Daytona Beach News-Journal reporter Eileen Zaffiro-Kean has been writing for the paper for more than two decades. In today’s Sunday feature, she tackles a complex and controversial topic: How do we fix Daytona’s beachside?

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It was an assignment, she is well-equipped to handle. In 2017, she wrote “Tarnished Jewel: Daytona’s troubled beachside,” a lengthy investigation into the city’s financial investment in the area.

Seven years later, I asked her about her most recent take on the area and what, if anything, has changed since she wrote that piece.

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Eileen, you have been covering Daytona Beach’s waterfront woes for a long time, culminating in that 2017 report. Can you describe that report a bit and tell people how much has changed over the past seven years?

Daytona Beach established the Main Street Community Redevelopment Area in 1982. Designating the area a CRA has allowed the city to capture some of the property taxes generated in that area, and then use the money to improve the beachside between East International Speedway Boulevard and Oakridge Boulevard.

As of 2017, the city had collected $81 million in property tax increment funds in the Main Street CRA, a tally that has now climbed to nearly $110 million. The story I wrote in 2017 explored how the money had been used.

For the current story, I began by walking and driving around Daytona’s beachside for nearly five hours. The main thing that struck me is that the housing generally looks better, with fewer extremely dilapidated homes, and some houses that looked very nice. There are a few new businesses on Main Street and State Road A1A, but the area is still struggling to live up to what an oceanfront area is capable of being.

Some have been critical of beach driving. Do some find that a deterrent to investors and businesses?

Yes. One local longtime commercial Realtor put it this way: “Why are we the only beach in Florida that has so many oceanfront commercial lots available? Underwriters for big hotels don’t like our drivable beach when compared to 27 other locations in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.”

As hotel projects have come along over the years, developers have sometimes fought to get cars off the beach in front of the property they wanted to build on. They contended their guests would want a quiet, safe traffic-free beach where they wouldn’t have to worry about getting hit by a car or truck.

Beach driving supporters argue that removing vehicles from the beach between International Speedway Boulevard and Oakridge Boulevard a few decades ago became a deterrent for people who otherwise would have visited that area.

Today’s story is a pretty unflinching look at the city’s beachfront area as told by the people who know it best. Is there hope for the future?

There’s definitely hope for the future of Daytona’s beachside. If there’s one thing that most everybody agrees on, it’s that the area between the Halifax River and Atlantic Ocean still has the potential to be the best part of the city, so I don’t think people will ever give up on it.

Many forces could change the current dynamics that have parts of the beachside stuck in stagnation. The Riverfront Esplanade and Brown & Brown headquarters sparked improvements in the downtown that many probably thought they would never see, and the same could happen on the oceanfront.

John Dunbar is Executive Editor of the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Reporter talks about latest piece on Daytona’s beachside problems