In Gulf Breeze, the Power Poles Come Down Last

On August 26, crews took down the last three utility poles along Gulf Breeze's stretch of Highway 98. About six weeks later, on the night of October 9, Hurricane Isaias came ashore near Destin and pushed winds of 91 to 116 mph across Gulf Breeze's weather station near Santa Rosa Sound. The commercial corridor had just lost its overhead wires. Most of the city's residential streets still had theirs.

The next group of streets to lose their wires is already named and has a budget. They will spend a long time in between, though. On Shoreline Drive, and later on the neighborhood collector streets, the old poles are scheduled to stay up for months after construction wraps.

What the Highway 98 corridor showed during Isaias

The finished first phase covered nearly two miles of overhead wire and 70 poles, and it added 80 decorative streetlights along the way. The city puts its cost at about $7.5 million, after nearly three years of construction and close to a decade of planning. Residents first asked for the conversion in 2006, and the city has been doing the work since 2018.

Mayor JB Schluter told WEAR-TV that the buried lines "did the job." Five days after the storm, 85% of the city had power again. When he gave that interview on October 19, power was fully restored. He set that against Hurricane Ivan in 2004, when he went a month without electricity.

"Of course, if you have a major feed coming in from behind the hospital where our main lines are, you're going to still have problems, but you don't have live wires in the streets."

He told WEAR the biggest gains were not having live wires tangled in debris and not having linemen block Highway 98 while they reattached lines.

The trees explain why this matters so much here. Isaias badly damaged the city's canopy. Schluter put the debris at about 150,000 cubic yards and expected pickup to take at least a month from the time of that interview. The city's capital plan gives the same reason for the next phase. It says undergrounding reduces "the risk of outages caused by fallen trees, high winds, and other storm-related impacts." In a city with this much tree cover, an overhead line is always one large limb away from an outage.

Where the lines go next

About a third of Gulf Breeze neighborhoods already have underground utilities, according to the mayor. The next phase is called the Neighborhood Collector Street Underground Utility Project. The city's Capital Improvement Plan for fiscal years 2027 to 2036 lists five streets in it:

• Shoreline Drive
• Fairpoint Drive
• South Sunset Boulevard
• Daniel Street
• Daniel Circle

The plan's estimate for the project is $8,785,725. Of that, $1,285,725 has already been spent, and $7.5 million of "Reserved Capital" is set aside for fiscal 2027. Utility Consultants of Florida, the city's project manager, presented a schedule update to the City Council in early September with a slightly different total of $8,627,814. That breaks down to $238,867 for design and survey and $8,388,947 for construction. Either way, the residential phase will cost more than the commercial corridor did.

The work is split in two. Phase 2A is Shoreline Drive alone. Phase 2B covers the neighborhood collector streets. Those two phases run on very different clocks.

On Shoreline Drive, the poles outlast the construction

These are the Phase 2A milestones from the consultant's September presentation. All of them are planned dates.

1. Contract award: December 8, 2026
2. Notice to proceed: December 17, 2026
3. Construction complete: April 8, 2027
4. Switching: June 10, 2027
5. Aerial wreck-out, when the overhead lines and poles come down: June 30, 2027

The contract award is scheduled for about a month from now. Build-out on Shoreline is then planned to take less than four months. Switching comes two months after construction ends, and the poles come down almost three months after it. For a full season after the crews leave, Shoreline Drive will have both systems at once: new lines in the ground and the old ones overhead.

That gap comes from how the work has to be ordered. The overhead lines keep carrying service until everything moves to the new system, and a pole can't come down while anything is still attached to it. FPL handles the electric design for 2A, and the presentation names Mediacom and AT&T as the carriers with lines on the Shoreline poles. The same schedule also called for three easement consents on Shoreline by September 15, 2026.

The collector streets run on a longer clock

The collector streets have more attached lines to move. The 2B schedule lists four carriers instead of two: Mediacom, Cox, Uniti and AT&T. The planned dates also stretch out further.

On the collector streets, construction is planned to finish in October 2027, but switching doesn't come until the following March. That leaves about five months with both systems in place, and the poles on those streets would stay up through the winter of 2027 and 2028. The capital plan lists the overall project's estimated completion as fiscal 2027, while the consultant's schedule puts the last pole removal in spring 2028. The council will see these dates again as the contracts move forward.

Some of the next work is already visible. Schluter told WEAR that phase two work began in September near the corner of the high school. He expects the project to be "going pretty strong by this time next year." At the September council update, city staff also said they would work to eliminate or replace a remaining pole near the baseball field, according to Citizen Portal's summary of the meeting.

The last few feet to the house

The city project moves the lines along the street. Each house also has its own connection from the street to the meter. FPL's general guidance covers that connection when an individual homeowner converts. According to its Underground Conversion FAQs, the meter equipment has to be modified, and the homeowner arranges a trench, a licensed electrician and usually a permit. In community conversions, the party requesting the work pays the total conversion cost. FPL's conversion process page says FPL provides the conduit, and the customer is responsible for installing it and for the electrician, permit, trenching and any applicable conversion charge.

That is FPL's general framework for individual conversions. How it will apply to a home on Shoreline, Fairpoint, South Sunset, Daniel Street or Daniel Circle is a question for the city. The Neighborhood Services and CRA office sent the September update to council, and the city can be reached at (850) 934-5100 or at City Hall, 1070 Shoreline Drive. This is general information, not legal or financial advice. Before you hire anyone or budget for work, confirm the details for your own address with the city, FPL and a licensed electrician.

If your home is on one of these streets and you're thinking about selling while the old poles and new lines are both in place, or about how to describe the project to a buyer, we're glad to talk through timing and presentation. Andra Morgan Team is here when you're ready. Let's Work Together.