PANAMA CITY BEACH — A contract has been awarded for improvements to Alf Coleman Road that are expected to be done by Spring Break.
The City Council has awarded the $190,155 contract to GAC Contractors and a $5,000 contingency fund to resurface the road, build new sidewalks and extend a left turn lane.
“Most of the road has all kind of deterioration, sediment cracks,” said Community Redevelopment Area Manager John Alaghemand.
The project involves extending the left turn lane from Alf Coleman onto Hutchinson Boulevard by 150 feet.
That will help traffic move through the busy road, Alaghemand said.
“It will provide more storage for the left turn lane,” he said, adding that traffic backs up when there when a lot of cars are trying to turn. “By extending it, it will allow more stacking for the left turn, and also obviously by doing that you are separating the through traffic. That would improve the operation of the intersection.”
Currently, the sidewalk ends abruptly in front of Stone Harbor Apartments.
The work, which is expected to be completed by March, will involve building a sidewalk on that eastern side of the two-lane road from Back Beach Road to Hutchinson Boulevard, Alaghemand said.
Donna Menchaca, the manager of Stone Harbor Apartments, said the improvements are “awesome,” and she hopes they help drainage, which is a serious problem there.
She said the new sidewalk is particularly good news in the wake of a fatal pedestrian accident last year near the entrance to the complex.
In July, 21-year-old Yuxin Gou of Panama City Beach was walking along the edge of Alf Coleman Road when he was struck and killed. The Florida Highway Patrol said Justin Charles Krupa, 35, Panama City Beach , was driving southbound on Alf Coleman Road when the front passenger-side corner of his 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe struck Gou.
“As long as I’ve been here they have needed to do something with the road,” said Menchaca, who has been manager for three years. “It is extremely dangerous.”
A sidewalk is not planned initially to be built on the western side of the street where Gou was killed, but it is in the plans for a four-laning project of the road that is associated with the Panama City Beach Community Redevelopment Agency’s ongoing improvements to Front Beach Road and feeder streets.
“Eventually, (Alf Coleman) will be four-laned,” Alaghemand said. “I’d call this current project a ‘temporary improvement’ until we do the actual four-lane improvements similar to Richard Jackson Boulevard. Like other CRA projects, Alf Coleman will have sidewalks on both sides, underground utilities, street lighting.”
He couldn’t give a timeframe for the four-laning project on Alf Coleman to begin.
“I can’t do that at this time because of the funding constraints,” Alaghemand said. “It is not at the top of our list, per se. We’re focusing more on Front Beach Road at this time,but we’ll eventually do that as well. We’ve acquired some right of way for that project and the design on that is also 70 percent complete.”