July 31, 2025 • 12 mins
A Hernando County waterfront park wiped out by Hurricane Helene's storm surge is reopening, with some changes. We speak with Community Services Director Chris LInsbeck about Alfred McKethan Pine Island Park.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News. Hernando County's main
Gulf waterfront park is reopening. Alfred McKeith and Pine Island
Park was closed for most of the past year because
of damage from the hurricanes, and County Parks and Recreation
has been working on repairs ever since that time. Set
to reopen Friday, August first. Chris Linsbeck is Hernando County
(00:21):
Community Services Director and joins us now and Beyond the News.
Chris lins Beck.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome, Thank you, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Well before we get into talking about the reopening and
what the facilities are like there now that you've had
some repairs and renovations, tell us about what kind of
damage you saw from the hurricanes. I mean, we all
know particular in particular Helene had a big impact on
Hernando County and perhaps also a little bit from Debbie
(00:52):
and Milton. Tell us about what you were dealing with
as a county to get that park back up to snuff.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Sure, yes, this is definitely been one of our main
focus points of getting this park back up to speed.
This in my I'm from Hernando County originally, and so
I've seen most of the storm or you know, glances
of storms that we've had over the years, nothing has
been I can compare to what Hurricane Helene did to
(01:21):
the to our coast. It was I think the closest
similarity was the ninety three storm, if I recall, but
this one was really bad. I think we had approximately
six to eight foot of storm surge on island itself
and that's like over our fences, and it was just
the impact was so great that it destroyed almost every
(01:44):
structure we had out there, including lifting up concrete that
was on the beach shores. We had dumpster enclosures and
things just kind of thrown around. We had to go
track them down in the canal system. It was just
a mass of just terrible disrepair out there for a
(02:05):
long time. Most of the most of the cleanup was
just that trying to get the debris under control before
we could even start repairs.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
So you had to clean up. You had to clean
up the debris and basically rebuild the park from the
ground up.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
So the yes that's correct were one of the things
that we focused on, and this was I have to
give credit to our County Commission who helped us, encouraged
us to do this type of redesign of the park
because we just went through DEBBI before that in Adelia.
(02:42):
So we actually were down for about six months after
Idelia and had to repair the whole do the same thing,
and we built back and it got damaged right out
when Hellen hit. So we found ourselves into what we
call repetitive loss. We keep building back and then ourselves
back in the square one trying to get the park
(03:03):
back open. So with the encouragement of our county Commission,
we were under direction to figure out a more resilient park.
What we've done is we've tried to find a way
to make most of the structures or anything like such
as the restrooms or even equipment trailers or anything like that,
(03:24):
to be just that a trailer or on wheels, so
we can make the portable, so we can actually, upon
a short notice of an incoming storm, be able to
remove these items and take them to higher ground, and
that way we can re establish the park in a
faster way once a storm is through, and we can
make the park safe and hopefully we never have to
(03:46):
be down this long again. So that's kind of what
the game plan we did for after this last storm.
As we went through a redesign plan and got the
whole site re engineered for more resiliency.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So basically, the buildings, the permanent structures there, the restrooms
and such are you can just hook them up and
haul them away if there's a storm coming.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Exactly. That's that's what we have out there right now.
It's a twelve by thirty foot portable air conditioned restroom.
You've seen them. You've probably seen them after some of
the stones on FEMA had them put up at different
locations to help citizens who may have been flooded. It's
a very similar system to like like an RV or
or a mobile unit. It has the same aspects of those,
(04:37):
except we have them so we can it's it is
it's on wheels, but it's and it's not the most
I don't think it's the most appealing thing from a standpoint,
but I mean it's it's more resilient, and that's what
we're going for when we keep getting storm damage on
a reoccurring basis, we have to think out of the
box a little bit, and I think this is definitely
(05:00):
the way to go for future keeping the park up
up and running a little better after these major storm events.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So tell us about some of the upgrades, some of
the improvements you've been able to make with this renovation
at the park.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yes, absolutely, so. We've pretty much repaired everything that was
previously damaged with the with the exception of there was
an observation deck at the furthest western point that we're
going to have that as a capital improvement project year.
We're going to tie that to a replacing a new
(05:37):
concrete seawall and have it as one main structure, including
into the seawall construction. So that's gonna be postponed for
about a year I think now. The other item that
we haven't replaced just yet it was the playgrounds, which
they should be delivering and installing the playground in September
this year, so that should be coming for coming very soon,
(06:01):
so folks will start to see that construction. That won't
close the park for that. We can just isolate that
area to get the new playground in. And this one
has shade sales, which has been a request and a
lot of our parks increase our shade aspects because it's
just so darn hot in Florida right now, and I
(06:22):
think that's gonna be a big plus for the people,
the patrons out there when they're letting their kids play
in the playground and it's got some shade. So the
other things we did was we previously had a concessionaire.
It was more of a permanent unit. It was Willie's
Tropical Breeze. He's been there. He's kind of a staple
(06:42):
of Pine Island. He's there for probably over thirty years.
But just like a lot of things, after the reoccurring
storm damages, he chose to think, you know, hang it
up a little bit and move on to maybe the
retirement life and let us kind of repair and with
some other ideas for concession. So we just developed a
(07:03):
food truck area. We we built in uh some power sources,
water supply, and we're going to try to do some
reoccurring rotating food truck opportunities so that uh, some other
folks can get in there. And and we just think
it's a when when the patrons enjoy the variety and
uh and of course I guess local business owners a
(07:26):
little opportunity to make a little money out there. So
that's one of the upgrades we did. We had a
area where it was designated for volleyball, like a volleymont
sand or the net and sand area, but we found
it sometimes it was being used with something. It was
very infrequent. So we looked at some of the ideas
(07:49):
out there of what is some new and up and
coming things that that families like to do, and we
decided to go with this concrete cornhole system cornhole game
board that basically it's permit fixtures that people can just
bring their cornhole bags and you can play a little
tournaments out there and the salt or the volleyball aspect
(08:11):
can be uh you can direct a net right on
the beach itself and if if a group of people
want to play volleyball still, so it didn't really lose
that aspect, but we added something that's a little different
and unique. Of course, we uh had I mentioned the
new playgrounds coming in September. That's plus we we added
new metal roofs to all the structures, so we reroofed
(08:33):
everything out there, and uh we added a very large
deck area for observations of the sunsets. So that's like
the number one thing Pine Island has been known for
is people want to go out and see the sunset.
So we uh we directed the seating area to be unobstructed,
(08:53):
so you can have a very large unobstructed view of
the of the of the water to the side, so
you can see the sunsets very well. Previously, the old
restroom units used to be there, so it kind of
blocked some of the view. So we thought this was
a really nice upgrade.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Now, one of the concerns that you have is this
park is, of course the only golf front facility in
Hernando County, and it's a small spit out onto the
water basically, and you have a lot of people trying
to crowd into a small space. So I understand the
traffic control is an issue, and if you could talk
(09:32):
about that, and I understand there are some ways to
get out there that don't necessarily involve a car.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Sure, sure. So we had a really good meetings with
some of our internal partners, other departments here with the county,
the Department of Public Works and the Transit unit which
they run the bus routes for Hernando County. They came
up with a really good plan to They created a
new route. It's called the Mermaid Route. It's route and
(10:01):
it's really made up of two fifteen foot or fifteen
passengers shuttles, so it's really not buses per se, but
more like the smaller shuttles, and it starts at the
Walmart on US nineteen near Osawa, and it runs through
Showline Boulevard and it terminates at Pine Island and comes back,
so it has a number of stops on the way there.
(10:22):
But the idea behind this new route is to help
alleviate some of the parking challenges that the season tends
to bring with folks out there. That really kind of
it's just not a lot of parking out at Pine
Island and there's a lot of great demand to be
out there, so we were trying to come up with
(10:43):
ideas to where they could park, maybe at some of
these other facilities like Linda Petterson Park or the r
Beach parking Lot that the county purchase not that long ago,
and then pick up the bus and be dropped off
and picked up at Pine Island on the I think
it's on a forty five minute circuit, so there'll be
(11:03):
the second shuttle will be every forty five minutes. So
we haven't began this concept. We're going to start it off,
and I'm sure there's gonna be some modifications to the
to the operation as we get going. But I think
it's really a great idea and it may even help
reduce some of the traffic concerns that we've had over
the years.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Now there you will be taking steps if you have
too many cars out there to close off the park.
So I take it you've done that before. Tell us
what that involves.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
So we've done a couple of different ways to handle it. One,
we have those traffic signal or signages that can alert
folks before they go take the long drive out there
that the pike that the park is at capacity levels,
and it kind of gives people a little pre notification
before they get in a line or a queue to
(11:55):
get in the park before it's not moving very fast.
So we've done that. We've all also tried to have
staff monitor at the gate and see if there is
if we are at capacity, we do try to help
turn some folks around before they get where they're blocking
any residential areas or driveways. It's kind of a it's
(12:17):
odd to say it, but it's kind of a unique problem.
I mean, we have a successful beach, so I mean
any kind of successful location tends to bring a lot
of folks, and so it's definitely a challenge that we're
trying to work through each year and coming up with
different ideas to manage that.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Alfred McKeith and Pine Island Park open Friday, August first
and hopefully henceforth and hopefully you won't have to worry
about hurricanes closing it down for a long period of time. Again,
Chris lin's Beck, community Services Director for Hernando County, we
thank you for filling us in on what's going on
out there, and thank you for joining us on beyond
the news.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Thank you very much,
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News. Hernando County's main
Gulf waterfront park is reopening. Alfred McKeith and Pine Island
Park was closed for most of the past year because
of damage from the hurricanes, and County Parks and Recreation
has been working on repairs ever since that time. Set
to reopen Friday, August first. Chris Linsbeck is Hernando County
(00:21):
Community Services Director and joins us now and Beyond the News.
Chris lins Beck.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome, Thank you, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Well before we get into talking about the reopening and
what the facilities are like there now that you've had
some repairs and renovations, tell us about what kind of
damage you saw from the hurricanes. I mean, we all
know particular in particular Helene had a big impact on
Hernando County and perhaps also a little bit from Debbie
(00:52):
and Milton. Tell us about what you were dealing with
as a county to get that park back up to snuff.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Sure, yes, this is definitely been one of our main
focus points of getting this park back up to speed.
This in my I'm from Hernando County originally, and so
I've seen most of the storm or you know, glances
of storms that we've had over the years, nothing has
been I can compare to what Hurricane Helene did to
(01:21):
the to our coast. It was I think the closest
similarity was the ninety three storm, if I recall, but
this one was really bad. I think we had approximately
six to eight foot of storm surge on island itself
and that's like over our fences, and it was just
the impact was so great that it destroyed almost every
(01:44):
structure we had out there, including lifting up concrete that
was on the beach shores. We had dumpster enclosures and
things just kind of thrown around. We had to go
track them down in the canal system. It was just
a mass of just terrible disrepair out there for a
(02:05):
long time. Most of the most of the cleanup was
just that trying to get the debris under control before
we could even start repairs.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
So you had to clean up. You had to clean
up the debris and basically rebuild the park from the
ground up.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
So the yes that's correct were one of the things
that we focused on, and this was I have to
give credit to our County Commission who helped us, encouraged
us to do this type of redesign of the park
because we just went through DEBBI before that in Adelia.
(02:42):
So we actually were down for about six months after
Idelia and had to repair the whole do the same thing,
and we built back and it got damaged right out
when Hellen hit. So we found ourselves into what we
call repetitive loss. We keep building back and then ourselves
back in the square one trying to get the park
(03:03):
back open. So with the encouragement of our county Commission,
we were under direction to figure out a more resilient park.
What we've done is we've tried to find a way
to make most of the structures or anything like such
as the restrooms or even equipment trailers or anything like that,
(03:24):
to be just that a trailer or on wheels, so
we can make the portable, so we can actually, upon
a short notice of an incoming storm, be able to
remove these items and take them to higher ground, and
that way we can re establish the park in a
faster way once a storm is through, and we can
make the park safe and hopefully we never have to
(03:46):
be down this long again. So that's kind of what
the game plan we did for after this last storm.
As we went through a redesign plan and got the
whole site re engineered for more resiliency.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So basically, the buildings, the permanent structures there, the restrooms
and such are you can just hook them up and
haul them away if there's a storm coming.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Exactly. That's that's what we have out there right now.
It's a twelve by thirty foot portable air conditioned restroom.
You've seen them. You've probably seen them after some of
the stones on FEMA had them put up at different
locations to help citizens who may have been flooded. It's
a very similar system to like like an RV or
or a mobile unit. It has the same aspects of those,
(04:37):
except we have them so we can it's it is
it's on wheels, but it's and it's not the most
I don't think it's the most appealing thing from a standpoint,
but I mean it's it's more resilient, and that's what
we're going for when we keep getting storm damage on
a reoccurring basis, we have to think out of the
box a little bit, and I think this is definitely
(05:00):
the way to go for future keeping the park up
up and running a little better after these major storm events.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So tell us about some of the upgrades, some of
the improvements you've been able to make with this renovation
at the park.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yes, absolutely, so. We've pretty much repaired everything that was
previously damaged with the with the exception of there was
an observation deck at the furthest western point that we're
going to have that as a capital improvement project year.
We're going to tie that to a replacing a new
(05:37):
concrete seawall and have it as one main structure, including
into the seawall construction. So that's gonna be postponed for
about a year I think now. The other item that
we haven't replaced just yet it was the playgrounds, which
they should be delivering and installing the playground in September
this year, so that should be coming for coming very soon,
(06:01):
so folks will start to see that construction. That won't
close the park for that. We can just isolate that
area to get the new playground in. And this one
has shade sales, which has been a request and a
lot of our parks increase our shade aspects because it's
just so darn hot in Florida right now, and I
(06:22):
think that's gonna be a big plus for the people,
the patrons out there when they're letting their kids play
in the playground and it's got some shade. So the
other things we did was we previously had a concessionaire.
It was more of a permanent unit. It was Willie's
Tropical Breeze. He's been there. He's kind of a staple
(06:42):
of Pine Island. He's there for probably over thirty years.
But just like a lot of things, after the reoccurring
storm damages, he chose to think, you know, hang it
up a little bit and move on to maybe the
retirement life and let us kind of repair and with
some other ideas for concession. So we just developed a
(07:03):
food truck area. We we built in uh some power sources,
water supply, and we're going to try to do some
reoccurring rotating food truck opportunities so that uh, some other
folks can get in there. And and we just think
it's a when when the patrons enjoy the variety and
uh and of course I guess local business owners a
(07:26):
little opportunity to make a little money out there. So
that's one of the upgrades we did. We had a
area where it was designated for volleyball, like a volleymont
sand or the net and sand area, but we found
it sometimes it was being used with something. It was
very infrequent. So we looked at some of the ideas
(07:49):
out there of what is some new and up and
coming things that that families like to do, and we
decided to go with this concrete cornhole system cornhole game
board that basically it's permit fixtures that people can just
bring their cornhole bags and you can play a little
tournaments out there and the salt or the volleyball aspect
(08:11):
can be uh you can direct a net right on
the beach itself and if if a group of people
want to play volleyball still, so it didn't really lose
that aspect, but we added something that's a little different
and unique. Of course, we uh had I mentioned the
new playgrounds coming in September. That's plus we we added
new metal roofs to all the structures, so we reroofed
(08:33):
everything out there, and uh we added a very large
deck area for observations of the sunsets. So that's like
the number one thing Pine Island has been known for
is people want to go out and see the sunset.
So we uh we directed the seating area to be unobstructed,
(08:53):
so you can have a very large unobstructed view of
the of the of the water to the side, so
you can see the sunsets very well. Previously, the old
restroom units used to be there, so it kind of
blocked some of the view. So we thought this was
a really nice upgrade.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Now, one of the concerns that you have is this
park is, of course the only golf front facility in
Hernando County, and it's a small spit out onto the
water basically, and you have a lot of people trying
to crowd into a small space. So I understand the
traffic control is an issue, and if you could talk
(09:32):
about that, and I understand there are some ways to
get out there that don't necessarily involve a car.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Sure, sure. So we had a really good meetings with
some of our internal partners, other departments here with the county,
the Department of Public Works and the Transit unit which
they run the bus routes for Hernando County. They came
up with a really good plan to They created a
new route. It's called the Mermaid Route. It's route and
(10:01):
it's really made up of two fifteen foot or fifteen
passengers shuttles, so it's really not buses per se, but
more like the smaller shuttles, and it starts at the
Walmart on US nineteen near Osawa, and it runs through
Showline Boulevard and it terminates at Pine Island and comes back,
so it has a number of stops on the way there.
(10:22):
But the idea behind this new route is to help
alleviate some of the parking challenges that the season tends
to bring with folks out there. That really kind of
it's just not a lot of parking out at Pine
Island and there's a lot of great demand to be
out there, so we were trying to come up with
(10:43):
ideas to where they could park, maybe at some of
these other facilities like Linda Petterson Park or the r
Beach parking Lot that the county purchase not that long ago,
and then pick up the bus and be dropped off
and picked up at Pine Island on the I think
it's on a forty five minute circuit, so there'll be
(11:03):
the second shuttle will be every forty five minutes. So
we haven't began this concept. We're going to start it off,
and I'm sure there's gonna be some modifications to the
to the operation as we get going. But I think
it's really a great idea and it may even help
reduce some of the traffic concerns that we've had over
the years.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Now there you will be taking steps if you have
too many cars out there to close off the park.
So I take it you've done that before. Tell us
what that involves.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
So we've done a couple of different ways to handle it. One,
we have those traffic signal or signages that can alert
folks before they go take the long drive out there
that the pike that the park is at capacity levels,
and it kind of gives people a little pre notification
before they get in a line or a queue to
(11:55):
get in the park before it's not moving very fast.
So we've done that. We've all also tried to have
staff monitor at the gate and see if there is
if we are at capacity, we do try to help
turn some folks around before they get where they're blocking
any residential areas or driveways. It's kind of a it's
(12:17):
odd to say it, but it's kind of a unique problem.
I mean, we have a successful beach, so I mean
any kind of successful location tends to bring a lot
of folks, and so it's definitely a challenge that we're
trying to work through each year and coming up with
different ideas to manage that.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Alfred McKeith and Pine Island Park open Friday, August first
and hopefully henceforth and hopefully you won't have to worry
about hurricanes closing it down for a long period of time. Again,
Chris lin's Beck, community Services Director for Hernando County, we
thank you for filling us in on what's going on
out there, and thank you for joining us on beyond
the news.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Thank you very much,
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