Drive north on Ocean Shore Boulevard this month and something is missing. The orange mesh fencing that has lined the dune side of A1A on and off since 2022 is gone for long stretches at a time. The sand where crews spent two years drilling concrete piles has grown back over into something that looks, again, like an actual beach. Nobody cut a ribbon. No sign went up announcing the end of anything. The town's multi-year identity as a construction zone wound down the same way it started, one section of dune at a time, and most people driving past never got a moment that told them it was over.
That's the thing worth knowing if you live here: there was no single reopening day. If your stretch of beach came back to you in June, you've had months to stop noticing. If it's still a few blocks away, you might still think the whole project is stalled.
Why the Fences Went Up
The work along this stretch of A1A traces back to Hurricanes Ian and Nicole in 2022, which chewed through the dune line badly enough to threaten the roadway itself. The Florida Department of Transportation's answer was a buried seawall, a concrete structure drilled into the ground and then covered entirely with sand and native plants so it reads as dune, not wall, from the road or the beach. The project spans roughly a mile and a half through Ormond-by-the-Sea, running from south of Sunrise Avenue up to Marlin Drive, part of a larger effort that also rebuilt a matching stretch of wall down in Flagler Beach.
The logic behind burying it rather than building a visible barrier was straightforward. A concrete wall you can see also blocks views and changes how the beach feels to walk. A wall you can't see does the same structural job without turning the shoreline into a parking garage.
The Walkovers Came Back One at a Time
By late summer, FDOT crews had finished the buried wall along the Marlin Drive to Sunrise Avenue run, covering it with nearly 238,000 tons of sand and rebuilding 28 beach walkovers along the way. That number matters more than it sounds like it should. Twenty-eight separate access points means this was never going to be a single reopening. Each walkover came back on its own schedule as the wall section beneath it finished, which is exactly why the change has felt so gradual from the road. Your neighbor two streets over may have had beach access back since spring while you were still routing around a fenced-off crossover.
That same run of Ocean Shore Boulevard passes some of the town's most familiar access points, including Bicentennial Park, Tom Renick Park, and Al Weeks Sr. North Shore Park. If you've been avoiding one of these because you remember it fenced off, it's worth a drive-by. There's a real chance it's not anymore.
The Cleanup That Tells You People Noticed
The clearest sign that residents have stopped thinking of this stretch as a work zone showed up on September 16, when Volusia County held its International Coastal Cleanup at Michael Crotty Bicentennial Park in Ormond-by-the-Sea. Lindsey Kauffman and her father Scott Wasdin were among the residents organizing supplies for the event, part of the Ocean Conservancy's broader national cleanup effort.
A beach cleanup only works if people are willing to show up and spend a morning on their knees in the sand. For years, that particular stretch of coastline was something residents drove past, not something they walked out onto with trash bags. The fact that Bicentennial Park hosted a cleanup this month, rather than another round of construction updates, says something the fencing removal alone doesn't. People are treating this beach as theirs again.
A Building Went Up While the Dune Was Being Rebuilt
The seawall wasn't the only thing under construction on this street. At 2360 Ocean Shore Boulevard, a 32-unit condominium project called Bailey by the Sea has been rising alongside the public work, and as of an April 2026 report it was already about 90 percent complete. The four-story building includes 13 oceanfront units among its 32 total residences, built on nearly 2.4 acres.
"It's something you would see in your Miami or Fort Lauderdale areas," a representative for the project said. "We brought it to Ormond Beach."
Whatever you make of that comparison, the timing is the interesting part. A private development this size landing near completion in the same year the public dune project wrapped up means the physical character of this stretch of road changed on two fronts at once, not one. The beach came back. So did the skyline, at least for a four-story building's worth of it.
The One Thing That Never Needed Rebuilding
Not everything on this corridor was in flux. Oceanside Beach Bar & Grill, at 1900 Ocean Shore Boulevard, opened its second location at the former Betty's A1A Cafe site and has stayed open straight through the years of fencing and drilling next door. It's the same team behind the original Oceanside in Flagler Beach, and the Ormond-by-the-Sea location has spent the entire seawall era as the one fixed point on a stretch of road that otherwise kept changing underneath it.
That kind of continuity matters more than it sounds like it should when everything around it has been under some form of construction for the better part of three years. A place that stayed open the whole time becomes the landmark everyone still uses to give directions, even after the fencing they used to describe its location is long gone.
What This Actually Changes This Fall
If you live along Ocean Shore Boulevard, the practical shift is simple: check your own walkover before assuming anything about the ones you haven't used in a while. Some have been open since spring. Others may still be a few weeks out depending on exactly where they sit in that Marlin Drive to Sunrise Avenue run. The barrier island geography that made the seawall necessary in the first place hasn't changed, storms will keep testing this coastline the way they always have, but the specific version of "under construction" that's defined this town since 2022 has largely wound down without anyone announcing it.
The next time someone asks what's new in Ormond-by-the-Sea, the honest answer this fall is less about a single opening and more about how many small ones already happened while nobody was watching for them.
If you're curious what any of this means for a specific address on Ocean Shore Boulevard, or you just want a neighbor's read on how a particular block has changed, David Stanley knows this stretch of A1A well enough to walk you through it block by block. Reach out anytime.
