Walk down Pine Avenue this week and you can see it from the street now: pilings breaking the surface of Tampa Bay in a straight line where the walkway used to run. For most of the past two years, that same view was just water. The Anna Maria City Pier has been closed since Hurricanes Helene and Milton tore through in 2024, and after months of watching poles go into the bay one section at a time, the city is finally close to giving it back.
But close isn't the same as whole. Talk to the people who run businesses along that stretch of the island and you'll hear two different timelines getting collapsed into one headline. The walkway is on track for this fall. The buildings at the very end of the pier, the ones where a restaurant used to sit, are on a separate schedule the city hasn't pinned down yet. If you live here, that distinction matters more than the reopening date itself.
One Pier, Two Repair Jobs
The 2024 storms did more than knock the pier around the way Hurricane Irma did back in 2017. Helene and Milton washed out roughly 400 to 500 feet of the walkway connecting the shore to the buildings at the T-end, while those end structures largely survived. That's why the rebuild has split into two phases that don't share a finish line.
Anna Maria's public works manager, Dean Jones, has described the new pilings as a real upgrade over what came before them, engineered to reach down to the hardpan roughly 40 feet below the deck. A Holmes Beach city commissioner has put the added depth even higher in casual conversation, though the city's own figure from its public works department is the one worth trusting. Either way, the pilings are concrete this time, not the wood that gave out before.
Mayor Mark Short has said the goal remains a fall 2026 reopening for the walkway itself. But as of late 2025, he was already flagging that the buildings at the end still need repairs that haven't started, telling local reporters those fixes are "in the plans" for later, without a firm date attached. Reporting through late August 2026 still frames the walkway's return as imminent while leaving that second phase open-ended. So the version of the pier that reopens this fall will let you walk to the T-end, fish, and watch the sun go down over Egmont Key. The version with a fully finished restaurant and gathering space at the end may take longer.
This isn't the pier's first time coming back from a storm. It's been substantially rebuilt six times since the original 1911 structure went up, including after major damage in 1921, 1935, 1974, 1988, and 2017. The 2020 rebuild after Irma took nearly three years. Residents who lived through that closure already know the difference between a ribbon cutting and a pier that feels finished.
The Businesses That Held the Line
The closure hit different parts of Pine Avenue in different ways, and that's its own kind of local knowledge.
Two Scoops Ice Cream, along with sister shops Two Sides of Nature and Two Sides of Nature Too, has been run by the DeLuca family for three decades just off the pier. The 2024 storms put three feet of water through the plaza where those shops sit. Owner Taylor DeLuca has talked about watching the empty pier for two years, the same view that used to be full of people walking off it toward her door.
"It's not just wood pilings, it's a gathering space for the community. It's like the heartbeat of our community."
That's Morgan Bryant, who owns Cool Beans near the pier's base, describing what two years of looking at an empty space has felt like for businesses that depend on people finishing a pier walk and wanting a coffee or a scoop of ice cream afterward.
Not every nearby business needed the pier to stay afloat. Beach Bums Island Attitude, which rents bikes, golf carts, kayaks, and paddleboards, has kept business steady through the closure by leaning on visitors who come to the island for reasons that have nothing to do with the pier itself. That's the quieter lesson in all of this: the businesses that survived the gap were often the ones whose customers were already headed to the beach or the water, not the ones who depended on foot traffic spilling off a single landmark.
Rod and Reel Pier tells a different story. The historic restaurant, serving the island since 1947, hasn't been able to reopen at its original waterfront spot at all. It's currently running out of a temporary location at the Plaza in Holmes Beach, a reminder that "the pier is reopening" doesn't mean everything tied to it bounces back on the same clock, or even at the same address.
What Changes When the Walkway Reopens
For residents, the practical shifts once the walkway is back will show up in small ways before they show up in big ones.
- Pine Avenue's evening foot traffic picks back up, since a walk to the pier and back has always been part of the routine for people who live nearby.
- Fishing returns to the T-end, which has drawn everyone from casual anglers to families teaching kids to cast a line for generations.
- The businesses closest to the pier's base, including Cool Beans and Two Scoops, should see the return of customers who use the pier as a turnaround point on an evening walk.
- A new restaurant called PIERadise is set to take over the end-of-pier space, run by Brian Seymour, who operated the original restaurant there before the storms. He's described it as an upgrade from what existed before, which he's called an "upgraded snack shack" without real indoor cover from the weather. This time, the plan includes an actual indoor option.
That last point is worth sitting with. The building repairs at the T-end are the piece still without a firm date, and PIERadise's opening is tied to that same construction timeline. So even after the walkway reopens this fall, the full dining experience at the end of the pier may lag behind the ability to simply walk out there.
Reading the Timeline Like Someone Who Lives Here
The easy version of this story is "the pier is coming back, tourism season is saved." That version isn't wrong, but it skips the part that actually matters if you live within walking distance. The walkway and the buildings are two separate construction projects sharing one name, and the businesses that have made it through the closure already understand that distinction better than any single headline captures.
If you're planning an evening around the pier's reopening this fall, expect the walk back before you expect the full restaurant. If you're catching up with neighbors who run businesses along Pine Avenue, ask which phase they're actually waiting on. Some of them, like Beach Bums, have been fine either way. Others, like Two Scoops and Cool Beans, have been counting the months until people start walking their direction again.
The pier has come back from worse before. It will come back from this too. It's just worth knowing that "back" is arriving in two pieces, not one.
For those who keep an eye on how these shifts ripple through property values and buyer interest on the island, Sheldon, Gettel & Dahl tracks these changes as part of daily life here, not just market data. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's happening on Anna Maria Island, whether or not a move is anywhere on your radar.
