Back to the Beach - Jason Beisel City of Treasure Island

The Pinellas beach city of Treasure Island is celebrating its ongoing recovery from last year's hurricanes with a "Back to the Beach" event Saturday and Sunday, inviting people from all over to join in. We speak with the city's Jason Beisel about the event and ongoing recovery. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News. Panella's county beaches
are recovering from the hurricanes, and that's part of the
message Treasure Island is hoping to send out. The city
is partnering with the County Tourism Agency visit St. Pete
Clearwater to welcome people back to the beach. Jason Beisel
is Public Information Officer with the City of Treasure Island
and he joins us on Beyond the News to talk

(00:20):
about it.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Thanks for joining us, Thank you for having me appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Before we talk about the event, let's talk about the
reason for the event. Where do Treasure Island beaches and
businesses stand in the hurricane recovery process? Now, almost six
months after Helen and Milton.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well, we're on the road to recovery.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Still there are still homes being rebuilt, businesses still being rebuilt,
but many of our businesses are beginning to open. Some
of our main ones like Ricky Tea's Vip, Bill Maher
Hotel and on them they're all now reopened, so that's
great news for us. And Trent Caddies on Sunset Beach
has been able to reopen under a special event permit.

(00:58):
That's a whole other story bringing businesses back, and so
it's becoming a good recovery and our permit process is
sped up, so things are looking good after the storm.
So we just want to get the message out that
we're open. Our businesses are open, many of them are open,
and we'd like people to come back to the beach
and enjoy the beach.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, and if you could just a second about that
special event permitting process, because it's enabled a lot of
beach businesses to open for business again.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah, what allows We had a special event permit that
businesses could apply for is only for nine days, but
this one extends that time to six months and they're
allowed to reapply for up to a year. It allows
them to have food trucks, tents, reshroom facilities on site.
So since Caddies is going to go through a long
rebuild because their building is pretty much destroyed, they're able

(01:43):
to open up by this week actually before the event
and before.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
The spring break crowds.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
They're one of the main businesses that use it there
is using that special event permit to put out a tent,
put out food truck, restroom facilities, and be able to
bring back some business so they can make some money,
they can bring back some staff and start getting that
business back to their facility even as they continue to rebuild.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
So let's talk about back to the beach. This is
going on this coming Saturday and Sunday as we record this,
and it's an event to celebrate hurricane recovery. Tell us
about what's going to be happening.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
What's a big event we have every year in November
Saint Innovations that was the course was canceled due to
the hurricanes, and so was our Kite Festival that was
also canceled in January as we continue to recover. So
we usually get funding from business Saint Pete Clearwater, who's
nice enough to bride some funding for these big events,
and they still wanted to give us some money for funding,
so they ask us to just throw an event.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
And so what we.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Decided to do is combined some aspects of Sane Innovation
and some aspects of the Kite festival. So we have
just one san sculpture. One large sand sculpture. This year
is not going to be something you see at Sane Innovations.
There will be one large sand sculpture created by five
to six sculptors, you'll have the kite flyers out there,
you'll have live music each day, you'll have vendors, local

(02:57):
vendors out there, food trucks, and there'll be of course
some you know, alcohol sales and all that during the event.
So what it is is to bring people back to
the beach and we're going from ten am to six
pm because we still have some lighting issues on the
beach with our beach walking all that not picture and
hopefully those crowds throughout the day and after the event's
then they will then go out and patronize our local

(03:19):
businesses and bring them some business as they're needed as well.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
And once again, if you could sum up when and
where this event is taking place, back to the beach.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
There'll be March eight to ninth. It'll be each day
from ten am to six pm. And the lineup and
all that's on our website my Treasure Island dot com.
Parking information and all that good stuff's on our website.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
But it'll be.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Taking place normally where the Sandy Innovation event takes place,
which is right behind the Bill Maher Hotel.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Right there on the beach.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
So back to the beach there on the beach.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
All right, Jason Bissel Lad the City of Treasure Island.
I'm sorry one more thing you wanted to add.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
No, I was just like, we're just we just want
people to come out. We ask people to be patient.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
There's you know, there's we This vent has actually got
a lot more coverage than we actually expected, which is
a great thing. So we're expecting a lot of people
to come. We're encouraging people if you can't ride, share,
ride with friends, something like that, because parking is still going.
A lot of our parking lots are open, but there's
still some parking issues around the city. So we're just
hoping that people just you know, you can use shuttle
services and ride shares and all that to get here.

(04:17):
But we're just hoping people come and have a good
time and enjoy paradise.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
All good to know. Jason Baize, public Information Officer, City
of Treasure Island. Thank you for joining us on Beyond
the News.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
I appreciate it. Thank you.