$8.3 million low bid submitted for Navarre Beach Boardwalk, public workshop scheduled for Oct. 19
Santa Rosa County has received a low bid of more than $8.3 million for the proposed Navarre Beach Boardwalk, a project that has dominated public comment at county meetings for nearly a month.
Crucible Construction of Spanish Fort, Alabama, submitted the lowest responsive bid at $8,321,183. County officials unsealed three bids for the project Sept. 17.
Now, residents will have another opportunity to weigh in on the proposal. The Santa Rosa County Commission has scheduled a public workshop for 6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 19, at the Santa Rosa County Administrative Building in Milton.
No board action will be taken at the workshop.
The plan includes an elevated building with event space, along with a boardwalk on the beach. The proposal also includes a parking lot and restrooms.
County officials first moved forward with a task order for the project on Sept. 25, 2025. Almost a year later, the bidding process began. The county held a pre-bid meeting on Aug. 13 in Milton.
Breaking down Crucible Construction’s bid, the event hall, which covers the hall itself along with the boardwalk and stairs, will cost $5,127,608, with the parking lot and restroom adding another $3.188 million. A building permit, which can change over the course of development, costs $5,000 per permit.
The other bids: Empire Builders Group of Pensacola submitted a bid of $9,458,466.66, while Green-Simmons Company, also based in Pensacola, submitted the highest bid package at $9,836,748.
Assistant County Administrator Jared Lowe told a packed room at the Tiger Point Community Center on Aug. 25 during a commission workshop that there would be no board action until a potential contract comes back to the board.
The project was first brought up in 2019 before being put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussions then resumed in 2021.
Opposition to the project then began to pick up momentum, with two Change.org petitions calling for the county to scrap the project sitting at a combined 12,591 signatures as of Sept. 17.
One of the petitions came from Navarre Beach resident Erika Thomas, who said that the petition was born from residents believing they were not being heard by county officials.
At the Sept. 8 Board of County Commissioners meeting, Commissioner Ray Eddington, who represents the area and will leave office in November after losing the August primary to Dean Light, called residents opposed to the project “hypocrites and backstabbers” and suggested that they leave the county.
“A lot of y’all, and I put myself in the same spot, I caused some of this by moving here. Y’all caused it because y’all moved here. If you want to put it back like it was, move out of Santa Rosa County,” Eddington said at the Sept. 8 meeting.
The land where the proposed project would be located is county-owned and zoned for conservation and recreation, like the Navarre Beach Pier.