2.

All the improvements could include:

60′x40′ amphitheater with permanent roof and walls suitable for theatrical productions, orchestral performances and musical events
Expanded amphitheater lawn area (see diagram below
Vegetative buffers around the parameter to prevent the need for temporary fencing
The Festival Lawn (the sandy area that’s used as overflow and vedor parking behind the park) will be improved to the quality of Frank Brown Park’s festival area
This area will support parking, play fields, and will have sod and irrigation
Additional bathroom facilities

At this point, the exact plans have not been decided upon. The structure in a previous post is just a proposed idea. The agreement that came to pass in the city council meeting just grants the City the ability to spearhead the planning of the new project.

The next step will bring plans and workshops before the final proposal and approval process.

New Amphitheater coming to Aaron Bessant Park

Improvements to Aaron Bessant park have been in the works for a few months. In fact, talks of improvements have been going on for years, but money has always been a challenge. This year, BP money in excess of $1 million, will help make park improvements a reality, and last week the Panama City Beach City Council approved the improvements.

Improvements include a new, larger amphitheater.

The new improvements will be a welcome addition to a heavily used facility. Currently they have several large events there each year that requires spending 10’s of thousands of dollars on erected staging and equipment. The new facility will have a large covered stage, integrated electrical and a solid infrastructure to host events with a capacity of 10,000.

All the improvements include:

60’x40′ amphitheater with permanent roof and walls suitable for theatrical productions, orchestral performances and musical events
Expanded amphitheater lawn area (see diagram below
Vegetative buffers around the parameter to prevent the need for temporary fencing
The Festival Lawn (the sandy area that’s used as overflow and vedor parking behind the park) will be improved to the quality of Frank Brown Park’s festival area
This area will support parking, play fields, and will have sod and irrigation
Additional bathroom facilities

Renderings, conceptual and imagery

The teal boundary area is the existing sidewalk paths around the amphitheater area. The purple lines indicate the other sidewalk areas and paths that lead around the park. The black lines will be the new amphitheater lawn area.

This is a conceptual of what the amphitheater could look like. The final product will have a beachy feel and should be consisten with the look and feel of neighboring Pier Park. The stage area could be approximately 60 feet across and 40 feet deep offering 2,400 square feet of space. There will be permanent walls and roof.

This is an example of another amphitheater. Ours could look similar.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think this will bring more traffic problems to this area? Or do you think the improvements will be better for the community as a whole?

New Walmart in PCB?

A recent traffic study indicates there might be a new Walmart coming to Panama City Beach. The traffic study is said to be standard operating procedure when it comes to putting in a large retailer such as a Walmart. The goal is to get a better understanding of the local traffic, the ingress and egress environment and get a first blush analysis of if this would actually work.

The site that the study is focused around is the parcel of land directly across Powell Adams road from the Pier Park Target. The traffic study explores the addition of a light at that intersection and three full-access driveways.

The current Walmart is located at the crossroads of Front Beach Road, Middle Beach Road and South Thomas Drive. The current location has certainly become an epicenter, if you will, of tourism action. When that Walmart was built, there was nothing around it. Now, just to name a few items, there is a Ripley’s, Wonderworks, Walgreen’s, Backyard Burger, and tons of other places.

The existing location, according to public records, is 223,168 square foot. The new proposed building would be approximately 156,000 square feet – roughly 70% of the size.

What are you thoughts on this? Do you think this would boost the economical vitality of the west end / Pier Park area? Do you think this could damage Target or make it stronger? Do you think this smaller store would have a produce section and finally bring some grocery aspect to a near Pier Park location?

Grand Lagoon Bridge Opens TODAY!!

Ok, so it’s actually not quite as dramatic as the headline, but the new Grand Lagoon Bridge roadway is set to transfer traffic to the new bridge today. Construction is set to be complete by mid summer, and they are goaled at having the temporary bridge out of the way by then.

They started construction on the bridge back in October of 2009 and have largely stayed on schedule for the duration of the project.

The new bridge is 18 feet at it’s center, up from 10 feet on the previous bridge. This huge for local Grand Lagoon residents since it not only opens up the lagoon for better circulation, it also allows larger boats to pass under it.

The bridge was funded by grants and the 2009 Economic Stimulus Fund.

Dune Buggy Park is OPEN

We first told you about the dune buggy adventure park coming about a year ago. We followed up a couple weeks ago to find that it was opening last Friday. Well, now it’s open – at least the dune buggy part. The rest opens in phases over the next 8 weeks.

So I’m sure you’re dying to know all about my driving adventure, right?

Continue reading “Dune Buggy Park is OPEN” →

New Dune Buggy Adventure Park to Open This Week [PICS]

Remember last summer when we were talking about a really cool new attraction in Panama City Beach, Panama Dunes? We were marveling the novelty of having a Dune Buggy track that was accompanied by other adventuresome attractions. Well, they’re opening this week.

Originally they had planned on opening last summer, then it got moved to Labor Day, then put off until this week. The setbacks were related to a variety of things that come up when building something that’s never been done before, and the winter hiatus was to ensure a strong start with the 2011 tourism season. But, with the winter months put aside for planning, the owners decided to launch their grand opening with a huge BANG with much more to offer then they had originally planned.

Continue reading “New Dune Buggy Adventure Park to Open This Week [PICS]” →