All beaches in Panama City were allowed to reopen as of Friday, May 1 and locals and surrounding area residents couldn’t be more thrilled.
At a Thursday council meeting, which was also broadcast on Facebook, the Panama City Beach City Council unanimously voted to reopen all beaches in the area.
The beaches were officially reopened at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, May 1 with no time restrictions, however Panama City Beach officials want to remind beachgoers to keep social distancing guidelines in mind.
\”We live in the world\’s most beautiful beaches and I feel like it\’s time to open that up a little bit,” said Panama City Beach Mayor Mark Sheldon. “Again, we are going to watch it and if that starts to go the wrong way, we would have to close the beaches back again. Hopefully we don\’t, hopefully everyone does the right thing.\”
Panama City Beach Police Chief Drew Whitman says his team will be strictly enforcing the guidelines.
Many of the beach’s restaurants are also now re-opened.
Local favorite Harpoon Harry’s is now back open, providing 25 percent capacity in-door seating and full capacity outdoor seating – although servers will be mindful of where to seat each guest so that there is reasonable distancing between tables.
The same applies to the newest restaurant on the beach, Longboards. The pizza and taco specialty locale was only open for mere days before having to close shop due to COVID-19 restrictions.
For more updates on how the beach and surrounding areas are getting back to normal, please keep visiting back as we begin to roll out more updates each week.
