"This has got all the new bells and whistles of 2026."

That's Toucan's on the Beach owner-operator Rob Hammer, describing a building that's been under construction, delayed, re-announced, and delayed again since Hurricane Michael took the original restaurant off the map in 2018. If you've lived in Mexico Beach through any part of that stretch, you've heard some version of "it's coming back" at least four times.

Here's what almost nobody in town is tracking with the same attention: the municipal pier at the end of 37th Street South, gone since the same storm, has a funded federal contract, an engineering spec, and a construction crew that turned up in a Fort Myers coverage of an unrelated pier project this spring, almost as an aside. It has none of Toucan's social media following and all of the paperwork that actually determines whether a project gets built.

Two comebacks, same storm, same nine years of waiting. One is getting louder as it nears the finish. The other has been quietly getting realer while everyone was watching the restaurant.

The Restaurant Everyone Is Timing Their Summer Around

Toucan's wasn't just a restaurant. It was the kind of place a whole region organized road trips around, and Hurricane Michael's 15.5 feet of storm surge erased it in one night. What's followed is a case study in how long a beloved rebuild can take even when everyone involved wants it back.

Notice what didn't change across six entries: the building itself. What changed each time was the date, and eventually, who was standing in front of the cameras answering for it. Lee did most of the talking in 2024 and 2025. By August, it was Hammer describing a 20,000-square-foot building at 719 Highway 98 with an oyster bar and a band stage, built to take another storm the original never could.

None of that means the restaurant is close to fake. It means the honest answer to a visiting friend who asks "is Toucan's open yet" is still no, as of this writing, even though the building looks finished from the road. If you're planning around it, treat every date you've heard as aspirational until the doors are actually unlocked.

The Project Everyone Forgets Is Also a Comeback

The pier that used to sit at the end of 37th Street South went up in the mid-1960s and got extended twice, first by 90 feet under a 2003 state permit, then by another 266.4 feet in 2009, bringing it to 816.4 feet before Michael tore through in October 2018 with 8 to 14 feet of storm surge.

Here's what's actually on file for its replacement, according to a FEMA environmental assessment dated this spring:

• A funding request of $7,019,365 through FEMA's Public Assistance program
• A concrete structure elevated above the 500-year storm surge line, with a deck height of plus 26 feet NGVD
• Blow-out panels built into the design specifically to reduce wave loading in future storms
• Construction in the same footprint and alignment as the original pier

The City of Mexico Beach's own project tracker lists the pier rebuild as "In Process." Bids for the construction contract were due at City Hall on November 19, 2025, with pricing held firm through mid-April 2026, the standard window for a public agency to finalize a contractor before work starts.

You won't find a splashy local announcement confirming that award. The clearest public confirmation actually came from outside Bay County entirely: coverage of a comparable pier project on Fort Myers Beach this spring identified its winning contractor, Panama City-based RJ Gorman Contracting LLC, as a firm already managing similar large-scale pier restorations, and named the Mexico Beach pier specifically as one of them. A crew was apparently active on our pier before most of us saw a local update saying so.

Why the Quiet One Might Beat the Loud One to the Finish

Toucan's is a private restaurant rebuild, dependent on insurance settlements and private financing, the same friction its own owners cited for years of delay. The pier is a FEMA-funded public infrastructure project with a fixed federal dollar figure, a completed bid process, and a contractor already in the field. Those are structurally different kinds of promises.

A private rebuild can slip because a lender gets nervous or a supplier runs late, and there's no public paper trail forcing a new date into the open. A federally funded public works project has a contract, a bid amount, and an agency watching the calendar, which doesn't guarantee speed but does mean the milestones are harder to quietly push. That's the reversal worth sitting with: the project with less chatter in town has more institutional weight behind an actual finish line.

None of this is a guarantee either project lands on a specific date. Coastal construction runs into permitting delays, weather windows, and material costs that can move even a fully funded federal job. But if you're the type of person who likes betting on which comeback finishes first, the paperwork says look at the pier, not the restaurant everyone's asking about.

What This Actually Means for Your Weekend

If a friend visiting from out of town asks about dinner at Toucan's, the safe answer is still to check the restaurant's own site same-day rather than promise a table. The building may be close, but "nearly complete" and "open for service" are two different things, and this project has missed enough self-imposed dates that the burden of proof is on an actual open sign.

In the meantime, the town has two more sit-down options than it did a couple of years back. Beach Bear Coastal opened this spring at 2902 US-98 with a scratch kitchen and a 30-inch pizza, and Forgotten Coast Brewing Co. has been running at 4101 US-98 since 2024, serving house-brewed beer alongside grouper tacos and wood-fired pizza. Neither replaces what Toucan's meant to this town, but they've quietly changed what "let's just eat here" means on a Tuesday night.

For the pier, there's no public completion date to plan around yet, so the honest move is the same one that's worked for years: keep using the beach access you already know, and don't expect a fishing spot at the end of 37th Street South this season. When there's a real date, it'll likely come with more fanfare than the contract award did.

Living here means you get to watch both of these finish lines up close, whichever one crosses first. If you're weighing what a slow, patient rebuild like this one means for property values, rental demand, or the timing of a move to Mexico Beach, that's a longer conversation, and it's one Compass & Key is glad to have whenever you're ready. Let's Connect.