- May 12, 2026
When will Andy Romano Beachfront Park in Ormond Beach fully reopen to the public?
If work stays on track, city staff estimates construction at the park will be finished sometime in early August. There are three projects in various stages at the park. Two of them are related to the significant hurricane damage sustained in 2024: Repairing the seawall and the reconstruction of the beach ramp, at a combined cost of $2.5 million.
This is the city's priority project, said Assistant City Manager Shawn Finley.
"This has taken longer than we would have liked it to have taken, but our goal is to return Andy Romano to being the premier park, I think, in Volusia County. We want it to be safe and reliable, and we want to bring it back for everybody's enjoyment as quickly as we can."
When the seawall was damaged in Hurricane Milton, it was damaged to a point where it triggered a full rebuild, Finley said. Plus, that seawall wasn't constructed with the beachfront park, which opened in 2013. It dates back to around the '50s or '60s, he said, back when the property used to be a hotel.
"When you get over a certain threshold, you have to bring it up to the entirety of current building standards," Finley said. "That required a redesign and since we're we're working with FEMA and Department of Emergency Management — they are involved in the review of those plans — and that's what set us in the direction of taking what seems to be a longer time than any of us would like to be."
FEMA is also helping fund the new beach ramp. The city previously had a wooden ramp that ran parallel to the seawall, but during storms and high tide events, it was often damaged or impacted by erosion that rendered it inaccessible.
The new ramp will be made out of concrete and comply with ADA standards, Finley said.
"I think that that's going to be a major, major improvement to what's there," he said. "... We should never lose that ramp access again."
FEMA will be reimbursing the city about $2.3 million of the total combined project cost for the new seawall and beach ramp.
"It has been very frustrating the length of time to get Andy Romano back fully open," Zone 2 City Commissioner Travis Sargent said in a statement to the Observer. "I am confident the city is on the right path. An after action report is necessary to figure out what processes need to be adjusted to speed up repairing damaged city properties."
The third project in the works for Andy Romano is a new shade structure for the playground. That, Finley said, is more of a regular maintenance project, since the park opened 13 years ago.
"We're at the point where we should be putting some effort into keeping it nice and making some repairs to it," Finley said.
According to a city staff report from April about the project, the city will replace five shade structures at the park. The city budgeted $300,000 for the project in its current fiscal year, using dollars from its Facilities Renewal and Replacement fund.
The shade structure rehabilitation and replacement is out for bid. The park will not have to close for the installation of the shade structures.
Why is some of the parking blocked at Andy Romano?
Finley said the current contractor — Construct Co Inc., of Orlando — is using about a third of the parking lot as a staging area. The contractor is constructing the seawall segments offsite, and sometime next week, they will start bringing those segments and keeping them in the fenced-off area.
Once work begins to install the new segments, the contractor will open up more parking spaces, reducing the fenced-off staging area as summer progresses.
"I think they're going to work from south to north, and try and get those wall segments in there one after another, and hopefully knock it out pretty quick," Finley said.
The city is also not giving up on charging visitors parking fees at the park, in line with the county's ParkVolusia program, launched in January 2025.
Last August, the commission approved an amendment to its code of ordinances that will lead to a $20 fee to park at Andy Romano. Visitors will also be able to obtain an annual pass for $100.
But first, the city is hoping to have all construction projects complete. Finley said the city has met with the county twice in the last month to discuss a paid parking program.
"We're working through the logistics of the agreement between the city, the county as well as the vendor that was selected through the county's process," he said.
Like with ParkVolusia, residents will be able to park at Andy Romano for free.
If the seawall had been a simple repair, the current state of Andy Romano would be a "different story," Finley said.
A redesign and reconstruction of a complete seawall is a complex project. The city also had an issue with the first contractor it hired.
In March 2025, it awarded a $2.1 million contract to East Coast Marine Construction & Design, Inc. However, according to a city staff report, the contractor then raised questions about the project specifications and said they couldn't proceed under the contract terms.
They requested a change order of $818,000, which would have brought the project cost to almost $3 million.
The city chose to award the contract to its second-lowest bidder in January of this year, Construct Co. Inc. The City Commission approved a settlement and release of claims with the original contractor for $30,400, funds that had already been paid for work in October 2025.
Commissioners expressed frustration with the rebid at their meeting several months ago on Jan. 20.
"I'm very disappointed that this happened like this," Deputy Mayor Lori Tolland said at that meeting. "I'm not trying to point fingers at anything, but I think moving forward we try to avoid this at all costs."
Mayor Jason Leslie agreed.
"We have to get the park up and running," he said. "It's the busiest park in the city. "We're essentially going to be generating revenue on that property soon, so we don't want to hold that up either."
Though an amicable split, that contributed to the project's delay too, Finley said.
"That's not something we like to do, and that's not something we see often, but sometimes with some of these challenging projects we get thrown a curve ball," he said.
There are a lot of unknowns when reconstructing structures from the '50s and '60s, Finley explained. Additionally, at the time the city put the project out for bid, there was a lot of competition for seawall reconstruction projects since so many were damaged during Hurricane Milton.
"But we're looking more looking forward now than looking back," Finley said.
