Bay Bluffs Park could reopen in January 2027.
The popular city park was closed in March 2023 after the boardwalks that navigate the steep bluffs were declared unsafe.
Last year, Conservation Florida and the city of Pensacola were awarded $2.2 million from the Florida Legislature through a Florida Department of Environmental Protection grant. It’s taken several months to route the grant through the DEP bureaucracy, but the project now has a proposed timeline.
Under the proposed timeline, community engagement, planning, and design of what will be done at Bay Bluffs Park with the $2.2 million could begin as soon as March and wrap up by September. The city will spend the rest of 2025 to seek bids and hire a construction firm. Construction will begin in January 2026, and the park will be ready to reopen to the public in January 2027.
The proposed timeline was included in backup material given to the City Council this week with the caveat that the timeline is subject to change.
The City Council is set to vote on a resolution endorsing the partnership with Conservation Florida and authorize the mayor to execute the DEP grant. The grant agreement is expected to be finalized by the end of February.
“There’s not a lot of tangible development in terms of what’s going to go where, and all of that, but this is that step to be able to get those funds released,” Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves said of the resolution he’s sending to the Council.
Under the partnership with Conservation Florida, the 22.5-acre Bay Bluffs Park will be prohibited from ever being sold or developed and will remain a nature park.
The $2.2 million will be used to remove the failing boardwalk and likely replace most of the boardwalk with nature trails instead. The funding request submitted to the Legislature last year called for the funds to be used to remove the boardwalk and create trails around the bluffs.
The city plans to hold community engagement sessions “to ensure Bay Bluffs Park meets the needs and expectations of residents and visitors,” according to a summary of the project given to the City Council.
Bay Bluff Park origins
Today, Bay Bluffs Park boardwalk covers only a small portion of the nearly 59 acres of contiguous city-owned and state-owned land managed by the city that preserves the geologic feature Escambia Bay Bluffs.
The bluffs are eroded cliff faces of sand and red clay, rare for this part of the Gulf Coast. As far back as the 1750s the clay of the Bluffs had been mined to make bricks and pottery. Some of the bricks in Fort Pickens came out of the Bluffs.
In 1982, the city bought a 22.5-acre property that would become the core of Bay Bluffs Park, where the boardwalk would be built.
The boardwalk was built over a year and opened to the public in September 1984.
Since the Bay Bluffs Park opened, it was immediately popular with residents but also immediately became a source of consternation for city and law enforcement officials.
A month after the park opened, the News Journal ran an article about police struggling to get a handle on large groups of teenagers drinking and “engaging in illegal activities” at the Bluffs, as well as at Wayside Park.
By the 1990s, the Bluffs developed a seedier reputation after sunset as the number of arrests for prostitution and lewd behavior spiked.
The secluded nature of the park has also led to several instances of vandalism. It’s not uncommon to see graffiti on the boardwalk.
The wooded area is also prone to fires.
In 2001, just after the city finished a $200,000 repair of the boardwalk, a fire on the Bluffs destroyed several sections of the boardwalk resulting in the park being closed for several months and $30,000 worth of repairs.
In 2010, another fire damaged the boardwalk, leading to another $47,000 repair job.
Despite the vandalism and damage over the years, the Bluffs has remained a beloved spot for locals.
News Journal archives over the last 20 years are filled with dozens of citizen-led cleanup events of the park and nature preserve areas of the Bluffs.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola’s Bay Bluffs Park could reopen in January 2027