After months of delay, Bay Bluffs Park is finally moving closer to reopening. Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves announced last week that the city and Conservation Florida have finalized a $2.2 million grant agreement with the state to fund long-anticipated improvements at the park.
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“We now have a grant agreement in hand," Reeves said at his weekly news conference, "... and our legal department has reviewed it.” He added: “The plan now is to get that agreement, supplemental budget resolution, and a draft site dedication in front of the City Council at the Sept. 11th meeting.”
Bay Bluffs, along Scenic Highway, has been the focus of repeated calls for a comprehensive fix. Reeves said the agreement clears the bottleneck that stalled progress.
“We’ve been waiting many, many months now for DEP and Conservation Florida to get all of their I’s dotted and T’s crossed,” he said.
In practical terms, the grant agreement is the contract that unlocks funding and sets expectations for how dollars are spent. The supplemental budget resolution allows the city to accept and allocate those funds. The site dedication outlines how the site will be used and protected over time. Together, the measures would move Bay Bluffs from promises to procurement and design, with decisions on access, amenities, and erosion control shaped by public feedback.
Reeves said outreach will be the focus once the council acts. He acknowledged frustration with the pace and said he shares it.
“There’s no one more impatient about getting Bay Bluffs Park done inside these city limits than me,” he said. “Whatever urgency you feel, add 10% and that’s the urgency I feel about getting Bay Bluffs Park up and going.”
The mayor did not preview design specifics, but his timeline sketches a clear sequence: council action in September; outreach and concept development; then engineering, permitting, and construction phases.
Reeves called the council action “our first and major tangible step,” to be followed by a public design process that will produce a long-term vision for the park.
