- March 29, 2025
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Returning to the SeaHorse Beach Resort feels like returning home for many of the condo-hotel’s owners and guests.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton battered the resort and its first floor, including the pool. The resort needed plenty of help. Sam McCarter said, luckily, the resort is built on a strong foundation — its owners and staff.
“We could not have done this without the support of our owners and our staff,” McCarter said.
The SeaHorse Beach Resort is a small, old Florida-style beach resort located at 3453 Gulf of Mexico Drive. The resort has 36 units varying from studios to two-bedroom condos.
Those condos are dubbed condotels, which describe the units as privately owned but also rented by the owners for guests.
McCarter is one of the condotel owners and a director of the condo association. He said the resort has always had a tight-knit community feel curated by repeat renters and the owners themselves.
“We want people to have a connection. We’re looking for people who come back. There’s a lot of family connection here,” McCarter said.
This community feel was amplified after the storms as owners worked alongside staff members to shovel the resort out from piles of sand.
Now fully operational, the resort began reopening in phases near the end of October 2024. The second-floor units were not impacted as badly as the lower units which suffered from Helene’s storm surge.
The storm surge pushed saltwater and mass amounts of sand toward the resort, intruding into the first-floor units. McCarter said the sand piled about 4 feet along the back side of the resort flooded through the walkways in between units and extended to the front along Gulf of Mexico Drive.
When McCarter arrived for the first time after the hurricanes, he said his first thought was, “I thought it was going to be worse.”
That’s because, by the time he arrived, resort staff members and some owners were already working.
“It was an incredible testament to our staff’s strength,” McCarter said, adding that some of the staff have been on board for 20 years.
Staff and owners did almost all the restoration work.
This included condo owner, Scott Lehning, operating an excavator to dig out sand from around the resort.
McCarter said two owners, Rachelle Neck and Karen Lehning, stayed behind during Helene and were able to go around placing towels in some areas to mitigate flooding. They were also there for an immediate response after the storm passed.
One of the biggest hurdles, McCarter said, was to get the pool back up and operational.
The storm had filled the pool with debris, sand and saltwater. It needed to be drained, shoveled out and cleaned.
Additionally, the deck that surrounded the pool was completely dismantled. The staff needed to re-establish a temporary walkway around the pool and are still awaiting a full deck replacement.
Now heading into peak season, McCarter beams with excitement about the future of the SeaHorse Beach Resort.
Around the resort, staff are working diligently to ensure guests have a positive experience.
“For us, the recovery has been for our guests. I really believe the SeaHorse will be better than what it was,” McCarter said.
When reopening the resort, staff wanted to focus on improving the guest experience at the resort. Staff and owners hope to expand partnerships with local businesses to help guests find more things to do in the community.
“We really want them to have the best experience on Longboat Key,” McCarter said.
But for the staff, there’s been a significant amount of growth, too.
Through the recovery process, McCarter said he’s witnessed a lot of personal development among staff and owners, and growth through the determination to reopen the resort.
Without the hard-working staff and dedicated owners, McCarter said this level of resurgence would not have been possible.
“We’ve proven we have a strong core. Our building is strong, our people are strong and our ability to persevere is strong,” McCarter said.
