After a long, convoluted, totally un-bro legal saga, Caddy's on the Beach, home of the sand-crusted Jager bomb, is now under new ownership, writes Tampa Bay Business Journal staffer Eric Snider.
The new owner?
The people who brought you MacDinton's now own and run Caddy's on the Beach, the only beach bar and grille that is actually on the beach.
It seems like a pretty good fit — Caddy's is literally the only bar directly on the beach, where you can drink directly on the beach, in the county. Sure, PCI and Jimmy B's are beach bars, and wonderful ones. But you're technically not allowed to bring your beverages out to the beach, past a certain point. You get ticketed for doing so. Even Sloppy Joe's, which, like Caddy's, is within booze-friendly Treasure Island, still requires you to traverse a sidewalk — a sidewalk — before you can stick your toes in the sand whilst grasping a mai tai.
And so far, it doesn't seem like much, if anything, has changed over at Caddy's.
This reporter and some associates did a bit of recon there in the weeks since the new ownership took over, and didn't see anything too different since the space changed hands. Veteran staff members remained at their posts, margaritas on the rocks were fantastic and the crowd was still (relatively) bearable.
It's unlikely that much will change, either.
“We might do some cosmetic things, but we like the place just the way it is,” partner Barry O’Connor told the Tampa Bay Business Journal. “We’re continuing operations; people keep their jobs; people still have their Caddy’s.”
The change-of-hands puts a cap on a long and complicated legal drama that nearly resulted in the place getting bulldozed.
The restaurant's prior owner, Tony Amico, had filed a lawsuit against the state over whether he could claim ownership over the beachfront that skirts the restaurant, as yours truly wrote about a few years back.
Long story short, he sued when the city of Treasure Island tried to limit his ability to restrict access to the beachfront skirting the restaurant (which stemmed from an incident in which he tried to close down the beach fronting the restaurant to attendees of an event at the adjacent Lions Club, whom he deemed too rowdy).
But since said beachfront erodes away pretty quickly and is replenished with sand dredged up using public money, the city and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection made the case that it probably wasn't his property after all.
What probably catalyzed the tension was the fact that, in 2009 and 2010, Caddy's began to attract a less-than-desirable contingent — frat boys, their dealers and whatever coeds they could find that didn't have a nose for Rohypnol — to the edges of the restaurant's property. For a quarter-mile to the north and south of the Caddy's beachfront, there would be insane throngs of partiers playing beer pong, doing Jager bombs and leaving the beach a toxic wasteland in their wake.
Local residents at the time, yours truly included, were not appreciative.
The city of Treasure Island, which is the only place where you can legally drink on the beach, banned alcohol just to the north and south of Caddy's, which seemed to do the trick in terms of driving away idiots who don't read beyond the headlines.
So, it's been pretty mellow since the spring of 2011, with roving hordes of douchebags choosing to turn other parts of the coastline into a bummer.
For a while, as they waited for the lawsuit to shake out, neighbors speculated that Amico would sell the property to the state, and that the only true beachfront bar in the county would be bulldozed. But the MacDinton's dudes stepped in, so all is well-ish.
Snider writes that Amico said the following when asked why he sold the restaurant: “Money. What other reason is there?”
Which is pretty much the most "bro" response one can give.
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2015.