Churchwell Drive CRA Complete – Road Opened Thursday

Churchwell Drive, the road that goes by the Panama City Beach Post Office connecting Middle Beach and Front Beach Roads was reopened Wednesday.

Construction began April 2007 and was completed ahead of schedule as it wasn’t slatted to be completed until mid summer 2008.

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Olive Garden to come to Pier Park

Press Release

More Reasons To Dine and Shop at Pier Park!
– Popular New Eateries and Stores Coming Soon –

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (April 14, 2008)- Simon Property Group, Inc. (NYSE:SPG), the country’s largest owner, developer and manager of high quality retail real estate, is pleased to announce more exciting concepts for its Pier Park development in Panama City Beach, Fla. today. Pier Park is a 900,000-square-foot open-air regional lifestyle center offering premiere retail, dining and entertainment choices located on 93 acres that covers land from Front Beach Road (at the City Pier) to the heavily traveled Highway 98 (Back Beach Road)

Baja Grill, Guy Harvey’s Island Grill, Olive Garden and Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge will enhance the already burgeoning roster of restaurants at Pier Park. In addition, Paradise Found will join nearly 40 other retailers that are already open for business.

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Housing Starts Lowest in 17 years

Housing starts, down almost 12% from February are the lowest they’ve been in 17 years.  With 947,000 starts, building permits were also down to 927,000, from 984,000 in February.

The nationwide foreclosure rate is up 57% from last March with nearly 235,000 homes hit with foreclosure filings last month alone.  Of this number, 51,393 homes were actually lost to foreclosure with “1 in every 538 households being affected by a filing in March.” (The Business Journal of Phoenix)

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Free Municipal Wifi in Panama City – Is Wired Mag Wrong?

Over the weekend I was reading a fascinating article in Wired Magazine that explained that although many may think the idea of free municipal-sponsored wifi networks was dead, it was actually becoming a reality any many large and small cities alike.

The idea came a couple of years ago, from google, to set up free city-wide wireless networks all across the country.  The idea, of course, came with much criticism and concern from the big tel-com companies out of fear they would eventually lose the market or become obsolete.  The cost would be offset by advertising.

I actually hadn’t heard much about it is a while, but apparently San Francisco (the pioneer city), Chicago, and Atlanta just to name a few are in the process of getting this.  In addition, Cupertino, CA, Athens, GA, and Ft. Lauderdale are up and running.  Can any of our readers in these area verify this and give us feedback as to how this works?

I was surprised to see that among the “little” cities that was functioning was Panama City with a mark on the map to verify its location.  I like to consider myself somewhat on the up-and-up, but I stay busy so maybe I missed something.  I called around to the City of Panama City, the City of Panama City Beach, Callway and Lynn Haven, and all of them answered the question with a pause and a belittling “no, I mean, we have a router in city hall, but I don’t think it will go across the whole city.”

After doing a little research, I found cnet.com had a map that supposedly shows all the municipalities that offer free wifi city-wide.  Panama City is on that map too.

Interesting.  I wonder where they are getting their information.

Wired pdf map.

Destin property owners refuting beach renourishment?

An article in the News Herald this morning reported on a case before the Florida Supreme Court addressing the Walton County beach renourishment efforts. As the article reads, property owners are suing to prevent this and it may cause renourishment efforts to be their responsibility when they want to do it and how much effort/money they want to put into it.

The argument is that it may be the “unconstitutional taking of private property from beach-front homeowners.” Am I reading this wrong? Beach renourishment, in my opinion is a great thing for the property owners. As a property owner on the beach, why would I not want this? If I had 100 feet of beach in between my home and the water, and now I had 50 feet, I would want back that extra 50 feet.

I know the beach restoration project in Walton County has had problems in the past, with concerns of the sea turtle nests.

As reported, if the renourishment is found unconstitutional, the property owners would have the responsibility to cover the restoration costs.

Have we hit bottom?

Has the real estate market nationwide hit bottom?  I hear Realtors all the time say that business is picking up for them.  In addition, I was looking through the New York Times Real Estate section, and not one article in the  18+ articles posted was negative.  Not one article was telling of how we are all doomed to suffer endless real estate woes for the next million years or that prices have dropped again for the umpteenth time.

The National Association of Realtors is predicting a “notable improvement” in the real estate market in the second half of 2008. Lawrence Yun, cheif economist for the NAR, said “Existing home sales could start to show a sustained increase within a few months, unless there are some additional economic problems or excessive inflationary pressure,” he said.  “We’re looking for essentially stable sales in the near term, before higher mortgage loan limits translate into more sales in high-cost markets.  The wider access to affordable credit should increase sales activity notably this summer as pent-up demand begins to be met.”

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