For almost eight years, the end of 37th Street has been an unfinished sentence. The wooden pier that stood there since 1964, the one every Mexico Beach kid learned to fish off of, came down with the rest of town when Hurricane Michael hit in October 2018, as WJHG reported. Since then it's been a concrete stub and a chain-link gate, a spot locals still point to when they're giving directions even though there's nothing there to point at.
That changes this fall. In the first week of September, the city announced it had secured its U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit and that a $10 million FEMA funding package had entered its final two-week congressional notification phase. Three days later, on September 4, the city confirmed FEMA had officially promised the money, as WJHG reported. On its own website, the city summed up eight years of waiting in five words: "Here we go, Mexico Beach!"
What's coming isn't the same pier with fresh boards. It's a different structure built for a different kind of use, and understanding how it's different tells you more about what's ahead for that end of town than any groundbreaking ceremony will.
Why the Permit Took This Long
City Administrator Mell Smigielski has said the permit, not the money, was the hard part. State and federal rules protecting nesting sea turtles and shorebirds along this stretch of Gulf shoreline slowed the environmental review for years, long after the city had a design ready to build. That's worth sitting with if you've ever wondered why a project everyone in town wanted took the better part of a decade to get off the drawing board. The bottleneck wasn't political will or budget. It was working around a nesting season that doesn't care about anyone's timeline.
With the permit secured and FEMA having promised the funding, the sequence is straightforward. Once the two-week funding phase wraps up, construction starts at the end of 37th Street and runs for about a year.
The New Pier Fishes in Different Water
Here's the detail that matters more than the ribbon-cutting will: the new pier keeps its historic 840-foot length, but it's being moved 230 feet farther out into the Gulf. That shift changes the water it sits in. The old pier, worn down by decades of storms and two prior extensions, ended in water about 6 feet deep. The new one ends in water roughly 20 feet deep.
For anyone who fished the old pier, that's the difference between casting into a shallow trough and reaching the kind of depth that actually holds bigger fish through more of the season. It's also a structural decision, not just a fishing one. Deeper water off the end means less of the pier sits in the surf zone that did the most damage during Michael and every storm before it.
| Original Pier | New Pier | |
|---|---|---|
| Built | 1964 (wood) | Planned for 2026 |
| Length | 840 feet | 840 feet |
| Water depth at end | About 6 feet | About 20 feet |
| Distance from original footprint | — | 230 feet farther into the Gulf |
Same footprint on the sand. Different pier once you're standing at the end of it.
What This Means for the Rest of the Year on 37th Street
The practical part for anyone who lives nearby: traffic on 37th Street will be reduced to one lane for the duration of construction, since the road doubles as the storage yard for materials. A year is a long stretch to plan around, especially for anyone who uses that end of the street to reach the boat ramp, the beach access, or their own driveway.
It's a trade worth naming plainly rather than glossing over. A slower stretch of road for twelve months in exchange for getting back the town's gathering place. The town dedicated the site to former Mayor Al Cathey in 2025, before the funding came through.
The Season Around It
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Fall in Mexico Beach has its own rhythm, and this year it's playing out as plans for pier construction take shape. The city's own newsletter points residents back toward Music in the Park and the Farmers & Craft Market as the weather cools, the kind of recurring, unglamorous events that don't make headlines but structure a lot of weekends here.
The dining scene has shifted some too. Beach Bear Coastal opened this year as a scratch-made, fast-casual spot with 30-inch sourdough pizzas, wings, and local seafood, joining longer-running names like Mango Marley's and Killer Seafood in the rotation. Forgotten Coast Brewing Company has settled in as a regular stop on most locals' short lists, pairing its craft beer with pizza, tacos, and seafood dip. None of it displaces the old standbys. It just gives residents a few more places to end up on a Friday night as 37th Street prepares for a year of one-lane traffic.
What to Watch For
The city has said to expect more updates over the next few months as the funding phase closes out and construction planning firms up. For residents, the practical questions are the ones worth watching: when exactly the one-lane restriction starts, how it affects access to the boat ramp near the pier site, and whether the timeline holds through next year's nesting season without another delay.
What won't change is the shape of the thing everyone's been waiting for. It'll still be 840 feet of pier at the end of 37th Street, still the place where people who don't own boats go to fish, still named for former Mayor Al Cathey. It'll just end in water deep enough to make the wait worth something.
If you've been watching this stretch of town change since Michael, and you're weighing what it means for a property nearby or just curious how projects like this tend to move local value over time, The Burkett Team has been tracking Mexico Beach and the rest of the Forgotten Coast through all of it. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's actually happening on the ground here.
