Bay Parkway Phase II moves forward

Traffic relief off Highway 98 in Panama City Beach is one step closer to coming to reality.

At Thursday's Panama City Beach City Council meeting, the council approved to move forward with finding an engineering group for phase two of the Bay Parkway project.

The group will create a drawing of road plans which will extend a cut-through road from Highway 79 to Highway 98.

The road concept aims to cut down congestion near Pier Park.

"This is the next section to it. It will go down to Nautilus Street and we've hired the engineers to draw that and so when we get, we're about finished with that legal swap of the land where we're buying from St. Joe, and when we get that done, we'll go ahead and start construction," Panama City Beach Mayor Mike Thomas said.

Officials said the next step is to bid out the job and hopefully begin construction within a year.