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By Tom Zucco, staff writer
©St. Petersburg Times, published August 27, 1995
Editor’s Note: The Tides Hotel and Bath Club closed
in October 1995 to make way for condominiums.
This Website is used solely for my personal,
non-commercial use!
NORTH REDINGTON BEACH -- At 16700 Gulf Blvd., tucked among
the monotonous high-rise condos and the million-dollar bungalows,
sits one of those tired little two-story resorts most people
don't notice unless they spend a lot of time on the beach.
It’s got an old neon sign out front, a cracked and peeling
1930s Art Deco facade and rooms that start at 45 bucks a night.
The Tides Hotel and Bath Club opened on New Year’s Eve 1936.
Early next month, the hotel will close. A month or so later,
the bath club will follow it into oblivion.
The Tides has creaky oak floors, bottle openers on the bathroom
doors, musty Oriental rugs and a glorious past. Back when people
made going to the Gulf a big occasion, back in the 1940s, ’50’s
and ’60’s, The Tides was the prince of the beach.
It was a rec room for Pinellas County’s high society. Rolls-Royces
deposited their passengers under the club’s canopy for fashion
shows and art exhibits. Couples got married, played bridge, ate
dinner and danced the night away on the parquet of the Four Seasons
Room.
You could leave your shoes outside your room at night and find
them polished the next morning.
Alfred Hitchcock stayed here. So did Jonathan Winters, Joe DiMaggio
and Marilyn Monroe.
In its heyday, the Bath Club had more than 5,000 members. Today,
there are about 1,200, who pay membership fees of $250 a year.
Most afternoons, you still can find groups of elderly women in
straw hats and summer dresses playing bridge under the awnings.
But it’s a fact of life that when property values go up,
old buildings come down. Comiskey Park in Chicago fell to the
wrecking ball. The Soreno Hotel in St. Petersburg was blown up.
And New York City’s Fillmore East, where rock bands like
the Who, the Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin played, is scheduled
to be demolished.
The same fate awaits The Tides, and for the same reason -- money.
Nearly every official connected with The Tides agrees that the
14 acres of land is worth more than the buildings, and that it’s
no longer economically feasible to refurbish the facility.
But "economic feasibility" is a hollow term for the
people who learned to swim here, who got dressed up and danced
here.
To them, one more slice of old Florida is dying.
“I’ve been having bad dreams about this place closing,”
said Ilene Hothem, a club member since the 1960’s. “It’s
scary for me. It was a way of life. You could rent a cabana and
keep all your things right here at the beach.”
She said she and her husband and their two sons will find somewhere
else to go.
“But not like this.”
A rich history
It seems like everybody has a story. There’s the waiter
named B.C. who never, ever, forgot a customer’s name or
favorite drink. Or the wealthy widow who would wait in her limousine
while her chauffeur went down to the beach to set up her chair
and umbrella. Or the time small airplanes were allowed to land
on the beach.
But maybe the best story is about Joe and Marilyn.
It was the spring of 1961. They had been divorced for about seven
years, but they decided to take a two-week vacation together.
They rented rooms across the hall from each other.
To avoid the fans who quickly found out where they were, the
couple would retreat to deck chairs set up on the roof. Undaunted,
kids showed up with baseballs and tossed them up to DiMaggio.
He signed his name and tossed the balls back down to the kids.
People saw the couple kissing and holding hands, and there was
speculation that they might get back together. They didn’t.
That same spring, George Symons began his 11th year as The Tides’
swimming instructor. He’s still there today, at age 76,
teaching kids to swim.
“I sit here and try to visualize all the kids I’ve
taught,” he said, looking out at the pool from under his
porkpie hat. “I used to have 30 to 40 kids. Today, I had
10. It’s the end of an era.
“But it’s been a glorious 40 years of my life,”
he added, “and I’ll still continue to work. Probably
at the American Legion pool in Seminole.”
Symons is part of a small group of people who have worked at
The Tides forever, people you could always count on being there,
who made the place special. People like Erno Gaspar, who has
worked there 39 years, as a baker. When The Tides closes, he’ll
retire.
“It’s time,” he said. He has lived on the property
all 39 years, and he had to find a new place to stay.
Nick Simons is another fixture. He just about grew up at The
Tides. George Symons taught him to swim here in 1955 and a few
years later, caught him playing hooky from school. Simons started
working here in 1961, first renting cabanas, chairs and umbrellas,
then operating his own rental business with his brother.
For the last year and a half, Simons, 47, has managed the club
and hotel in addition to his duties as a Redington Beach commissioner.
He said The Tides is dying because lifestyles have changed. People
don’t socialize -- just sit around and talk or play cards
-- like they used to. And vacations are different.
“It used to be that you went to the same place -- Atlantic
City, Ocean City, Panama City Beach -- year after year,”
he said. “Today, people are more adventuresome and have
more options -- cruise ships, cheap air fare, time shares.”
“And instead of taking a two-week vacation, people are taking
more vacations, but not as long, like a three- or four-day weekend.”
The other factor working against The Tides is the increasing
value of beachfront property. The place just takes up too much
valuable land.
The Tides is actually a series of buildings, including the motor
inn, the main hotel, patio apartments and eight cottages. The
Bath Club, which is in the middle of the complex, has two dining
rooms, two pools, a dinner theater and a ballroom.
In all, it’s about a quarter-mile of prime real estate.
“The buyers are buying the land, not the property,”
Simons explained. “That is what’s really valuable.”
“Sure, I hate to see the place go. But if there was any
way possible of keeping it open, the owners would have done it.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment or two, and then he
shook his head. “It’s sad,” he said. “I guess
right now I’m trying to stay occupied with making sure everything
runs smoothly as we wind down.”
Business at The Tides has been good lately, Simons said, but
only because it’s the death watch. People are coming here
the way old friends visit a pal who’s gravely ill.
When Jack and Lillian Toone found out The Tides was closing,
they started coming to the club every day from their home in
Seminole. They want to remember every detail of the place, like
the wrought iron poles adorned with grape clusters that support
the awnings.
“It just makes you ill,” said Lillian, a retired coffee
shop manager. “I know they need the money, but oh. . . .
It was always nice and quiet here, never crowded, and the people
who work here are so nice.”
Jack, a former New York City police officer and director of security
for the New York Mets, nodded in agreement.
“The last of a dying breed.”
Condo coming
Closing is scheduled for mid-October.
EcoGroup Inc., a Tampa-based development company, is under contract
to buy the property from the heirs of Charles Alberding, who
died in 1989 and owned The Tides, the Vinoy, and the former Sunset
Golf and Country Club. EcoGroup plans to raze the buildings,
clear the land, and build a condominium: 14 stories, 244 units.
The plan has to be approved by the planning and zoning board
as well as the town council. About 30 residents showed up at
a recent zoning meeting to look at the plan. Most were skeptical.
Another landmark gone. Another high-rise in its place.
“We propose to build up to 14 stories,” explained Jae
Heinberg , vice president of EcoGroup. “But by doing that,
we would be opening up about half of the 1,370 feet of beachfront.
So instead of only a few feet of open space, we’d build
higher and open up about half the site.”
“We will landscape it, put in a fountain, benches and a
park.”
Heinberg said he knows residents don’t want another cliff
dwelling, another giant concrete block.
“It may or may not fly,” he said. “But the product
there now has not been economically feasible for a number of
years. What are the alternatives? It’s an economic dinosaur.
It’s in disrepair and would take such a substantial amount
of money to rebuild.”
“Our projects are not concrete pillboxes,” he said.
“This is going to be nice.”
The Colonel
A few Tuesdays ago, at about noon, the Colonel was standing
in the middle of Gulf Boulevard, waiting for a break in traffic
so he could cross the street. His name is Irwin Lex, but everyone
calls him the Colonel. He served in the Army during World War
I and retired in 1955.
Every Tuesday and Friday, the Colonel puts on a freshly pressed
shirt, a pair of slacks and a bolo tie and drives his old Chevy
from his home in Seminole to have lunch at The Tides.
He sits at the same table by the window and orders the same thing:
grilled cheese sandwich, fruit cup, coffee.
“Been doing this too long to remember,” he said with
a wide smile.
The Colonel is 100 years old.
What will he do now?
“They’re going to close?” he asked. “I didn’t
know that.”
He took a sip of coffee and smiled again.
“Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll just have
to eat somewhere else.”
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