Panama City Beach delays hire of manager for Front Beach Road development
PANAMA CITY BEACH — In an unexpected turn of events, local officials did not select a new firm on Thursday to manage the Front Beach Road Community Redevelopment Area Plan.
It was expected that the Panama City Beach City Council would choose in its Thursday meeting either DRMP or Panhandle Engineering to manage the extensive construction project that began in the early 2000s, but City Manager Drew Whitman suggested otherwise.
"I'd like to reject both of (their) bids," Whitman said during the meeting. "I'd like to reject them for one reason — I want more competition. I think there's more competition out there. ... I think it would be good for our city (and) definitely for our residents who have been living though this for the last 20 years.
"I'm not a man who likes to fail and I think we've failed in this area a couple of times, so more competition would be better in my eyes," he added.
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The two civil engineering firms that were under consideration, which were interviewed by the council during a December meeting, were the only two to apply for the job. DRMP is based in Orlando with an office in Panama City and Panhandle Engineering is based in Lynn Haven.
Adopted by the City Council in 2001, the CRA has a goal of installing upgraded features to Front Beach Road and surrounding roadways, including tram lanes, sidewalks, bicycle lanes, enhanced lighting, new street signs and landscaped medians.
In 2021, the council allocated about $40.6 million to the CRA fund for the 2022 fiscal year — a more than $19 million, or almost 90%, increase over 2021.
The project was previously led by CRA Manager David Campbell, who quit the job in December.
For Councilman Geoff McConnell, postponing the decision to give other firms more time to apply did not seem like a good idea, even though he had some concerns with the proposals from both DRMP and Panhandle Engineering.
McConnell was the only councilman to vote against Whitman's recommendation.
"What we need is one (person), or at the most two people ... just to be project management to bulldog this thing through," he said. "To delay this again makes me very concerned that it's going to delay the CRA project and it's going to increase our scale, our scope and our costs and that it's also going to put more burden on our staff.
"I think we already did our diligence with getting this out to bid and my preference is that we award it tonight so that we don't cause any further delays," McConnell added.
According to information from the meeting, it could be about two more months until a new CRA manager is hired.
Construction on the project will not stop in the meantime. It will just be temporarily managed by city staff members until a firm is selected.
"This is one of the most important projects that we have going on and I definitely want to get it right," Councilman Paul Casto said. "I agree with our manager. (There's) nothing wrong with the two firms that submitted. I would just like to see more firms and I think it's worth the two-month delay to make sure that we get some more competition."
This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Panama City Beach delays picking manager for Front Beach development
