Longboat Key's "typical" season comes to a close

There’s no hard-and-fast date on the calendar.

No coordinated schedule of condo community goodbye parties and no telling exactly when the last car-carrying tractor-trailer rumbles out of town.

But it doesn’t take too long to begin seeing the effects of a season that has come to an end.

Longboat Key’s population began descending to offseason levels earlier this month, in earnest during the week after Easter.

Traffic and lines at restaurants began thinning out. Tennis courts and tee times began getting easier to arrange.

That’s bound to happen when a town of about 8,000 zooms up to a peak-season population of more than 20,000, before descending again for summer.

From a public-safety point of view, both Police Chief Pete Cumming and Fire Chief Paul Dezzi said the season was fairly dull – exactly what people in their position want.

“It’s been a typical season,” Cumming said, adding calls for service were on par with previous seasons. “And now we’re hoping for a typical summer.”

Dezzi also said there was nothing unusual, and he noted calls for service began dropping off last week as well.

“To us, it was a normal season,” Dezzi said.

While Town Manager Dave Bullock knows the effects of a more than 100% increase in population can, at least temporarily, play havoc with a town of about four square miles, he said some of those effects were moderate in comparison to previous years.

“I felt traffic might have been slightly less and ended sooner,” Bullock said.

Bullock noted that the volume of traffic was still heavy, but congestion didn’t seem as bad as the previous two years. While exiting the Key into Sarasota, Bullock said he noticed traffic back up to St. Armands on occasion.

Bullock mentioned that Florida Department of Transportation signal changes at the intersections of Fruitville Road and U.S. 41 and Gulfstream Avenue and U.S. 41 may have helped.

“Traffic was not terrible this year, so I think that tells us something,” Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce President Gail Loefgren said, who noted hotel occupancy rates and tourist taxes collected in January were close to last year’s totals. March was not yet available.

Sandra Rios, director of marketing and communications for The Resort at Longboat Key Club, Lido Beach Resort and Zota Beach Resort, said the club saw about the same amount of business as it did in 2016, but more travelers arrived from within Florida during the winter months.

“Honestly, here at the resort, it’s really seeing the familiar faces that return year after year,’’ she said. “We have a strong history of repeat guests, so we really see generations of guests that come back year after year.”

However, Howard Rooks, owner of Amore Restaurant, said the restaurant was busier this year, but that could be because more people are becoming aware of the Italian hotspot that plans to operate from a mainland location in Sarasota next season.

“As small as Longboat is and as prominent as our location is, people were just discovering this year we were here,” he said.

Budee Jacobs, a longtime resident at Beachplace, said she loves seeing her friends throughout the season and, as many do, hates the traffic. But, she said she thinks traffic wasn’t as tough to navigate this season.

“Hate to say it because then I’m afraid they’re going to accept more people coming here and increase the population,’’ she said, adding that she finds Longboat Key people “very down to Earth.”

“At this stage in my life, what I want is as little stress as possible, but I want to be expanding and learning and meeting new people, and that’s what Longboat Key has done. I think, unlike any other community, you just see a cross section of everything.”