- April 25, 2024
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That’s a wrap.
The car carriers are leaving, the traffic is waning and the beaches are getting less crowded — all tell-tale signs that the end of season is near.
So with Easter past and temperatures rising each day, the Longboat Observer thought it appropriate to review this year’s season to answer the question: Was it any different than years past?
Photos from approximately 145 events have made their way into the pages of the Longboat Observer since October. Is that more than years past? By about 10 events, but we were pretty tired when we counted.
“I think we had more going on this year, so many clubs were coming up with some innovative events and just new ideas all over town,” said Susan Phillips, Longboat Key Garden Club president. “It was just a very packed schedule this season, and everything was a broad spectrum of events offered, so you weren’t going to the same event just put on by different organizations.”
Phillips said attendance was higher at this year’s Garden Club events, which included the annual Taste of the Keys and Fashion Show in January.
Over at Longboat Island Chapel, event and worship service attendance was the same or higher as last year, communications chairwoman Sue Reese said. Overall, she noticed bigger crowds on the island.
“I thought it went extremely well,” Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce President Gail Loefgren said. “This is one of the busiest years I’ve seen, and I’ve been here 20 years.”
While Sarasota County numbers weren’t available to her yet, Loefgren said that the Manatee County side of Longboat saw an increase in tourism tax dollars. In February, $233,542 in tourist tax dollars were collected. That beats last year, which was $174,925.
Sand Cay Beach Resort Assistant Manager Melissa Ciolino said season went well for the resort, and numbers were about the same as last year’s. She expects winter visitors to taper off starting at the end of April.
Loefgren said Hurricane Irma could have had an impact on the higher numbers, as some popular spring break destinations, such as Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, are still recovering.
Loefgren said she thinks 2019’s late Easter (April 21) will be a boon for the island. And Sand Cay is already booked for March 2019.
Season started late for Simply Suzanne’s Cafe near mid-Key. Stacy Altherr, who purchased the cafe a little over a year ago, said she was expecting seasonal customers to start flooding through her door by January.
But it wasn’t until the end of February that more customers started coming in for coffee and a meal.
“I expected season to be longer,” Altherr said. “We’re getting the numbers that we were expecting, but only for two months.”
Lynn Christensen at Harry’s Continental Kitchens said season started a couple weeks earlier for them.
“There’s only so many weeks where it’s like peak season, and in the past, it was about the middle of February, and it seemed to start sooner than that,” she said.
Christensen said on average the restaurant served anywhere between 150 and 200 people for breakfast and lunch, except for Sundays when that number increased to more than 300. Dinner was similar, she said.
Over on St. Armands Circle, Columbia Restaurant had a record year, Chief Marketing Officer Michael Kilgore said. He said he thinks the warm temperatures in February helped business.
With more people come more emergencies, something the Longboat Key Fire Rescue and Police Department expect. Although this season was typical by many standards, both departments did have some interesting observations.
Police Chief Pete Cumming said the single thing that stood out to him, beside the typical increase in traffic and crashes, was the increased use of Greer Island, colloquially known as Beer Can Island.
“This spring break has been unique,” Cumming said. “We’ve put a lot of extra resources up there.”
That increased presence, plus the additional workforce necessary to police a Key that more than doubles in population, required more overtime pay in the Police Department. The town is hoping to reimburse that budget need with funding from Manatee County to patrol its property on the north end of the island.
The police numbers, otherwise, are “fairly static,” Cumming said in an email. He backed up that statement with numbers of traffic incidents last season compared to this season. Between February and March, the department recorded 228 traffic incidents last year and 225 of the same this year. The most common infractions were parking violations.
Fire Rescue Chief Paul Dezzi said the season, as he saw it, was not much different than the past 10 years. That increase in call volume starts around late October and begins to wane around late March.
There have been more patients coming into the department’s two stations seeking help, Dezzi said. Most of the department’s calls for help are for falls, Dezzi said.
Ahh, traffic — the great equalizer. It’s almost become a dirty word on Longboat Key, a complaint Town Manager Tom Harmer said he hears often in conversations with residents.
But traffic seemed to be lighter this year, Police Chief Pete Cumming said.
And although there are no numbers to compare it to, the department put its traffic monitoring device near the 1600 block of Gulf of Mexico Drive at the end of March. Its data showed an average of more than 3,500 northbound vehicles per hour between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. between March 22 and April 1, the busiest time per day for the eight days that were monitored.
The average speed of those vehicles was about 42 mph, according to the data collected by police. The fastest speed measured was at 3 a.m.: 77 mph.
Numbers recorded by the town’s five on-demand crosswalks were lower than last year’s. Of all the crosswalks, Country Club Shores was most popular with an average of 423 requests per week from Dec. 31 to March 10.
That crosswalk for the same time period in 2017 counted an average of 442 pedestrians per week.
