Drive south on Ocean Shore Boulevard past Lagerheads Bar and Grill on a Tuesday afternoon and you might assume the place shut down. Orange barrels ring the property. A new curb cuts straight across what used to be the parking lot. The lot that held 45 cars now holds 12.
The bar is open. It has been open the whole time. What changed is the road in front of it, and what's confusing longtime residents is that this isn't the project everyone spent the last two years watching finish.
There are two separate jobs on this stretch of A1A right now, run by the same agency, overlapping in space but not in scope, and not in schedule. One of them wrapped up. The other one just started and won't be done until 2027. If you know which is which, the last few months on this road make a lot more sense.
The Project That's Actually Done
For most of 2024 and into 2026, the Florida Department of Transportation buried a 1.3-mile seawall beneath the dunes between Sunrise Avenue and Marlin Drive, part of a larger resiliency effort that also included a matching wall up in Flagler Beach. You never see the wall itself. Crews drove the pilings, poured the caps, then covered the whole structure with roughly 238,000 tons of new sand and rebuilt the dune line on top of it, according to WFTV's reporting on the completed work. Twenty-eight beach walkovers came down during construction and went back up once each section was finished.
This is the project residents had been asking for since Hurricane Ian and Nicole chewed into the shoreline in 2022. It's also, for the most part, over. The dunes along that southern stretch are wider and higher than they've been in years, and the walkovers residents use to get to the sand are back in place.
If your image of "the A1A construction" is still one of trucks parked in the surf and a beach that keeps washing away, that image is out of date. That part is finished.
The Project That Isn't
What's still active, and what's actually causing the parking headaches right now, is a different job entirely: a pedestrian safety and drainage project running along A1A from north of Roberta Road up to the Flagler County line. It started in April 2026 and FDOT expects it to run through 2027, according to ClickOrlando's coverage of the ongoing work. The goal is a shared-use path, new curbs, and better drainage along a stretch of road that has never had much separation between traffic and the shoulder.
This is the project that put a permanent curb across Lagerheads' main lot. FDOT confirmed to reporters that the spaces sit within the state's right of way and that parking there is no longer available. Fox 35 Orlando reported the lot went from 45 spaces to 12, and staff say the slowdown hit during what should have been a busy stretch of summer.
"Everybody's driving past us, and they think we're closed."
That's an employee describing the effect of barricades and a blocked lot on a business that has been a fixture on this stretch of A1A for years. The bar's schedule hasn't changed. The optics have.
Two Jobs, One Road, Different Timelines
| Seawall Project | Pedestrian Safety Project | |
|---|---|---|
| Corridor | Sunrise Avenue to Marlin Drive | Roberta Road to Flagler County line |
| Started | 2024 | April 2026 |
| Status as of September 2026 | Complete | Active, expected through 2027 |
| What changed | Buried wall, rebuilt dunes, 28 walkovers replaced | New curbs, shared-use path, drainage work |
| Visible effect | Wider beach, restored walkover access | Reduced roadside parking near some businesses |
The two projects sit on the same road and both involve curbs, both involve FDOT crews, and both have stretched across more than a year. That overlap is exactly why it's easy to assume they're the same undertaking, or that finishing one means the other wrapped up too. They're not connected, and the timeline gap matters if you're trying to figure out how long the parking situation near certain businesses will last.
What's Actually Open Right Now
For anyone planning an evening out or trying to figure out if a favorite spot survived the construction season:
- Lagerheads Bar and Grill (2986 Ocean Shore Blvd) is open. Parking is limited to the 12 remaining spaces near the building, and staff have said FDOT has discussed additional parking options without committing to a specific fix yet.
- Oceanside Beach Bar and Grill (1900 Ocean Shore Blvd), the second location from the Flagler Beach restaurant of the same name, opened in the former Betty's A1A Cafe building in 2024 after a renovation that took longer than expected. It's a separate property outside the current construction zone and unaffected by the parking changes further south.
- The Ormond dog beach, a leashed stretch of sand between Rockefeller Drive and Milsap Road, became a permanent fixture rather than a pilot program in 2025. It's the third public dog beach in Volusia County, alongside Lighthouse Point Park and Smyrna Dunes Park.
If you're headed to Lagerheads specifically, plan for street parking or a short walk rather than counting on pulling straight into the lot. The barricades and the reduced spaces are real, but they're not a sign the business is winding down.
Reading the Road Like Someone Who Lives Here
A1A through Ormond-by-the-Sea carries a lot of history for a two-lane road. It was renamed in honor of Jimmy Buffett in 2024, which tells you something about how the barrier island sees itself: a place defined by beach bars, dune crossovers, and a slower pace than the boulevards a few miles inland. Locals know the difference between a project that's improving the coastline and one that's just making the next twelve months inconvenient. Visitors, and even some residents who haven't driven this stretch in a while, don't always have that context.
The dunes look better than they have in years. The parking near a few businesses looks worse than it has in years. Both of those things are true at the same time, and neither one is permanent in the way it might feel driving past on a random Tuesday.
If you're someone who already calls this stretch of coastline home, the next year on A1A probably means a little extra patience finding a parking spot near a few specific addresses, and a beach that's in better shape than it's been since before the last round of hurricanes. If you're weighing whether this corner of the coast is where you want to put down roots, and the roadwork has you wondering what else is changing here, The Cook Group knows this stretch of A1A block by block and can walk you through it. Schedule a private consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
