Has it truly been sitting down like that for a 10 years?
Absolutely sure enough, when Daytona Beach front Shores initial filed a lawsuit to tear down the Treasure Island Resort, aka Treasure Island Inn, aka Treasure Island Lodge, as a nuisance residence, it was back again in 2011.
Even then, the go well with had been brewing for some time, but it was lawfully challenging. About a dozen defendants had to be named simply because it was unclear who owned it —all these liens, bankruptcies, collectors, satisfies and countersuits.
Now, as News-Journal staff members writer Jim Abbott a short while ago reported, the metropolis may possibly in fact imply it.
Mark Lane:Derelict seaside lodge is no treasure
From 2017:New resort prepared for Treasure Island site
The 11-story resort elaborate appears to be like like anything from a war zone, a graffiti-coated skeletal outline of a the moment-going on resort. This was no zombie home quietly rotting away and driving down the glance of a community. This was a towering destroy on the city’s key road. A monument to storms, financial downturns and the vicissitudes of a fickle tourism and serious estate sector. An unavoidable warning to any probable trader in the area.
The spot has been dim due to the fact the hurricanes of 2004. The owners at the time, Bray & Gillespie, a genuine estate firm that when owned 35 beachside accommodations, stated it would reopen the put by June 2005. It did not.
As an alternative, there was the a single-two-three punches of hurricanes and the bursting of the Good Florida Actual Estate Bubble followed by the Wonderful Economic downturn.
This was all the sadder due to the fact the area was as soon as a premier house. A spot that exemplified a high-drinking water time of relatives tourism here. A hotel that could keep its personal towards the significant resort chains. An all-inclusive holiday knowledge with a Tiki bar, two swimming pools, convention facilities, a reward store, and the Billy Bone’s Tavern wherever Patti and Marti would participate in your requests nightly. It experienced a grand entrance with a enormous picket, Polynesian-fashion roof, shading the way to a roomy foyer.
This was no mother-and-pop Atlantic Avenue motel with a cracked asphalt parking ton and a flickering sign stating, “Free A/C, vacancy,” this would be the new period in regional tourism. More upscale, absent from the regular Daytona Beach front core. Every little thing you could want proper there on the beach.
For a fondly remembered time in the 1970s and ‘80s, the Treasure Island was a strike and prompt a extra affluent beachside and tourism economic climate awaited the region if buyers could only commence thinking huge.
But then, very well, things transpired.
After reprieve, resort nonetheless standing
About 8 many years in the past, architects commissioned by buyers concluded that, sure, the setting up was not automatically misplaced. It has, as the real estate people today like say, very good bones. Rebuilding on a stripped-down hulk of a resort would price tag thousands and thousands a lot less than building a new construction from scratch. Back again then, that seemed plausible plenty of. In 2017, house owners declared strategies for a large rebuild. A four-star resort! A return to its previous glory. This could happen.
Now, following quite a few much more years of neglect, storms and salty winds, possibly people bones are not as great as all that any longer. And soon after June’s Surfside Condominium collapse, these kinds of an ambitious rebuilding approach on broken bones appears like an even more challenging provide.
So now the city is hunting all over again at demolishing the resort. Some thing that required to take place a extensive, long time in the past. Something that prolonged in the past occurred to various other more compact ‘70s era accommodations up and down Atlantic Avenue just after the walloping of the 2004 hurricane year. These pretty much 17 a long time of disuse and decay show that, if practically nothing else, Daytona Beach Shores has shown an abundance of tolerance for what has develop into the area’s most imposing nuisance house.
Nevertheless, it’s unfortunate that a building that experienced so a lot probable, that was these a showpiece, that was the backdrop of so numerous very good periods, has come to this.
Mark Lane is a Information-Journal columnist. His electronic mail is [email protected]
