- December 18, 2024
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The streets of Spanish Main Yacht Club are clean, but the units are still desolate.
Most unit owners still cannot return to their villas as contractors work to restore plumbing and electricity to the gutted villas.
With 212 units, it is a herculean task for the Spanish Main Yacht Club board and residents to restore their community.
“We really want to get people back in their homes as quickly as we can,” board member Margaret Dugan said.
After Hurricane Helene’s storm surge, residents had about a week to assess the damage before Milton had its sights on Sarasota.
Immediately after Helene, residents returned to check on their villas.
Dugan said, from the outside, the units looked relatively okay. But once people opened their doors, Helene’s water damage was staggering.
In Dugan’s two units in Spanish Main, one had 8 inches and another had 18 inches. Many villa owners lost almost everything close to the ground, including furniture, Dugan said.
Dugan and fellow board member Jeffrey Love said the condominium association board looked around for companies for remediation and restoration.
The board chose Servpro, and through collaborating with the company’s Sarasota office, Servpro sent a crew from Michigan.
According to Dugan, it was necessary to find a crew big enough to deal with Spanish Main’s community.
“This was not easy because it’s never happened before,” Dugan said. “Nobody left us a recipe book on how to manage it.”
Then Milton arrived, and the crew paused remediation efforts. After, crews assessed damage from Milton, which was mainly wind damage to roofs.
Servpro workers started necessary drywall removal and asbestos testing in villas that had water damage.
From the end of October to recently, the streets of Spanish Main looked like most others in Longboat Key, the sides of narrow streets piled with debris and furniture.
After Servpro handled debris cleanup, its contract with the association was done. The board then hired a separate contractor to continue doing restoration work in the villas like plumbing and electrical work.
Dugan said the board is still working on finalizing numbers between insurance and its public adjuster. Each villa is insured for up to $250,000, and Dugan said current remediation estimates are still “well within” that number.
The association is responsible for “white boxing” the units, which means restoring the units to a blank slate. This means replacing drywall and restoring power and plumbing.
From there, it’s up to the unit owners how to repair the villas with paint, furniture and whatever else is necessary.
Dugan and Love said the board is prioritizing full-time residents of the community during the next phase of construction, which is to restore plumbing and power.
“There’s about one-third of unit owners who that’s their only home,” resident Tom Freiwald said. “The community is first trying to get those people first on the list.”
Freiwald is a full-time resident of the community and is still moving from apartment to apartment while waiting for his villa to be habitable.
“Once the drywall goes up, our villa is fully functional. We’re planning on moving in quickly,” Freiwald said.
While he is eager to move back, he understands that with 212 units, this is an enormous task for the board.
Freiwald compared the recovery effort to a freight train, with all the individual units as the cars.
“We’re trying to get the cars back on the track,” he said.
During the remediation process, there were some bumps in the hypothetical train track.
For one, some residents were concerned with how Servpro was managing the drywall and content removal. Freiwald said some residents thought Servpro was too “aggressive” in the cleanup process, and things like countertops or shower doors could have been saved.
“For sure there were people who weren’t happy with Servpro,” Freiwald said. “But there are others who were satisfied and felt they did their job.”
Again, Freiwald emphasized that 212 unit owners equate to over 400 residents when factoring those who live as couples or families. Not every story will match up, he said.
“It’s a hard fight,” Freiwald said. “It’s a really interesting dynamic, but it’s been mostly friendly.”
The Spanish Main board was responsible for dealing with insurance companies, public adjusters and remediation crews while also trying to keep residents informed.
“This has become more than a full-time job for our board,” Dugan said. “There’s much to do.”
The Spanish Main board now focuses on restoring the units and getting residents moved back into the villas.
But a handful of residents pondered the idea of exploring the option of bringing in a developer to overhaul and change the community.
Spanish Main is a 55-and-older community with one-story villas that finished construction in 1972. The community is situated on a unique plot of land with a canal, which is likely why Helene’s storm surge was this damaging to the community.
“Spanish Main’s land is very valuable,” Freiwald said. “There’s no other property like it on Longboat Key that would become available in the foreseeable future.”
It’s not about money for the residents, though. It’s about the future, Freiwald said.
He took part in some discussions among residents who want to explore the possibility of redeveloping the community to meet modern standards.
Freiwald said there will soon be a survey sent to residents to gauge people’s interest, or lack thereof, in this possibility.
“We owe it to ourselves to explore every option,” Freiwald said. “Until we know what peoples’ intentions are, that conversation isn’t going anywhere.”
Dugan confirmed that there is chatter among some residents concerned about Spanish Main and looking at the possibility, but, to her knowledge, there is not yet a credible proposal.
“The board is really focused right now on doing the things that we are required to do, which is to recover and rebuild. If something were to come along and enough people had interest in it, we could look at it,” Dugan said.
Now, in late December and two months after the hurricanes, Dugan and Love feel the community is turning a corner.
“As people see the community being restored, I think spirits are lifting a little bit. I think people are feeling more hopeful,” Dugan said.
When residents return, it might still be a shock for some.
“When you see the drywall removed, you don’t recognize the rooms. It’s pretty odd-looking. But I think people see that’s the first step in bringing it back to where it was,” Love said.
Through the hardship, Dugan and Love said they had hope when seeing the Spanish Main community come together.
On some doors in the community next to the yellow “restricted use” signs, someone in the community also pasted “I love Spanish Main” signs.
“The real concept, the neighborhood, the fact that you knew your neighbors, and they looked out for you, that really did sell me on Spanish Main,” Love said. “I think we’re still there. We just need to rebuild our houses and regain what we had before.”
