REDDINGTON BEACH, Fla. \u2014 A Reddington Beach motel that served as the backdrop to family memories for more than 30 years is finally welcoming back guests.<\/p>\n
The opening comes 18 months after the first floor and most of their grounds were destroyed by Hurricane Helene.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
The Sails Resort Motel on Redington Beach reopened after 18 months of rebuilding
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Hurricane Helene destroyed the motel’s entire bottom floor in 2024
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Regular visitors, including families from Canada, were eager for it to reopen<\/p>\n
The family that owns the motel said they were determined to open their doors to families they\u2019ve known for a lifetime.<\/p>\n
For five years straight, The Sails Resort Motel on Redington Beach served as a home away from Annette and Mitchell Hamann.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the same time every year. We come down for three and a half weeks,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
That was until 2024 when Hurricane Helene destroyed the entire bottom floor of the beachfront, family-owned motel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took a walk through here when we were down here last year and I couldn\u2019t believe it,\u201d said Annette. \u201cOur place on the lower level was just demolished.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple kept checking in for updates on a reopening date and so did sister and brother, Marlena and Damian Basek.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s such a nice place and for it to be closed down as long as it was while they were rebuilding, it was devastating,\u201d said Damian.<\/p>\n
They spent a lot of their childhood at the Redington Beach hotel. They say for the last 20 years they\u2019ve been coming down from Canada with their parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would count down the days. Sometimes we went twice a year. So, before I had my own kids, I would come with my parents twice a year,\u201d Marlena said.<\/p>\n
Now there\u2019s another generation of their family visiting their beloved family vacation spot.<\/p>\n
Their stories and memories here are a large part of why Zaneta Cieslak said their family were determined to rebuild.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes you get up one more time the next day and keep going because some days were kind of long,\u201d she said. \u201cNo income for like a year and a half. It was hard, but you did what you could every day. A little bit here, a little bit there and it slowly, it seemed like nothing was happening until people started showing up and they noticed how much was done.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2024, Cieslak showed the extensive damage after the back-to-back storms. She had hoped to be done in a few months but that turned into more than a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last room, the two-bedroom, got finished last Friday,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
So far, they\u2019ve already got reservations up as far as a year out.<\/p>\n
Data from Visit St. Pete\/Clearwater shows hotel room openings and closures throughout the county.<\/p>\n
On Redington Beach, there are still almost 90 rooms considered temporarily closed.<\/p>\n
The numbers for closures on St. Pete Beach are much larger because of the larger hotels with more rooms that aren\u2019t available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"REDDINGTON BEACH, Fla. \u2014 A Reddington Beach motel that served as the backdrop to family memories for more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2031,36321,558,3125,115,596,4368,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,14104,1316,835],"class_list":["post-198508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-local-business","tag-app-tourism","tag-business","tag-hurricane-helene","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-saundra-weathers","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-topic-latest-local-business-stories","tag-tourism","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}