Rocky Point Road reconstruction — Malabar, Florida

The Rocky Point Road reconstruction was a Town of Malabar project to rebuild eroded shoreline at four spots along Rocky Point Road, then repair, repave and restripe the whole road (Town of Malabar).

It came in two parts. First came a shoreline revetment restoration: Custom Built Marine Construction, Inc. was set to start on April 1, 2024, with an estimated completion date of September 1, 2024 (Town of Malabar project page). The town says restoring the shoreline in those four areas of Rocky Point Road was necessary to prevent further erosion and additional roadway collapse, as well as unsafe conditions for vehicular traffic. The second part was the pavement. The Malabar flyer for Rocky Point Road residents states that the roadway repair was not included in the shoreline scope, and that after the shoreline work a paving contractor would restore the collapsed lane (residents flyer, page 1).

The Town Council approved the work at a Special Town Council Meeting on February 26, 2024 (Town of Malabar). Rocky Point Road is on the Town of Malabar list of accepted public streets (accepted streets list), and the project page sits under the town's Public Works department. Last verified: October 13, 2026, on the Town of Malabar website.

Rocky Point Road needed rebuilding because storm damage and shoreline erosion along the Indian River had collapsed sections of the lane, and the town's 2023 road survey already flagged it for partial reconstruction with FEMA funding (Town of Malabar, April 3, 2023).

The road is the former highway. The Malabar accepted streets list (dated as of 1/25/2024) records Rocky Point Road as 22 feet wide with 7,590 feet of pavement and notes that it was old Hwy 1 (accepted streets list, page 2). The same list includes nearby lanes such as Reef Place, recorded as 510 feet paved east from Coral Way in the Coquina Point subdivision.

In 2023 the Town Council reviewed a town-wide Roadway Asphalt Pavement Surface Evaluation Report prepared by Engineering Design and Construction Inc. (agenda item 13.b, April 3, 2023). On that ranking Rocky Point Road was classed as a collector road with an estimated service life of 0 to 5 years, a distress score and rank of 15/6, and an adjusted score and rank of 15/3, which put it third on the Malabar resurfacing list. The recommended treatment was a subsurface or structural investigation followed by mill and thin or structural overlay, and the ranking sheet carries the note: storm damage requiring partial reconstruction, FEMA funding (road ranking, page 6).

The shoreline is part of the story. The Malabar Coastal Management Element (December 2019) says the immediate town shoreline is not bulkheaded and appears to be a relatively unimproved, rocky shoreline, with seagrass beds on the submerged land next to the town and no saltmarshes (Coastal Management Element, page 2).

Rocky Point Road runs through the south end of Malabar, on the narrow strip of land between US 1 and the Indian River Lagoon shoreline south of the US 1 and Rocky Point Road juncture (Coastal Management Element, page 1).

The Coastal Management Element defines the Malabar Coastal Planning Area as everything east of U.S. Highway 1 to the Indian River Lagoon and counts approximately 3.5 miles of town shoreline on the Indian River (page 1). South of the juncture with Rocky Point Road the planning area holds 82 parcels; 45 of them include the strip of land on the east side of Rocky Point Road along the shoreline, which gives those 45 lots their own water access, and the land use there is low density single family homes (page 2).

Public services along the road are thin. The same element says public water and sewer lines do not reach the coastal area, homes there rely on private wells and septic systems, and the public infrastructure is the roads in the Rocky Point and Coquina Point subdivisions plus two drainage outfalls into the Indian River (page 5). Because the road is an accepted town street, its repair fell to Malabar Public Works and the Town Council.

The Rocky Point Road shoreline was designed as a rock revetment, an armor of rock over filter fabric, with all project work above the mean high water line (construction drawings, sheet 5).

The signed drawings, titled Rocky Point Road Shoreline Stabilization for Town of Malabar and dated 8/31/2023, set the rules. All project work was to stay above the mean high water line at elevation -0.71 NAVD88, and the general notes say no work would be permitted in the adjacent water body (drawings, sheet 3). The owner, the Town of Malabar, furnished regulatory authorizations issued by the Florida DEP for the work. Tidal data on the plans comes from NOAA station 8721994, Micco, Indian River, FL (sheet 3). NOAA lists that station with a mean tide range of only 0.27 ft, from a gauge NOAA lists as installed on March 22, 1972 (NOAA Tides and Currents).

The Site 4 profile sheet puts the top of the proposed rock revetment at elevation 7.2 to 7.3 feet NAVD, over filter fabric specified as D-2 (revetment standard) or equal, and its silt fence detail calls for filter fabric in conformance with Sec. 985 of the FDOT specifications (drawings, sheet 10). Water protection was part of the design: double turbidity barriers had to be in place around the pier before construction, and turbidity curtains had to stay at least seven days after work ended and turbidity readings returned to background levels. The town page shows the four Rocky Point Road sites as Site 1, Site 2 and Sites 3 and 4, with construction progress photos of Site 1 dated 5-13-24 (Town of Malabar).

Docks and other private items inside the Rocky Point Road right-of-way at the four sites were to be removed by the contractor and not restored, and traffic was to pass lane closures and flaggers in the work zone (residents flyer).

The Malabar flyer says property owners with docks in the four site areas were notified that docks, privately owned items, structures and improvements in the right-of-way would be removed by the contractor and would not be restored, and that owners could remove them before work began at their own discretion or expense (flyer, page 1). The town project page repeats the same terms.

For traffic, the town told Rocky Point Road residents to expect lane closures and flaggers for maintenance of traffic throughout construction, with signs to alert motorists (Town of Malabar). The work zone plan places the job at US-1 and Rocky Point Rd, keeps vehicles, equipment and workers no closer than 2 feet to the edge of the travel way, posts ROAD WORK AHEAD, ONE LANE ROAD AHEAD and ONE-WAY TRAFFIC signs, and refers to FDOT Index 102-603 (MOT plan, page 1). Electronic lighted signs went up at the north and south entry of the project site on March 22, 2024. The 2023 ranking classes Rocky Point Road as a collector road; separately, Town Code Sec. 13-1 sets a maximum speed limit of 20 miles per hour on residential streets in the RS-10, RS-15, RM-4, RM-6, RM-H and RLC districts (Malabar Town Code).

The Town of Malabar scheduled Rocky Point Road roadway repair to begin August 16 and final paving of the entire length to begin September 9, after the shoreline phase that ran from April 2024 (Town of Malabar project page).

The update on the Malabar project page says roadway repair would include removal of the soil from the damaged areas to prepare for base and underlayment with asphalt. The page gives those two dates without a year; the shoreline phase they follow was listed as April 2024 to September 2024, and the flyer adds that the schedule could change because of weather or other unexpected conditions (flyer). As of October 13, 2026, the Rocky Point Road page still shows these dates as scheduled and posts no separate completion notice.

Questions about the Rocky Point Road project went to the Town Manager, Lisa Morrell, at 321-768-9120, while general calls go to Malabar Town Hall at 2725 Malabar Road, 321-727-7764 (Town of Malabar).

The Florida Department of Transportation has finished resurfacing northbound US 1 from Rocky Point Road to Malabar Road and is designing a separate repaving of southbound US 1 over the same stretch (FDOT 447092-1, archived; FDOT CFLRoads).

The northbound job, FDOT project 447092-1, milled and resurfaced the northbound lanes and shoulders of US 1, the Indian River Lagoon National Scenic Byway, from north of Rocky Point Road to Malabar Road (SR 514), and added a 6-foot-wide sidewalk on the west side of US 1 beginning south of Orange Avenue. FDOT lists it as completed: 2.433 miles, a $3.2 million construction cost and an early 2024 start (FDOT project 447092-1).

The southbound job, FDOT project 452883-1, is in design. It would repave the southbound lanes of US 1 from north of Rocky Point Road to south of Malabar Road over 2.561 miles and update pedestrian curb ramps to ADA standards, with a design cost of $420,000, a letting date of 07/07/2027 and an estimated construction cost of $3.2 million (FDOT project 452883-1). US 1 is a state road, so those lanes stay with FDOT; Rocky Point Road, the old Hwy 1 beside it, stays with the Town of Malabar.