For almost two years, the detached head house at the end of the Anna Maria City Pier has sat over Tampa Bay looking like it drifted there by accident. Hurricanes Helene and Milton tore out roughly 400 to 500 feet of the walkway in 2024, leaving the two buildings at the T-end stranded with no way to reach them on foot. If you live here, you have watched the barges and pilings from Pine Avenue for months without much to show for it beyond progress photos.
What most people have missed, because it happened in a string of city commission meetings rather than one headline, is a change to how the T-end will actually be run once it reopens. On June 11, Anna Maria's city commissioners approved a lease that puts both buildings at the end of the pier under one operator for the first time since before Hurricane Irma damaged the original structure in 2017. That detail matters more than the new name on the sign.
One Operator, For The First Time In Nearly A Decade
Before Irma, longtime tenant Mario Schoenfelder ran both T-end buildings as a single business. After the pier reopened in 2020 following its post-Irma rebuild, the buildings split. GSM Partners, led by Brian Seymour, took the smaller building on the west side and opened the City Pier Grill & Bait Shop on Dec. 10, 2020. The larger building on the east side went to Mote Marine Laboratory, which signed a 10-year lease in September 2021 and opened its Marine Science Education and Outreach Center there in May 2023.
Then came the 2024 storms. Both tenants lost access to their spaces, and in January 2026 the city commission voted unanimously to terminate Mote's lease early, an agreement Mayor Mark Short described as reached mutually after months of discussion with Mote and Manatee County officials. That left the larger building empty and reopened a question the city hadn't faced in years: who runs the T-end now?
Seymour had an answer ready. He has long favored a single tenant running both buildings, the way it worked under Schoenfelder. In April, commissioners authorized Short to negotiate with GSM Partners for the larger space, and by June the deal was done. The new venture is called PIERadise, and Seymour put it simply after the vote: "I'm very excited. I think we have a good plan to move forward."
What The Lease Actually Trades
The financial terms tell you more about what changed than the new name does. Here is the before and after, based on figures the operator and the city have both put on the record.
| Before 2024 | Under the new PIERadise lease | |
|---|---|---|
| Space covered | Smaller west building only | Both T-end buildings |
| Monthly base rent | About $6,500 | $12,000, plus taxes and a share of utilities |
| Lease term | 5 years, expired Dec. 31, 2025 | 60 months, with a 60-month renewal option |
| Maintenance | Split between city and tenant | Tenant furnishes and maintains all T-end equipment and space |
Rent nearly doubled, but so did the footprint, and the maintenance shift is the part city officials pointed to when explaining the math. Mayor Short told commissioners the arrangement could save the city $3,000 to $4,000 a month once GSM Partners takes over furnishing and upkeep for the whole space. The lease also spells out exactly what can operate there: "family-friendly, high-quality and simple grill-style, take-out food and beverage service," plus a bar serving beer and wine and a public bait and tackle counter.
The Pine Avenue Names Behind It
PIERadise is not an outside operator moving in. It is three people who already run businesses you have probably visited within a five-minute walk of the pier.
Seymour owns and operates the Anna Maria General Store on Pine Avenue. His partners in the new venture are brothers Jason and Ben Sato. Jason co-owns Sato Real Estate, also on Pine Avenue. Ben owns gRUB Tropical BBQ, a few doors down. GSM Partners itself looks different than it did when the City Pier Grill first opened. Seymour originally ran that business with Vic Mattay and Nick Graham starting in 2020. The Islander reported that the corporate structure had changed by the time this year's lease was signed, with Seymour now partnered with the Sato brothers instead.
Ben Sato is not stopping at the pier. He is also developing a separate restaurant called Mingo's in Holmes Beach, planned for 2027 in the former Wells Fargo bank building that developer Jake Spooner is converting. Between the General Store, gRUB, Sato Real Estate, and now PIERadise, this is a small group of neighbors consolidating a meaningful piece of the island's food and beverage scene, not a chain moving into a tourist landmark.
Why The Seating Stays Free
Back in January, before any lease was on the table, the city held a workshop just to ask residents what they wanted at the T-end. Resident Amir Benaly pitched a coffee shop where people could watch the sunrise. Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Janis Ian, who lives in the city, suggested pairing that with a cart-based hot dog stand that could roll on and off the pier, freeing up seating for anyone who just wanted to sit. Bradenton resident Vicki Hart argued for something closer to the old Florida crab shack the pier used to be, writing that the island had already "lost Annie's, we lost Rod & Reel Pier."
None of those specific concepts became the winning bid. But the underlying concern, that the T-end might turn into a place you have to pay to occupy, made it into the actual contract. At a March workshop weighing whether to keep the building enclosed or open up the shell for more capacity, Short said he did not want visitors to "feel obligated that they have to buy something to be out there." Commissioner Gary McMullen called opening the shell a "no-brainer," while Commissioner Kathleen Morgan-Johnson preferred to settle on a tenant first.
The June lease resolved it. Under the agreement, every seat at the T-end is open to the public except the PIERadise bar seats themselves, a provision that will also apply to Gulf Island Ferry passengers once that service reaches the pier, expected sometime in 2027 or 2028.
What Is Still Unsettled
The shell question from March has not actually been closed. As of June 12, the city had a separate request for proposals out to reopen the eastern building's shell for more seating, with bids from Tangerine Group and Longboat Key-based Eason Builders Group. No recommendation had been made yet, so the exact seating capacity residents will find this fall is still up in the air.
The menu is not public either. Seymour has said it will differ from the old City Pier Grill lineup but will stay, in his words, "family-friendly and as economical as possible." Public Works Manager Dean Jones was more candid about the timeline itself when a commissioner asked if November was still realistic: "I left my crystal ball in my other pants." His best guess, if the weather cooperates, is that November holds.
The dollar figures behind all of this are larger than the lease alone. The full pier rebuild is projected to cost between $7.1 million and $7.8 million. FEMA has committed $3.5 million toward that total, and Manatee County commissioners approved a grant of up to $2 million in February. As of late January, the city had already spent $1,661,109 of its own money rebuilding the walkway while those outside commitments were still being finalized.
What This Means For The Rest Of Us
The pier has always been the thing you point to when someone visits and asks what makes this end of the island different from a beach town anywhere else. Whether PIERadise opens in November or slips a few weeks, the more lasting change is structural. One group of Pine Avenue neighbors now controls both buildings for the first time in almost a decade, and they built free public seating into the deal on purpose. That is a different kind of pier than the one that closed in 2024, even if the building looks the same from the beach.
If you are watching how this island keeps evolving, whether from a porch you already own here or one you are still picturing, Kathy Harman pays attention to these details for the same reason you might. Discuss your island priorities. Let's find the perfect waterfront fit.
