FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. — There is now a new owner of Silver Sands Resort on Fort Myers Beach.
The resort was washed away by the storm, and now only rubble stands where 14 units once were.
“People could come by boat, by jet ski or kayak,” the now former owner Andrea Carriere said.
Silver Sands Resort once stood across the street from the sand near the heart of Fort Myers Beach.
“It’s bittersweet,” Carriere said. “It was my baby… but you know, wasn’t meant to be.”
Hurricane Ian wiped out the resort and she had to decide whether to rebuild or walk away after 25 years.
“You know you wait for the almighty insurance gods and they paid around $500,000 for a fully insured 14-unit place,” she said.
That $500,000 is nowhere near what she needed to reopen Silver Sands.
“I’d say $3 million and a good four or five years,” she said.
So, she made the difficult decision to sell it. But she said she sold it to a neighbor.
“Tom lives right around the corner and he’s been here for 15 years,” Carriere said.
Tom Torgerson is the developer for Margaritaville.
“One of the first people that I talked to, actually we were just commiserating over everything that happened and I had told him and he said well do you wanna sell? I said, “What’s the number?”
They closed at $7.1 million. But Carriere said what means the most is selling it to someone in the area who can rebuild.
“I’d like to see a small boutique, something a little bit different, something like Key West,” she said. “It was the last tacky little beach town in Florida.”
TPI has not released its plans yet.
“I know it is in good hands,” she said.
This sale not only brings a bittersweet goodbye, but it brings hope to Andrea.
“I’d like to find another Silver Sands somewhere. It’s not going to be on this island, but somewhere,” she said.
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