Staff report
The Billy Bowlegs Pirate Festival wrapped up Monday night with the annual Torchlight Parade up Eglin Parkway. Thousands lined the streets for beads, candy and trinkets as they cheered on the Krewe of Bowlegs pirates and other parade participants among the estimated 60 floats and vehicles.
Judges named winners in four categories: Truck Rye-Land Lawn Care; Car Fort Walton Beach Women’s Club; Float Mardi Gras Club of Fort Walton Beach; and Krewe Krewe of Bowlegs.
The event was organized by the Greater Fort Walton Beach Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by Step One Automotive Group.
The festival kicks off at 6 p.m. Friday, April 30, with a pub crawl. Pick up a card at any one of the following downtown establishments: Fokker’s Pub, Coaster’s, Downtown Music Hall, Salty Duck, Props Brewery or The Block. Get your card punched at all of them and end up at The Block by 10 p.m. for a chance to win prizes, including a 70-inch television.
Saturday is the festival’s big day, and there are two new youth events for pirates in training. Get your costumes ready, because downtown merchants will host a “Trick Argh Treat,” from 2 to 6 p.m.
Fort Walton Beach RV offered to lease about eight acres of the land for 25 years at a starting price of $60,000 a year. Company representatives also offered to pre-pay $150,000 for the city s use to refurbish recreational facilities off Sullivan Drive.
Mark Bethea of Realty House told the council that after researching both offers, he could find no real downside to either. I ve thought long and hard about what to recommend . and I m not going to make a recommendation, he said. Both offers in my opinion are market rate offers.
Representatives of both companies addressed the council and made it clear that their level of interest was high despite the land once having been a city dump, and the groundwater beneath it already had been determined to contain arsenic and lead.