Longboat's Hidden Tourist Industry

While the town commissioners go about their self-appointed crusade to build high-density lower-middle-class tourist hotels on our exclusive island, they have failed to look at their own community and realize that Longboat Key already has an extensive and burgeoning tourist accommodation industry. Perhaps ten to fifteen percent of all properties on Longboat Key are already on the vacation rental market. 

One has only to go on-line and Google "for rent by owner Longboat" and there are dozens and dozens of websites advertising vacation rental homes on our island. Typically one finds headlines such as "

Longboat Key - 527 vacation rentals - VRBO

The above website alone lists over 5% of the total properties on Longboat Key as rental properties  I recently attended a party in a home in Bay Isles. Talking to the occupant, who herself was seasonal  renter, I was told that approximately half the homes on her street were rentals. 

Everyone, except the current town commission, has known for years that there is a steady, and now accelerating, economic transformation occurring on Longboat Key. More and more of Longboat is becoming increasing wealthy. Property costs continue to go up. Over the past four years, the island has witnessed a McMansion building boom. Gone are the days of modest homes being built on the island. Now we see 10,000 square foot beachfront cottages and $4 million+ homes being torn down to make way for even more opulent abodes.

Many of us remember a simpler community where people spent a majority of their year. We now see the profile of a new wealthy, highly seasonal, property owner. The new Longboater spends two or three months a year on-island. They are vacationing and do not require neighborhood services such as hardware stores or clothing shops. 

Many of the houses owned by people who are seldom here become rentals. Since the town has made no attempt to understand the island private home rental market, there are no substantiated figures, other than what one is able to see on the internet.

Looking on-line it is readily apparent that the Longboat Key visitor market is alive and well, and also highly promoted. Given the seemingly large rental inventory already available, one has to wonder why the town commission is driven to increase tourism still more.

It should be noted that all local restaurants have been experiencing record business in recent years. The commission might look into where all these customers are coming from.

The current commission's tourism dreams may have already been fulfilled. They just have not noticed in their zeal to  promote commercial development in an exclusive, residential community, where it is doubtful that property owners of luxury homes even want more tourists.

A new form of tourism may in fact be evolving on Longboat Key. This new form of visitor accommodation is softer and lower profile than the high-rise hotel-like structures of the past two decades. Along with residential tourism comes a transformation of island neighborhoods into assemblages of private and rental houses.

It is of interest that many of the rentals on Longboat lie "behind the gates". The American economic landscape is changing, As wealth disparity increases, exclusive communities such as Longboat Key, with abundant upscale home rentals, will continue to attract the discriminating vacationer, who now prefers the comforts of a house to the limits of a hotel room. Personally I always rent flats or condos, as opposed to hotel rooms, when I travel.

There is no lack of advertising and promotion of Longboat Key as a vacation destination on the internet, where all promotion now takes place. What has changed is that increasingly wealthy travelers and seasonal visitors are choosing larger more commodious accommodations. Why stay in a 500 square foot noisy crowded box when you can stay in a beautiful home for not much more?

The town commission may be a day late and a dime short when it comes to accommodation trends on Longboat Key. Their baseless rational that a high level of commercial tourism is necessary to promote home ownership is outmoded in today's new vacation rental world. Increasingly the owner promoted residential rental market is displacing the older hotel room model. The internet is displacing the travel agent. Longboat is unique as there is such a high percentage of wealthy seasonal absentee property owners, coupled with an attractive island ambiance that makes home rentals attractive to travelers.

This is the new reality and the town commission needs to get on board.

Poineers!, Oh Pioneers!

To paraphrase a Walt Whitman poem:

Come my tan-faced children,

Follow well in order, get your lawyers ready,
Have you your agenda? have you your sharp-edged tongues?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Once again this town commission is already girding up its loins to do legal battle with all those who would criticize yet another uninformed venture by a failed group of people who speak with a single tongue it seems. It should be noted that this commission has so far lost every single legal squabble they have precipitated.

This time it will be very expensive and actually create more problems for future generations of taxpayers than the commission's north end beach plan might help.

Below are images of every inlet in the state of Florida. I include them so taxpayers can clearly understand that building two groins at the north end is unique. No other county or municipality has chosen to build groins near an inlet. Why?

I want to use images to try to inform residents just how ill- advised it is to spend tens of millions to construct unneeded groins that will severely and quickly erode Beer-can Island which is county property. Manatee County will surely take issue with their beach being ravaged as the result of two groins adjacent to the island and demand that the beaches not only be restored, but also maintained on a yearly basis. This will be extremely expensive for Longboat taxpayers, year after year. 

If you look at the various inlets you will notice that every single one has two jetties, one on either side of the inlet, and not a single inlet has groins. Does that make you wonder why it is that the town commission has decided to become pioneers in inlet management? 

Do you know that the commission is ready to spend $25 million dollars of your tax dollars on a scheme proposed by people who stand to make millions on the project, without asking for advice from a single outside independent qualified engineering company? Would you be so trusting?

Even though Florida created statutes to encourage investigation of alternative ways of maintaining our beaches, this commission has chosen to proceed in complete ignorance of  what is being done in other communities around the world.

Below are two pictures of the proposed groins at the north end. The second shows how the beach will fare if no groins are erected. There is not enough difference to merit spending tens of millions of tax dollars. Additionally, the town manager has repeatedly cautioned the commission that groins require more sand replenishment than leaving the beach in its natural state. 

Groins and erosion down-drift.

Looking at the Islander, it will

much more severe.

Natural beach with projected erosion

Because this commission refuses to ask for input from other communities that have successful inlet management programs, we taxpayers may end up spending much more money than we need to. Ignorance seldom produces good results. It is important to email the commissioners and demand that they act prudently and in our best interests.

The rational approach to managing our beaches adjacent to our two inlets would be to seek input from communities with successful programs. 

Then there is the issue of spending our money to maintain Beer-can Island which belongs to the county to which we send eighty percent of our Manatee county taxes. Why is this commission asking taxpayers to pay and pay and pay, when we should be demanding the county control their inlet that is responsible for gobbling up 86% of the sand lost off the north end beaches - 86%!

Here are images of every other inlet in Florida - notice NO GROINS.