September 3, 2026
On a normal Saturday, Under the Oaks Park does not ask for much attention. Dog walkers loop the fitness trail under the live oaks it is named for. A handful of regulars work the disc golf course threaded between the trees. Someone is almost always parked on the fishing pier watching East Bay do its slow, tidal thing, and a canoe or two slides off the launch toward open water. The crowd is not made up of beach tourists working through a bucket list. It is Callaway, Springfield, and Parker itself, people who already know the park is there and use it the way you use a park you grew up near.
That is what makes April 18 worth noticing. Bay County Parks and Recreation launched a brand new event this year, a six-month Concerts in the Park series stretching from spring into fall, free to attend with food trucks parked at every stop. Of all the county's parks, the one chosen to open the series was not the boardwalk pier in Panama City Beach or a flagship complex in Panama City. It was Under the Oaks.
Bay County has no shortage of higher-profile venues for a countywide music series. There is the pier at M.B. Miller County Park on Front Beach Road, built for crowds and tourist foot traffic. There is Zollie Young Park in Panama City, which hosted the June stop. The series was designed to rotate through the county's parks over six months, closing out on September 19 at M.B. Miller County Pier, a location that makes sense as a season finale precisely because it can absorb a bigger audience.
Instead, the series opened at a park most people outside the east side of the bay have never had a reason to visit. County Commissioner Robert Carroll framed the whole initiative as a chance to put the parks system itself in front of residents, giving families a reason to treat these spaces as gathering points rather than just amenities on a map. Starting that effort at Under the Oaks rather than a bigger draw says something about how the county now weighs a small city park against its splashier neighbors. It put Parker first, not last.
Under the Oaks earned that spot the slow way, by already functioning as a real park rather than a pass-through green space. Sitting on East Bay just off Highway 98, near the bridge that carries traffic to Tyndall Air Force Base, it has spent years accumulating the kind of amenities that turn a park into a routine rather than a stop:
That disc golf course is worth a second look. It was not a pandemic-era add-on or a grant-funded afterthought. It has been there long enough to have a designer credit and a course rating on the sport's own review sites, integrated into the existing walking trails rather than bolted on separately. Under the Oaks was never an empty field waiting for a reason to matter. It already had one, several times over, before anyone plugged in a sound system.
Head down Highway 98 to US-98 Business and the mood changes completely. The Parker Sports Complex sits on 18 acres that the city spent roughly four years rebuilding after Hurricane Michael flattened the original facility in 2018. What reopened is a different kind of park entirely: four baseball fields anchored by a full concession stand, an open field built for soccer and football practice, two basketball courts, two tennis courts, and four outdoor pickleball courts that are free to use and cannot be reserved, so you show up and take your turn like everyone else.
The walking trail that circles the complex does double duty as a designated dog park, complete with waste stations, which is not a small detail if you have ever tried to find a place in Bay County where your dog can actually run off leash. Mayor Andrew Kelly has talked about the pickleball courts as the thing people ask about most, and about how often he stops by just to watch the dog park in action. It is the kind of park built for people who came for a specific activity: a league game, a pickup match, a dog that needs to move.
Line these two parks up and Parker's weekly rhythm starts to make sense in a way that a single park never could. Under the Oaks has always been the unstructured option: fishing, disc golf, a slow walk under the oak canopy, no schedule required. The Sports Complex has always been the structured one: a league night, a reserved tennis court, a dog that needs its trail. For most of the year, a resident picks one mood or the other, and the two parks rarely overlap on anyone's actual Saturday.
The concert series changes that math for at least one park. Under the Oaks now has a third register layered onto the quiet ones, a scheduled, countywide event that pulls in people who have never touched a disc golf basket or baited a hook. The season finale landing at M.B. Miller County Pier in September confirms this really is a countywide rotation and not a one-off favor to Parker. Which makes the choice to start there even more telling. Before this year, Under the Oaks was the park you went to because you already knew about it. Now it is also the park the rest of the county gets pointed toward first.
That is a small shift, but it is the kind of thing that changes how a place gets talked about. A park that used to run entirely on local knowledge now has a countywide spotlight attached to at least one date on its calendar, even if the fishing pier and the disc golf course go right back to running on local knowledge the rest of the year.
If you are already living near Under the Oaks or the Sports Complex, none of this requires you to do anything differently. Keep walking the dog, keep working the disc golf course, and check the county's parks calendar before the next concert date if live music at your local park sounds like a good way to spend a Saturday. And if you know someone who is weighing a move to this side of Bay County and wants a read on what daily life actually looks like here, that is exactly the kind of conversation Coastal Heritage Realty has all the time. Schedule Your Complimentary Consultation whenever you are ready to talk through it.
Buying or selling a home is a major milestone, and you deserve a team that truly listens and understands your needs. We take a personalized approach to every client, ensuring that your experience is smooth, stress-free, and successful.