Palm Bay Florida Apartments & News

I can’t wait for the Panera Bread Bakery Cafe on Palm Bay Road in Palm Bay FL to open. As far as I can tell, it appears to be about another month before the construction will be done and my favorite restaurant will be serving Mediterranean Veggie sandwiches and all their other goodies.

With all the new restaurants going up at the new Hammock Landings shopping center, it has been a little disappointing to see that they usually turn out to be a Burger King, another McDonalds, or even something silly like a bank. But now justice has prevailed and decent, nutritious and affordable fast food will be served to hungry patrons living in the bustling metropolis of Palm Bay.

There’s a good chance I will probably be living at Panera once it opens as it has wireless Internet access, comfortable booths, pleasing decor and tasty delicacies (fast food style), what more could a person want? I wonder if I can permanently rent a booth and get them to personalize a coffee mug for me? I wouldn’t camp out for an Apple iPad (sorry Steve), but I might when this new restaurant opens.

Being that we live in Palm Bay nearly right across the street from Hammock Landings, it will be a very quick trip to hit Panera up for lunch unlike it is now. The closest one to us is at the Post Commons Shopping Center off of Post Road in North Melbourne so it’s about a 15 minute drive when the urge strikes for the Mediterranean Veggie or their delicious frosted chocolate brownies.

And if you’d like a job in Palm Bay, check out the job posting on Craigs List for Panera and remember, you may be making chocolate brownies for someone you know, so go Barack Obama with the frosting (in other words, be liberal).

Last October I was part of the Eternal Destruction Palm Bay Road Crew Band for the harvest party we held at Covenant Presbyterian Church. It was obviously a joke we put together to poke fun at the snail’s pace of construction but, no joke, it is now 5 months later and although we are a little further along in the destruction process on Palm Bay Road, it doesn’t seem like it is any closer to being completed in my lifetime.

While the project has been underway since January 3, 2008, that’s 2 years and 3 months for those counting, it seems like an eternity. The reason for the long delay is is probably because I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than about 4 people working on the road at any one time. What I’m talking about is actual work, not a bunch of road construction supervisors standing around a hole trying to make it deeper by telekinesis. The Eternal Destruction Palm Bay Road Crew Band had more working members than does the crew working on the eternal road of destruction.

The entire construction zone, if that’s what you insist on calling it, is  4.5 miles long from Robert J Conlan Blvd to Minton Road so, that makes the current rate of destruction approximately 6 months per mile. Let’s hope we don’t stretch that out to 1 year per mile. Anyone willing to place a bet? There are a few 20 yard stretches here and there that do appear to be completed and have traffic moving in both directions on 3 lanes each however, these seem to be more like anomalies than actual finished sections of road when 3 days after completion, out cometh the orange cones because someone needs to move a drain hole 10 feet. That is, after discovering that water in fact does flow downhill.

If you were wondering, the whole plan may have simply been designed to drain money out of some state budget fund somewhere that was probably showing a surplus. The surplus was probably an accounting error and will eventually rear its ugly head one way or another, likely showing up mysteriously in a future tax bill from Brevard County.

The reason I’ve dreamt up this somewhat nutty conspiracy theory is because there is no actual completion date for this project according to the Florida Department of Transportation. And after a 5 minute search of the web for additional information as to the date we can look forward to a ribbon cutting ceremony, free bar-b-que and a cold brewski for tolerating this nonsense for an eternity, none was to be found.

Maybe we could get a few Fla DOT construction supervisors on a completion date estimate instead of looking down that hole trying to make it deeper?

If you live in Palm Bay Florida you know whet a hassle it has been for the last year or so getting around town and if you are just a visitor to Palm Bay within that last year, then you know that the old saying, “You can’t get there from here” is somewhat true.

What I’m referring to is the amount of road construction leading into and around Palm Bay. It’s crazy that if you live where we do, you can’t go just about anywhere without running into that construction, and yes, it is a huge mess.

Palm Bay Road is being widened from 4 lanes to 6 lanes along with the road improvements being done to accommodate the new Hammock Landing Mall and Interstate 95 is also being widened to 6 lanes making for a most unpleasant time getting just about anywhere in the South Brevard area.

My wife and I took a trip to Orlando a couple of weeks ago and almost every major artery leading to and from Palm Bay to Orlando has some sort of construction or road improvement going on. In addition to Palm Bay Road and I-95 being widened, 528 is having tool booth construction done as is the East West Expressway through Orlando and in addition I-4 is as well.

A simple 1 hour trip to Orlando has been increased to about a 1.25 to 1.5 hour trip because of the excessive construction.

Hopefully all this construction will be done soon and we will be able to get around Palm Bay Florida with ease in the next few months. In the mean time we’ll just have to deal with it, that is until they start some new project.