Bayfront CRA — Palm Bay, Florida

The Bayfront Community Redevelopment Agency was a separate public body that Palm Bay created in 1999 to fight blight and draw new investment along the city's U.S. 1 waterfront, and it sunset on May 4, 2024.

The agency's own 2024 annual report describes a CRA as a separate public entity created by the local municipality to carry out redevelopment under Chapter 163 of the Florida Statutes (Bayfront CRA 2024 Annual Report, page 1). Its stated mission in Palm Bay was to remove and reduce blight in the district, encourage economic renewal and attract new capital investment. The adopted vision was a district rebuilt with homes, shops and mixed-use buildings, including an active waterfront village for the enjoyment of all Palm Bay residents.

The legal pieces came together in 1999. Palm Bay created the agency by City Resolution 99-20 and approved its redevelopment plan after Brevard County delegated its Chapter 163 powers through County Resolution 99-11 (2024 Annual Report, page 5). City Ordinance 99-19 set up the tax increment trust fund that paid for the agency's work. The groundwork was older still: in 1994 the Bayfront area was found to be an area of slum and blight, five years before the agency and its plan were adopted.

In Palm Bay's audited books the agency was a blended component unit. The fiscal 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report calls the Bayfront Community Redevelopment Agency an incremental tax district created by city ordinance and classifies it as a special revenue fund, with the City of Palm Bay doing all of its accounting (Palm Bay ACFR FY2024, page 63).

The Bayfront district covered a four-mile stretch of U.S. 1 in Palm Bay, running from the Melbourne city limits on the north to the Town of Malabar on the south, with the Indian River Lagoon as its eastern edge.

The western line was irregular and followed streets and the railroad rather than a single road. The 2024 annual report traces it south from the U.S. 1 and University Boulevard intersection for about 500 feet, then west to the Florida East Coast Railroad and south along the tracks about 2,200 feet (2024 Annual Report, page 3). From there it ran west along the city limits at Florida Avenue to Lipscomb Street, then south and east on Doreatha Fields Avenue (also called Pacific Avenue), Northview Street and R. J. Conlan Boulevard to Palm Bay Road.

The boundary picked up the parcels on the south side of Palm Bay Road as far as the FEC Railroad, then followed the railroad south to the Malabar town limits. The agency's reports list district businesses on Dixie Highway NE, Robert J. Conlan Boulevard NE and Palm Bay Road NE among their facade grant recipients, and the 2023 report places Castaways Point Park in the Bayfront District (2023 Annual Report, page 6).

The Bayfront CRA was funded by tax increment: the City of Palm Bay and Brevard County paid into its trust fund a share of the property taxes produced by growth in district values above the base year.

Florida law sets each taxing authority's yearly increment at 95 percent of the difference between the taxes levied on the district's real property and the taxes its base-year value would have produced, unless the funding ordinance sets a lower share of at least 50 percent (section 163.387, Florida Statutes). For the Palm Bay Bayfront district the base was $100,372,760, the assessed value when the CRA was enacted in 1998, and the 2024 assessed value was $414,014,864, an increment value of $313,642,104 (2024 Annual Report, page 7). The agency's reports date the enactment to 1998 and the creation to 1999.

Rising values drove the revenue. The 2024 report gives the district's certified taxable value as $379,056,941 for 2023, up about 14 percent from $332,438,420 in 2022 (2024 Annual Report, page 2). Tax revenue reached $2,664,894 in fiscal 2024; the report gives the City of Palm Bay's portion of the increment as $1,857,777, or 70 percent, and Brevard County's as $807,117, or 30 percent, two amounts that add up to that total although the report labels the split FY 2023.

The two reports do not agree on fiscal 2023. The 2023 report put tax revenues at $2,532,753, a 53.3 percent jump over the prior year (Bayfront CRA 2023 Annual Report, page 2), while the 2024 report compares its fiscal 2024 total with $2,394,530 for 2023. Both figures are shown here as each Palm Bay report states them.

On October 8, 2019, the Brevard County Board of County Commissioners adopted Resolution 2019-198, which took away the Palm Bay agency's power to issue bonds, pledge funds, borrow or take on debt and limited its other financial activity.

The county had delegated those powers to Palm Bay in 1999 through County Resolution 99-11, and Resolution 2019-198 modified that delegation. The 2024 annual report says Resolution 2019-198 prohibited the Bayfront CRA from undertaking any new projects that would commit agency funds, and there were no new CRA-funded projects in fiscal 2024 (2024 Annual Report, page 6). The same report records that no jobs were created or retained as a direct result of the agency's own projects and activities.

The same day, Brevard County, the City of Palm Bay and the Bayfront CRA executed an interlocal agreement covering unexpended funds. In fiscal 2024 the agency reimbursed $799,983 to Brevard County for unexpended fiscal 2023 funds and transferred $1,863,783 to the Palm Bay General Fund for the same reason (2024 Annual Report, page 2). Expenditures for the year totaled $805,658 against an approved operating budget of $1,283,457. State law allows that outcome: money left in a CRA trust fund at year end may be returned to each taxing authority in proportion to what it paid in (section 163.387(7)).

The governing board had already been folded into the City Council. Starting in fiscal 2017 every Palm Bay council member also sat as a Bayfront CRA commissioner, with the mayor and deputy mayor as chairman and vice-chairman, plus two at-large citizen commissioners appointed by the council.

In its last two years the Bayfront CRA sold waterfront land on Orange Blossom Trail NE, and its reports list Castaways Point Park grant work and city facade grants to district businesses on Palm Bay Road and Conlan Boulevard.

The land sales came in the agency's final two fiscal years. On May 4, 2023, the CRA sold 1626 Orange Blossom Trail NE, a site on Palm Bay's waterfront assembled for a large mixed-use project with apartments, a hotel and commercial space (2023 Annual Report, page 1). On April 4, 2024, a month before the sunset, it sold 1608 Orange Blossom Trail NE for $60,000 and the parcel just north of it for $90,000, also as part of a land assemblage for a large-scale mixed-use project (2024 Annual Report, page 1).

For Castaways Point Park, a 2.5-acre park on the Indian River Lagoon built in 1998, the city received a $60,000 Coastal Partnership Initiatives grant from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for north pier boardwalk repairs, lighting and restroom upgrades and educational signs, and a Florida Inland Navigation District matching grant for south pier improvements, which together helped fund the first phase of upgrades (2023 Annual Report, page 5). A second phase would move parking to city parcels northeast of U.S. 1 and Bay Boulevard and add permeable pavers and a nutrient-separating baffle box to cut stormwater pollution reaching the Indian River Lagoon.

Through Palm Bay's Commercial Property Enhancement Program, five businesses in the district won facade grants in fiscal 2023 and three in fiscal 2024, and all of them got funding priority for being in the Bayfront CRA (2023 Annual Report, page 6; 2024 Annual Report, page 5). The program reimburses owners after the work for exterior upgrades on major Palm Bay corridors, such as new paint, stucco and signs on Palm Bay Road NE and Robert J. Conlan Boulevard NE. No CRA money went to affordable housing in fiscal 2024.

The Bayfront CRA ended on May 4, 2024, 25 years after it was established, when its interlocal agreement with Palm Bay and Brevard County expired, and its fund remained active through fiscal 2025 for audit purposes.

The city's Bayfront CRA page states the sunset date and posts the agency's annual report for the year ending September 30, 2024, as section 163.371(2)(a) of the Florida Statutes requires (City of Palm Bay Bayfront CRA page). That statute makes every CRA file an annual report by March 31 with the city or county that created it and publish it online (section 163.371, Florida Statutes).

The board met for the last time on May 2, 2024, in the City Hall Council Chambers at 120 Malabar Road SE (Bayfront CRA minutes, May 2, 2024). One at-large commissioner said he was sad to see the agency sunset but confident the Palm Bay City Council would continue its work. The vice-chairman hoped the agency would be reinstated, and other members talked about adding Opportunity Zones in other parts of Palm Bay, as Cocoa and Melbourne have. The meeting ran about four minutes, from 5:31 to 5:35 p.m.

Money left at the end stayed restricted. The 2024 report's unaudited financial schedule shows a Bayfront fund balance of $3,036,130 at September 30, 2024, after a $372,365 net increase for the year (2024 Annual Report, page 10), and the audited ACFR reports the same fund rising by $372,364 to $3.04 million (ACFR FY2024, page 38). Palm Bay's FY 2027 Proposed Budget shows fiscal 2025 actual spending of $1,899,891 from the fund, $1,329,924 of it transfers, and zero for fiscal 2026 and 2027 (FY 2027 Proposed Budget, page 31).

Last verified: October 12, 2026, on the City of Palm Bay Bayfront CRA page and in the agency's annual reports.