Indialantic's Boardwalk Redesign: Sea Turtle Input and No Construction Funding Identified
October 1, 2026
October 1, 2026
"A funding source has not been identified."
That line sits at the bottom of the Town of Indialantic's own page for the Fifth Avenue boardwalk redesign, right under renderings of a walkway that doesn't exist yet. It's a plain, candid summary of where this project stands after two years of meetings, one contracted design firm, and a public open house.
Anyone who's walked past Java Surf to check the swell at the Indialantic Boardwalk, grabbed a smash burger at Boardwalk Bar & Grill on Miramar, or let a kid loose at the Mikey Goodwin Playground already knows this stretch by feel. Nance Park runs about five acres along 700 linear feet of shore, with restrooms, a pavilion, and metered parking at the north end. The boardwalk itself spans roughly five blocks from Fifth Avenue to the water. None of that has changed. What's changed is what the town wants it to look like next, and how long it has taken for the proposal to reach this stage.
As Fox 35 Orlando reported, the town first floated a redesign in the fall of 2024. Mayor Mark McDermott brought in planners who pitched a wider seaside sidewalk, more points of nature access, and even a skate park, framing it as a gathering space where people could exercise, eat, or just sit. Residents at that meeting weren't sold. Councilmember Carrie Foy said she wanted a boardwalk that was "something that the residents want," not something handed to them. Boardwalk business owner Emre Uralli asked the question that would end up mattering most: "Where do we park?" Former mayor Dave Berkman went further, telling the council flatly that they weren't being good stewards of money.
The vote that night sent the whole thing back to the drawing board. The planning firm that presented wasn't hired. No budget existed, and the council didn't pretend otherwise.
The project picked back up in the spring of 2025. At the May 14, 2025 council meeting, Mayor McDermott reported that he and the town manager had interviewed two design firms and were recommending Land Design. The council approved a contract not to exceed $35,000, unanimously, with almost none of the friction of the previous year. That same meeting, a councilmember raised the idea of folding in a resident request for a skate ramp and pairing it with planned improvements at Sunrise Park, suggesting the town was already thinking bigger than just the boardwalk itself.
By September 2025, the mayor told the council he felt the latest project meeting had gone well and expected Land Design to return with plan options for a similar public session by the end of September or October. That timeline slipped. The open house didn't happen until December, and the vision boards from that session weren't posted publicly on the town's website until January 12, 2026, about fourteen months after the original plan got sent back for revision.
The plan that came out of that December session keeps some things untouched and reshapes others. The Mikey Goodwin Playground stays exactly where it is. Everything around it changes.
At Nance Park, the vision includes:
Along Wavecrest, the plan calls for a boardwalk running the full length of the street, built around the existing sea grapes to protect dune integrity, and elevated so nesting sea turtles can still pass beneath it. That detail came from direct input by the Sea Turtle Preservation Society, who the town says will keep advising if the project moves forward. New entrance plazas are planned at the Fifth Avenue crossing and at each side street connecting A1A to the boardwalk. Pavers would replace pavement in non-traffic zones to improve stormwater permeability, alongside bioswales and rain gardens, all of it subject to Florida Department of Environmental Protection review and consultation with the town's own Sustainability Board.
It's a comprehensive concept. The town's own language makes that clear, noting on the project page that these aren't final drawings but that major changes are unlikely unless council or residents push in a different direction.
The plan's treatment of parking is notable. Uralli's question, "Where do we park?", never got a direct answer. Instead, the new plan consolidates parking to make room for the event lawn, meaning the design choice this time is fewer spaces, not more. Whether that trade reads as an improvement or a repeat of the original concern probably depends on whether you're the one circling the block on a Saturday in season.
The funding gap hasn't moved either. The town paid $35,000 for a design. It hasn't identified a dollar for construction. That's not a criticism of the process so much as a description of where it sits: a fully rendered vision with no line item behind it, sitting on a government web page next to a note that says exactly that.
Nothing about the current renderings is locked in. The town's own disclaimer says as much, and the record so far shows the project has progressed through several stages: a rejected pitch, a design contract, a slipped timeline, an open house, and now a public posting with an unresolved budget attached. Council meetings remain the place where that budget conversation would have to happen, and agendas get posted at indialantic.com before each one.
For now, the boardwalk everyone already knows, the one behind Java Surf with the workable swell and the five blocks of weathered wood, is still the one that exists.
If you keep an eye on what's changing in your own town, block by block, Krissy Knows tracks those local developments too. Let's Connect if you ever want to talk about what's changing along the Space Coast, boardwalk included.
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