This St. Pete Beach hotel, wrecked by Helene, reopens today. See inside

Along Gulf Boulevard on St. Pete Beach, a combination of luck and resources shaped the last 13 months for dozens of hotels ravaged by Hurricane Helene.

The latest to open its doors, five months after a previous estimated reopening date of June 1, is the 102-room Beachcomber and its accompanying live music bar, Jimmy B’s.

Jimmy B’s sits behind St. Pete Beach’s dunes, in front of the Beachcomber’s courtyard. The wood-decked bar, meant to evoke old Florida, sits around three feet above sea level.

So when nearly five feet of storm surge came rushing from the Gulf, the water flowed underneath the bar’s latticed foundation — straight toward the Beachcomber’s guest rooms, drowning plants and toppling hammocks in its wake. Rooms closest to the water saw four feet of flooding, halfway to the ceiling.

Half of the resort’s guest rooms are on the first floor. Disposing of waterlogged furniture and gutting trashed rooms to the studs took months. Then came permit requests, delayed by a backlog at St. Pete Beach City Hall.

Once the permits came in December, a sea of about 40 contracting companies descended on the hotel to make it like new, said Shaun Kwiatkowski, managing director of the Beachcomber and the Bellwether. The lobby, far back enough that it escaped the worst flooding, has new flooring and paint. Each of the ground-floor guest rooms has new electrical wiring, drywall, floors, sea-green paint, furniture and window A/C units.

The hotel will be about 60% occupied its first weekend back, Kwiatkowski said. The second weekend in November, as snowbirds and visiting families drift in, bookings are sold out.

For St. Pete Beach locals, the revival of Jimmy B’s marks the return of a community gathering place — just in time for Halloween.

Deborah Ritterson has been counting down the days in a Facebook group for St. Pete Beach residents since the reopening date was announced last month.

“40 days. Not that I’m counting,” she wrote in September.

The bar will open its doors Thursday at 5 p.m. The resort’s return also means around 60 staffers — front desk clerks, housekeepers, bartenders and servers — are back to work. Most returned even after 13 months away, Kwiatkowski said.

“Of course we wanted to open the business back up,” he said. “But at the end of the day … it was about getting our team back.”

Hotels on this busy strip of Gulf Boulevard saw similar storm surge, but reopening times have diverged dramatically. The nearby TradeWinds Resort opened one of its hotels just a month after Helene, while Postcard Inn is still surrounded by ladders and contractors’ trucks, with exposed wood framing hanging over its lobby entrance.

The Don CeSar, St. Pete Beach’s iconic pink hotel, reopened in March after floodwaters decimated its century-old electrical system. And the Bellwether, the 12-story sister property to the Beachcomber, no longer has a reopening date after a past estimate of July 1 came and went. The first floor requires extensive repairs to its elevator and electrical systems, Kwiatkowski said.

“From the city, to us as property operators, none of us have been through this,” he said. “There’s a lot of steps it takes.”

Less than 1,000 rooms remain out of commission on Pinellas’ barrier islands a year after Helene, said Brian Lowack, president of Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, the county tourism booster.

But the southern communities, places like St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island and Madeira Beach, have suffered the most closures. The tourism agency is still highlighting hotels and businesses as they reopen, he said.

Tourism officials have something else to advertise: Pinellas County’s beach renourishment project, which they say will double the width and height of the city’s Upham Beach Park.

“People already know us as America’s best beaches,” Lowack said. They “are getting bigger, brighter, wider., better than ever … and that gives us the opportunity to tie (hotel reopenings) into that story.”

“People know already know us as America’s best beaches, but making sure they know that America’s best beaches are getting bigger, brighter, wider, better than ever, and inviting them to come check them out this winter and this spring. And you know, as part of that too, that gives us the opportunity to tie into that story of the beach nourishment project and the new product that’s coming online as hotels reopen in the southern county beaches renovated properties.

The Beachcomber built back a little more resilient than it was before. The doors and windows at Jimmy B’s are now hurricane-rated. The shrubs covering the courtyard are saltwater resistant.

Sea oats have grown back thicker on the dunes guarding Jimmy B’s.

Kwiatkowski can only hope they’ll fend off saltwater the next time disaster strikes.