🧃 The Main Squeeze: Highwaymen Upgrade Approved!

After months of back-and-forth, Fort Pierce commissioners just approved the final change orders for the Florida Highwaymen Museum. Opening day finally feels real.

TLDR

The project team got the green light to level the second floor, fix the parking-lot slope, and add a dumpster enclosure. They also rejected a twenty-six-thousand-dollar request to swap perfectly good impact windows for new ones, trimming extra fat from the budget. With permits next in line, construction can wrap before winter visitors arrive.

🎨 Why It Matters

Fort Pierce claims the Highwaymen story as its own. The museum will honor the local painters who sold vibrant landscapes from car trunks when galleries shut them out. A finished building means art shows, school field trips, and fresh foot traffic for downtown businesses.

📊 The Money Angle

• Leveling the second floor keeps art displays safe and ADA compliant.

• Smoothing the parking-lot slope avoids future runoff problems.

• Skipping the window swap saves twenty-six grand now and prevents more scope creep later.

📅 What’s Next

Permits move to final review this month. Contractors can then finish interior work and landscaping. If the schedule holds, ribbon cutting happens before the high season crowds roll in.

🖼 Quick Refresher on the Highwaymen

A group of twenty-six Black artists started painting Florida scenes in the 1950s, framing palms, highways, and sunsets that galleries ignored. They hustled art door-to-door and from trunks along US-1. Their work now hangs in major museums and private collections worldwide. This new space gives their legacy a permanent home right where it began.