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The historic Tampa neighborhood of Palmetto Beach sits just above sea level and faced flooding during Hurricane Helene.
Now, a 25-million-dollar plan announced last year is facing new tweaks to get the neighborhood, located south of Ybor City, storm-ready.
The Pathways to Palmetto project was originally announced last summer.
It focuses on narrowing Bermuda Boulevard along McKay Bay, as well as adding sidewalks.
Crews would also reconstruct the seawall on McKay Bay.
Brandon Campbell is the Director of Transportation Services in Tampa.
The neighborhood, which a City of Tampa press release describes as underinvested, saw a storm surge of 7 and a half feet during hurricane Helene, and Campbell says the current seawall in the area is only around 5 feet.
“Even with a new seawall, if we built it exactly back as it is, we would have seen the water from Helene overtopping that,” Campbell told WMNF.
“That is causing us to reimagine the scope of the project and to see if there are possibilities for us to even increase the height of the existing seawall and what impacts that might have on the existing infrastructure and street network,”
Due to environmental review and design, Campbell says they’re still about three years from construction. He also says federal government reviews on construction funding have affected the project’s timeline “to an extent.”
A 2024 press release says projects of this scale can take up to five years to complete.
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