St. Pete Beach city commissioners to decide fate of TradeWinds expansion

Trevor Sochocki
·2 min read
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ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. (WFLA) — After the April 15 marathon meeting of the St. Pete Beach City Commission lasted for nearly nine hours until 1 a.m., commissioners pushed back their decision on the TradeWinds Island Grand Resort expansion plan to Tuesday’s meeting.

If all goes according to plan, the future of the resort will be finalized. However, the previous meeting was met with hours of public comment and resistance from many neighbors to the expansion.

“It’s not just about being quaint,” said St. Pete Beach resident John Kurzman. “It’s about how you prevent the problem of overcrowding when you just have different groups bringing everybody in, and they’re all going to be fighting with each other because there’s just going to be more people being brought in at one time.”

The expansion plan would cost about $500 million and add more than 600 rooms in a series of four phases, taking about 20 years to complete.

“The traffic studies have been done, the roads can handle the traffic in phase one,” explained TradeWinds spokesman Kyle Parks. “We would continue to work with the city to review how the impact actually happens once phase one is being done.”

But that has not eased residents’ concerns about congestion.

“Every email, every letter, you can’t always do everything that people want,” Parks said. “But I feel we’ve done a meaningful job of responding to the community’s concerns and that’s what we can do.”

Environmental advocates are also worried about the impact on marine life.

“13 years experience on the beach where I have had to rescue sea turtle hatchlings,” said Lisa Reich of the Coastal Wildlife Advocacy Group. “Both alive and dead at the TradeWinds because of their lighting.”

But officials with the resort said it will make window shades darker and beach furniture more mobile to help the turtles.

The St. Pete Beach fire chief also said the department will do studies to see what the impact of more tourists would be on emergency services to ensure response times stay as low as possible.

Tonight’s city commission meeting is set for 6 p.m. at the St. Pete Beach City Hall.

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