I recently had a ride around Stock Island, up Shrimp Road with an excellent tourguide. He's known the area for years and years, and showed me what is going to be developed into mega-deluxe waterfront shopping, hotel, and slips. As it looks now, it's old Key West: wooden boats up on stilts, offshore fishing charter fleets like the one above, and their offices. parking lots, and live-aboard slips. The property formerly owned by FishAndy has been sold. This includes 80 or so slips which have been occupied by houseboats and liveaboard yachts and sailboats. They will have have to vacate early next year, 2009. Here's a picture of that area:
One huge warehouse, built just two years ago to house a company that makes giant catamarans often used by watersports companies to ferry touritsts out to the reef, is going to be flattened. In its place will sit the anchor of the newly developed area, a 300-room hotel. Here's that building now:
There's already one building built, near the Fish Andy charter business, which is already moving to spots near the Hogfish Grill on Stock Island. It's a professional building, right on the water, very nice:
There's already one building built, near the Fish Andy charter business, which is already moving to spots near the Hogfish Grill on Stock Island. It's a professional building, right on the water, very nice:
There are all kinds of interesting stories sitting quietly over there on Stock Island on Shrimp Road. There's a mega yacht over there, more like a small ship. It was once owned by some former Soviet-bloc country which has been re-divided, perhaps Czechoslovakia before it split into Slovakia and Czech Republic. When power changed hands, nobody paid the dock bill on the yacht, here in Key West. They racked up such a high bill that the owners finally said "Take it". So now it sits in harbor, and the lucky guy who got it now lives there. He owns the tug next to it, too. It was supposed to tug the yacht away to be renovated but in the meantime they discovere the yacht wasn't exactly sea-worthy and couldn't be moved. Here it is:
There are some condo/apartment/workforce housing units overlooking this waterfront area. You can see them in the background of this picture, in pastel colors. Nothing special, but they are going to have one heck of an interesting time looking out their windows for the next few years while development goes forward. You can also see one of the big cats they build in that building which is going to be torn down.
