NAVARRE

What's coming to the newly renovated Navarre Park? Check out all the improvements.

Alex Miller
Pensacola News Journal

The wait is almost over for those who cherish the Navarre Park and have missed spending time there the park has been out of commission for well over a year.

The park will reopen April 30 with new playground equipment and renovated facilities, it will be continue to be improved upon through additional phases in the future.

"It feels fantastic. The families are so excited, and they've been so anxious to get it back open. And it's in a beautiful spot, it's a picturesque spot that everyone's going to enjoy for years and years and years to come," said Dave Piech, the Santa Rosa County commissioner representing the Navarre area.

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Navarre Park will open April 30 after more than a year of renovations.

Piech said some fencing still needs to be installed, but otherwise, this phase of the renovation is complete. In addition to playground equipment upgrades, the park will now feature a larger splash pad similar to Benny Russell Park in the Pace area.

More parking and bus spaces have also been added to the park, which is located at 8513 Navarre Parkway.

County Administrator DeVann Cook said the location originally started out as a "passive park" and featured items such as picnic tables and gazebos, and the county eventually installed playground equipment as well.

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"There has been a push for quite some time to really upgrade the park because it's kind of the entrance to Navarre Beach, if you will," Cook said.

"There used to be the Panhandle Butterfly House there and some things like that, but there wasn't very much parking, and so they decided to completely renovate the park. And so that's how they got where they are now with a whole new design."

The project's first phase was greenlit by the County Commission in 2020, but its construction timeline was then affected by Hurricane Sally, as well as a number of other difficulties most all projects have experienced in the past two years.

Navarre Park will open April 30 after more than a year of renovations.

"I don't want to say typical delays, but (there were) unanticipated delays at the start of the project," Piech said. "When you get going, there were supply chain issues. There were delays in getting the playground equipment, the splashpad equipment; labor shortages."

Piech said this phase cost about $3 million and was paid for through a combination of money from the Local Option Sales Tax, Tourist Development Office and district recreational funds.

Looking ahead, Piech said the next phase will include a memorial area with bricks from the original park, as well as some new picnicking and gazebo pavilions. He said he expects to bid the construction of phase two in the next 12 to 18 months.

"We used to have a basketball court and we took that out to put in bathrooms and more playground. So, part of looking at phase two and three I personally would like to see if I can work in at least a half-court basketball court park somewhere," Piech said. "There’s really not a whole lot of room for much more. But the citizens have said they enjoy that."

Cook said parks in the county — as a whole — have seen a surge in usage as of late, and he is pinning that on the growing population in Santa Rosa.

"With the tremendous growth in the Navarre area, it's not just used by people that are visitors, it's used a lot by people that live in the area, because that area is growing so fast," Cook said.