The vacant Anna Maria City Pier T-end building is finally seeing action.
Anna Maria Mayor Dan Murphy wrote in a Dec. 21 email to The Islander that Sarasota-based Willis Smith Construction had begun work installing the Mote Marine Laboratory educational outreach center in the 1,800-square-foot building.
Plans for the outreach center include a handful of live exhibits with about 1,000 gallons of recirculating seawater, as well as several interactive exhibits, such as microscopes and a livestream display of the waters beneath the pier.
The live tanks will include:
- An invertebrate touch tank where people can touch urchins, sea stars, horseshoe crabs and more;
- A mangrove tank displaying the plants’ importance in local marine ecosystems and containing juvenile fish and shrimp;
- A grass flat tank containing Gulf killifish and stone crabs;
- A tank with marine life from the waters surrounding the island.
The build-out and exhibit installation will be funded with $500,000 from the 2021 Manatee County Tourist Development Council budget.
Its addition may be the final piece to the pier puzzle, which hasn’t been complete since Hurricane Irma left the historic pier damaged in September 2017.
The original pier was built in 1911 and became a staple for transportation by steamer and fishers on the island over the next century but was closed by the city following the storm due to the extensive damage it sustained.
The city demolished the pier in the summer of 2018 and began work rebuilding the same footprint and structure but with sturdier materials, including concrete pilings and Ipe hardwood decking.
The new pier partially reopened to the public in the summer of 2020 but the two T-end buildings remained unfinished and empty.
City commissioners selected the group of Brian Seymour, Vic Mattay and Nick Graham to operate the City Pier Grill and Bait Shop in the smaller, north T-end building in September 2020.
The grill and bait shop were open and operational by December 2020, leaving the T-end’s larger building empty.
Mote presented its plans for the outreach center to the city in February 2021 and negotiations with the city began soon after.
The parties agreed in September 2021 on a 10-year-lease to install and operate the outreach center in the empty building.
At the time the lease was signed, it included a March 29 deadline for Mote to complete the interior build-out.
However, Mote did not provide final conceptual plans for the outreach center to the city until April, at which point city commissioners voted 4-1 to extend Mote’s contract through March 1, 2023.
The city soon implemented several new deadlines for Mote to meet or risk the dissolution of its lease, including:
- Begin engineering and design work by Aug. 18;
- Submit completed plans by Oct. 13;
- Begin construction seven days after the city issues permits;
- Apply for a certificate of occupancy within 12 weeks of the city issuing construction permits;
- Open the outreach center within four weeks after the city has issued a certificate of occupancy.
Mote met both of the first two new deadlines and city commissioners authorized the building department to execute a construction permit.
However, Mote did not obtain and submit bond documentation until Dec. 16, so the permit’s issuance was delayed — although it did not amount to a violation of the new contractual deadlines.
With work on the outreach center beginning four days after the construction permit was issued, Mote met the city’s third deadline.
Mote now has until Friday, March 10, 2023, to apply for a certificate of occupancy in compliance with the deadline.
If it meets the deadline, the outreach center should open by Friday, April 7, 2023.
Murphy wrote Dec. 21 that Mote did not provide a roadmap for construction.
“We do not have a schedule of their projected progress, nor did we require such a schedule in the lease agreement. It is their project to supervise in detail and to meet our schedule,” Murphy wrote.
Willis Smith Construction project manager Taylor Aultman did not respond to a Dec. 21 phone call from The Islander.
