CLEARWATER, Fla. — Clearwater’s beach walk is getting some major renovations.
“The project itself is really a refurbishment or a renovation of beach walk that’s been here for 14 years,” said Art Kader, Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Clearwater.
The project kicked off on Dec. 5 and includes fixing and cleaning all areas of the concrete and outdoor showers, cleaning seat walls, making repairs to light fixtures, updating landscaping, and adding a sealant on top of the walking path to protect it.
“It’s broken out into 18 different sections. As you can imagine, this is a huge project and what has to happen is we have to do it in small sections. That way, we don’t interfere with the businesses, the hotels that are here,” said Kader.
The first section of the beach walk that will close is on the south end of Clearwater Beach, working towards Pier 60.
Beach access will remain open at all times, and the city will work to make sure people can get around the areas of beach walk that are closed during construction.
“Pedestrians may come, and if you know, beach walk is on both sides of Gulf View here, and so at times when we block off portions of the east side, we’ll route the people to the west side,” said Kader.
Crews will temporarily halt construction during popular times like spring break.
Beach walk is a major attraction for the city, and leaders said updating this $1.3 project is an important investment.
“This has been an economic driver," Kader said. "When they built this in 2008, the vision was that it would be an economic driver for the City of Clearwater. And if you can look up and down all of these facilities, they’re all because, well, I won’t say it’s necessarily because of this, but it certainly did bring a lot of these major resorts."
The project is expected to take eight months to complete and should wrap up in August 2023.
For updates on which sections of the beach walk are closed, click here.
