Walk to the end of Pine Avenue this month and you'll see concrete pilings breaking the surface of Tampa Bay in neat rows, driven deeper into the seabed than anything the old wooden pier ever stood on. City crews expect the walkway to reopen this fall, according to the most recent WWSB coverage, closing out a stretch that's felt endless to anyone who's watched the empty space from Bayfront Park.
Here's the part that doesn't show up in most of the "pier is coming back" coverage: add up the years since Hurricane Irma first knocked the original structure down in 2017, and the City Pier has spent more time closed than open. Irma damage led to a full demolition and rebuild that didn't reopen until June 2020, nearly three years later. It stayed open for a little over four years before Hurricanes Helene and Milton tore out 400 to 500 feet of the walkway in the fall of 2024. Do the math on those nine years and the pier residents talk about as a permanent fixture has actually been walkable for a little more than four of them.
That pattern is exactly what this rebuild is engineered to break, and the changes underneath the water aren't the only thing being redesigned. What's happening at the T-end, where the buildings sit, is arguably the bigger story for anyone who lives here.
Nine Years, Four Open
The pier's history goes back further than most people assume. According to a WWSB report from earlier this year, this reconstruction is the pier's sixth since it was first built in 1911, with prior repairs or rebuilds after damage in 1921, 1935, 1974, 1988, and 2017. For most of the twentieth century, that meant a rebuild every fifteen to twenty years, spaced out enough that nobody living here experienced more than one closure.
The last decade broke that spacing:
- 2017: Hurricane Irma damages the original wood-piling structure.
- 2020: The pier reopens in June after a nearly three-year rebuild.
- 2024: Hurricanes Helene and Milton destroy hundreds of feet of walkway just over four years after the last reopening.
- 2026: A rebuild using reinforced concrete pilings targets a fall reopening, city officials have said.
Public works manager Dean Jones has been the most precise voice on what's different underground this time. He told WWSB in May that the new piles are driven to hardpan, roughly 40 feet below the deck, a specification meant to hold through the kind of storm surge that gutted the walkway in 2024. Commissioner Carol Whitmore has described the depth in rounder terms, telling WWSB in August the crews went "50 feet deeper, I hear" than the old supports. Whatever the exact figure, both are describing the same bet: that the fix this time is structural, not cosmetic.
"No matter who you are, everybody knows about the city pier." — Carol Whitmore, Holmes Beach city commissioner
The T-End Is Getting a Different Tenant, Not Just a Repair
Most of the coverage on this rebuild treats the T-end buildings as an afterthought behind the walkway story. That's a mistake, because what's happening there is the clearest sign of how the city is thinking about the pier's future.
Mote Marine, which had occupied space at the end of the pier before the storms, is not returning. In its place, city commissioners in June unanimously approved a new lease with GSM Partners, the operator bringing back the pier's longtime restaurant, Pieradise, into an expanded footprint that includes the space Mote Marine used to hold. The deal runs five years with an option for a second five-year term, GSM paying $12,000 a month in base rent plus utilities and taxes that escalate annually with the consumer price index. Mayor Mark Short called it "very fair" and said it could save the city $3,000 to $4,000 a month compared to the prior arrangement.
The practical change for anyone walking out to the T-end: more room, a bar separated from the kitchen for the first time, live music on a regular basis, and a bait-and-tackle counter for people fishing off the rail. GSM's Brian Seymour described the goal as offering more than the small original footprint allowed. Whether that reads as an upgrade or a shift away from the pier's quieter, more educational identity probably depends on who you ask, but it's a real decision the city made about what belongs at the end of that walkway, not a like-for-like replacement.
Pine Avenue Felt the Empty Space
The closure didn't just cost the city foot traffic in the abstract. It cost specific businesses specific customers.
Taylor DeLuca manages Two Scoops Ice Cream, a shop her family has run for three decades a short walk from the pier entrance. She's described three feet of storm surge inside the store from the 2024 hurricanes, on top of the loss of the foot traffic the pier used to send down Pine Avenue every day. Morgan Bryant, who owns Cool Beans nearby, put it more bluntly to a local TV crew this month, calling the pier not just a structure but "the heartbeat of our community."
That's not sentiment for its own sake. Mayor Short has called the pier the county's top tourist destination, and businesses along Pine Avenue have spent two years without the pedestrian traffic that designation used to generate. Reopening isn't just a ribbon cutting. It's the return of a walking pattern that shops on this stretch of the island have built their calendars around for decades.
What to Actually Watch This Fall
If you live on the island, the useful thing to track isn't the reopening date itself, since that's shifted before and could again depending on weather and permitting. It's whether the two changes underneath this rebuild actually hold: whether the deeper pilings keep the walkway standing through the next serious storm, and whether an expanded Pieradise with a separated bar and regular live music changes the crowd that gathers at the T-end compared to what used to be a smaller, quieter operation next to a marine science outpost.
Either way, the empty space at the end of Pine Avenue that's defined the last two years is about to fill back in. Whether the businesses along that street get the traffic pattern back the way it was, or something a little different, is the story worth watching once the pier actually reopens.
If watching this stretch of the island rebuild has you thinking about your own place on it, whether that's a home near Pine Avenue or somewhere else on Anna Maria, Renne' Rupp tracks these neighborhood-level changes as part of how we work with buyers and sellers here. Reach out any time to talk through what's happening on your block, or request a free home valuation to see where your property stands today.
