The laid-back lifestyle of Boca Grande. Staff photo / Harold Bubil.
Bustling in season, the Gasparilla Island community has history, safety and lots of wealth Neighborhoods, subdivisions, gated communities — their residents like to think they are unique, and, in a way, they are. No two are exactly alike, although a whole bunch of them are redundantly similar.
But among the Gulf Coast’s communities — and we can use the entire Gulf Coast as a sample size — there is only one Boca Grande.
Occupying Gasparilla Island, which is bisected by the Charlotte-Lee county line, Boca Grande is a self-contained village of about 1,500 full-time residents. It has a preschool, health center, fire department, elementary school, community center, several marinas, churches and state parks to go with a beach that runs the 6-mile length of the island.
The pace of life is slow — the locals like to describe it as “laid back to the horizontal” — as is the pace of change.
In fact, the Herald-Tribune’s archive contains a story about Boca Grande written almost 20 years ago, and the quotations in that story echo those offered by Realtor Bob Melvin for this one.
“Most people come here because of the safety and the remoteness and the quiet,” said Rebecca Seale Paterson, of The Seale Family Realtors, in 1996. “There’s not a whole lot to do here to entertain people other than the beaches and the fishing. There’s a lot of natural beauty.”
Golf carts are the preferred mode of transportation in and around Boca Grande, and many of them have been customized. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 12-28-2015.
A week ago, when asked about Boca Grande’s most appealing feature, Melvin observed, “The family nature of it, and the relative safety — as safe as any place can be these days. Your kids can have freedom, like when we were kids. You can ride your bike, or, in this case, drive your golf cart and have some freedom. You can’t have that anymore in a lot of places, and I think for families, that appeals to them.”
Wealthy families, that is. They are known to vacation at The Gasparilla Inn, spending $3,188 per two-person bedroom per week during the holiday season for a standard cottage that can house several generations.
“It is very generational,” said parttime resident Mike Wetzer. “You see the grandparents, the parents, the youngsters, who apparently have been doing this for years. That’s really cool. You don’t see that very much anymore.”
Like Wetzer, they might have flown in by private jet, landing at a nearby jetport that has a 6,000-foot runway.
“It is obviously much more appealing to those folks, especially the ones who are family oriented, or it is going to be too slow for them,” Melvin said.
“We are on the island to enjoy the peace and quiet,” said Wetzer. “If I want to go shopping, I can go to Midtown in Manhattan and do all the shopping I want.”
A stroller and bicycles in front of the Gasparilla Inn comprise a snapshot of Boca Grande's appeal to wealthy young families. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 12-28-2015.
Melvin describes the century-old Gasparilla Inn as one of the “finest historical hotels in the world,” and praises its management’s efforts to bring the amenities into the 21st century while maintaining its early 20th-century Old Florida charm.
“The Gasparilla is really classy. We really enjoy that,” said Wetzer, a businessman from the Syracuse, N.Y., area.
Boca Grande’s location on the deepest harbor between Tampa and Miami made it an attractive location for a shipping port, and early in the century, Seaboard Coast Line built a railroad to carry phosphate from central Florida’s mines to Gasparilla Island and waiting ships from around the world.
Dripping with elegance, the 1912 Gasparilla Inn is one of Florida's finest historic resort hotels. Along with the tarpon fishing industry, the hotel is a major economic driver for Boca Grande. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 12-28-2015.
The Gasparilla Inn was built in 1911 and soon enlarged, becoming a resort for which the word “exclusive” is a bit of an understatement. Wealthy families have made it a vacation destination for generations.
When phosphate ships began to favor modern port facilities in Tampa and Manatee County, the Boca Grande railroad closed about 1980 (the right-of-way is now a bike path). But the town sustained itself by capitalizing on a largely unspoiled subtropical setting and some of the world’s best tarpon fishing. Boca Grande’s fishing guides cater to visiting anglers during the late-spring tarpon season.
Legislation in 1980 that froze commercial zoning was a key event in island history because it preserved the central business district that visitors find so appealing. There are no traffic lights. Stores like Fugate’s, restaurants like Temptation and The Pink Elephant, and architecture like that found at the former railroad depot, the various churches and the community center give the town its enduring charm.
“It is beautiful and worth preserving,” said Lynne Seibert, a longtime Boca Grande resident who has been active in preservation matters. “The reason people come here is because of the walkable, human scale of the village.”
A new swing bridge, at right, is being built to replace the 1958 bridge on the Boca Grande causeway, the only roadway onto Gasparilla Island. The toll is $6 to get onto the island and free to get off. About $50 million is being spent by the Gasparilla Island Bridge Authority to build new bridges linking North, Cole and Gasparilla islands to the Charlotte County mainland near Placida. The new bridge is expected to be completed in August. The bridges are expected to last 75 years, said real estate broker Bob Melvin. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 12-28-2015.
That is never more evident than during the Christmas season, when the island draws thousands of visitors, many of them who rent vacation units off-island, and, undeterred by the $6 bridge toll, use Boca Grande as a recreational amenity. As a result, parking can be an issue. Automobile drivers creep through the National Register historic district as the share the road with golf carts, bicyclists and pedestrians.
The bayside port at the south end of the island is undergoing dramatic change. Gone are the huge oil tanks, and the 9-acre property, owned by Florida Power and Light, is under contract.
The developers, BCB Homes and Seagate Development Group of Naples, said Melvin, “will cut it up into a nice, high-end community on the south tip of the island. It will be a nice beach community” of 20 luxury houses.
Although Melvin said 2015 was a record year for sales on Gasparilla Island, he describes the real estate market as “like Boca Grande itself — nice and steady. You don’t have the high highs or the low lows.”
He said prices are “pretty much as high as they have ever been, in most instances. Some listings will be coming up that are Sarasota-type listings in the $10 to $15 million range. There are definitely a few billionaires out here.”
This house at 16261 N. Island Court on the north end of Gasparilla Island is listed for sale at $6.35 million by Bob Melvin of Gulf Coast Internatonal Properties. Built in 2001, it has four bedrooms and six baths in 4,989 square feet. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 12-28-2015.
Boca Grande’s real estate market features cottages in the historic district, elegant beachfront mansions and more contemporary houses and condos on the bay side of the island. Prices range from $450,000 for a small condo unit to $6 million, although in the past, much pricier listings have been on the market. The home-sale record is $14.9 million, set in 2001.
Melvin described inventory as “fairly historically low. But it doesn’t bother me. We just make it happen.” Thirty houses are on the market, with a median list price of about $2 million. The median selling price of recent sales is about $1.25 million.
