September 10, 2026
Walk Harrison Avenue on any weekday evening and the street doesn't announce anything. The sidewalks are wider than they used to be. The lighting is better. The landscaping along the storefronts looks less like an afterthought and more like it was actually planned. If you've lived in Panama City through the last few years, you've probably stopped noticing, the way you stop noticing a fresh coat of paint on your own house after the third week.
That's the thing about the news that broke on September 2. The City of Panama City announced that Harrison Avenue is one of four finalists statewide for the 2026 Great Places in Florida People's Choice Award, presented by the American Planning Association's Florida chapter. Voting runs through 4 p.m. Central on September 30, with the winner announced October 1. It reads like a fresh headline. What it's actually recognizing is a project that wrapped up ten months ago, back in November, mostly unremarked, on a street you've probably walked past a dozen times since without connecting the dots.
The Harrison Avenue Streetscapes Project ran from the Marina up to 6th Street, covering the historic corridor's full stretch, which runs roughly half a mile along St. Andrews Bay. It replaced sidewalks, added landscaping, and updated the underground utilities that most people never think about until something breaks. It finished last November, quietly, the way infrastructure projects usually do: no ribbon, no headline, just a street that suddenly handled more foot traffic without anyone slipping off a cracked curb.
City Manager Jonathan Hayes put it plainly when the award nomination came through: "Harrison Avenue represents the heart of our historic downtown and the resilience and community spirit of Panama City." That's a nice line for a press release. But the timing is the actual story. The street changed in 2025. Florida noticed in 2026. If you've been down there for Heard It on Harrison, the monthly first-Friday block party with live music and beer that's been running for years, you were walking on the finished product months before it had a name attached to it.
This isn't a corridor of empty storefronts waiting for someone to notice them. It's dense with specific businesses that have been building on each other for years, and the streetscape work just made them easier to get to on foot.
Main Street Antiques occupies 16,000 square feet across three floors, an operation big enough that first-time visitors are routinely surprised by how much building is behind a modest front door. A few blocks down, Baywitch trades in crystals and tea, Atelier Candle Bar runs pour-your-own workshops, and History Class Brewing Company pairs local beer with a deliberately nostalgic décor built around Bay County's past. For food, Bayou Joe's Marina & Grill and Harrison's Kitchen & Bar both work the waterfront angle from opposite ends of the price range, while El Weirdo Taco Pub keeps a rotating gallery of local art on its walls alongside the taco menu. The Bay County History Museum sits right on Harrison too, which means the street's own past is on display a few doors down from the businesses making its present.
The clearest example of what's changing under the surface is the Mashburn Building. It used to house Chavers-Fowhand Furniture Store, and the massive cascading sign that once marked the storefront was eventually bought by a local collector who used it to store classic cars. Today the same four-story, 27,000-square-foot structure is being converted into 18 industrial-style residential lofts alongside co-working space and a restaurant. It's named for Jack Mashburn, who was elected to the Florida House at 22 and helped create the first park for Black beachgoers in the South at St. Andrews State Park, a stand that cost him his seat a full year before Brown v. Board of Education. He's remembered for saying he did what his father told him was right, regardless of the consequences. That's not a footnote you'd expect to find behind a loft conversion, but it's exactly the kind of layered history that makes Harrison Avenue's award nomination feel earned rather than promotional.
The street's momentum isn't limited to storefronts. It shows up in the fall calendar residents already half-know by heart, except this year it's happening on pavement that didn't exist in this form twelve months ago.
Downtown's 38th Annual Oktoberfest Weekend runs September 25 and 26. Friday from 5 to 9 p.m. is the Volksmarch, a self-paced pub stroll where you get a passport stamped at each stop for a shot at a prize basket. The stops this year include:
Saturday the entertainment shifts to Harrison Avenue itself, from East 5th Street to Beach Drive, with the main stage set up on the lawn of the Panama City Center for the Arts at 19 East 4th Street.
That same building turns over almost immediately into Fright Nights, the Bay Arts Alliance's month-long haunted house tradition that has run every October for the past several years, complete with a walking tour through downtown's ghost stories and proceeds that go toward the group's stated mission of putting art on every corner downtown.
None of these events are new. What's new is the street they're happening on, and how few people walking through them this September have actually clocked that the sidewalks under their feet are the thing currently up for a statewide vote.
A few blocks over, the same pattern is playing out on a smaller scale. Millville Waterfront Park sits on 4.2 acres overlooking Watson Bayou, land the city's Community Redevelopment Agency purchased back in 2008. A fishing pier went in during 2013. Full development didn't start until 2023, and the ribbon-cutting on the finished $1.3 million project happened this past July 14. Today it has walking paths, a playground, an amphitheater, covered picnic areas, pergola swings, a bike repair station, and a pet waste station, all sitting on a piece of waterfront that most residents outside Millville had never had a reason to visit before this year.
Same story as Harrison Avenue: money spent, work finished, and the public catching up to what the money bought after the fact. Panama City has apparently been quietly rebuilding pieces of itself all at once, and the state-level attention on Harrison Avenue is just the most visible thread to pull.
If you want to weigh in before the September 30 deadline, the vote allows one entry per day, and the winner gets announced October 1. Whether or not Harrison Avenue takes the title, the street it's competing on isn't the one that existed two years ago.
Keeping track of what's actually changing in Panama City, block by block, is part of how Coastal Heritage Realty stays useful to the people who already live here, not just the ones thinking about it. If you're curious what else is shifting in your corner of the Emerald Coast, or you'd simply like to talk shop about a street you love, Schedule Your Complimentary Consultation with our team.
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.