Secur-All Insurance cuts ribbon at new Longboat Key location

There was a sense of deja vu at the Secur-All Insurance ribbon cutting on March 18. Though ribbon cuttings typically celebrate new businesses, Secur-All has been part of the Longboat Key community for 12 years. 

However, the Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce festivities were to celebrate the longtime business’s move to the north end of the island. Sandra Smith, agent and office manager, moved her team there in June of last year. Since opening in 2009, the agency had been on Bay Isles Road, where the Truist building now is. Smith cut the ribbon at 6350 Gulf of Mexico Drive. 

“It was time to get to another part of the Key,” Smith said. “It’s a new neck of the woods where a lot of new life is. It’s smart to have that Gulf of Mexico Drive exposure, and we’re still your neighborhood agents.” 

Smith now shares the building with another new business, Reed Medical Group, who she was also promoting at her ribbon cutting.

She wanted to introduce her clients to the new doctor, who opened a concierge medical group in February, and get their professional relationship going. The building will be renamed the Longboat Key Professional Center and Smith hopes to work with Reed Medical Group to promote both of them. 

“This building has been brought back to life,” Smith said. 

Smith’s cooperation and support of her fellow businesspeople is nothing new. She’s been a Longboat Key resident for 25 years and threw herself into her community once she opened Secur-All.

Since opening, Smith has made it a point to support philanthropic endeavors like the Kiwanis Lawn Party, which she’s sponsored every year. Her Chihuahua, who serves as Secur-All’s unofficial mascot, also comes to many of her events. 

Her Secur-All agency is an offshoot of her father’s, which began on Long Island in the 1960s. Before she opened the office, she worked at the Colony and the tennis center and used her local contacts to grow the business when she started out. At first, she advertised very little and just grew the business by working with friends to get them the best insurance premiums she could find.

As the business grew, she moved from the office at Harbour Square into the SunTrust building, now the Truist building. Her passion is helping residents of her community, and her team works with everyone from homeowners to part-time residents to condo owners to homeowners associations. 

The Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce has traditionally done ribbon cuttings when a new business opens up on the Key, and chamber President Gail Loefgren said that since Covid, more and more businesses have moved here. In the past year, the chamber has hosted three: Ultra-Yacht, Symphony Massage and La Vita Zen. 

“This year and last has been the most business growth I’ve seen on the island since ever, and I’ve been here since 1993,” Loefgren said. “This kind of growth wouldn’t have happened in the 90s.”

The business community, like Smith, has been supportive of new businesses entering the Longboat Key landscape and businesses that are good for Longboat Key residents have been thriving. Ambassadors come bearing novelty scissors (which have to be sharpened every few years) to celebrate the new addition to the community. Recently, the family’s been growing at a high rate. 

“We’ve had those big scissors forever, we’ve always done ribbon cuttings,” Loefgren said.