The One that Got Away - Not the Fish!

Key West is famous for its fishing, drinking, and real estate tinkering. Today's blog is about the real estate deal that got away.  All readers are aware of the real estate maxim location, location, location. Some properties have excellent locations and others are not so blessed. Some have have horrible locations. Sometimes good locations have bad juju.

I never forgot a "buyer" I worked with about twenty years ago. He wanted to look at the former Logun's Lobster House end of Simonton Street. It was the location and size of the lot more than the building that made this property so appealing.  The 17,000 square foot lot sat at the south end of Simonton Street overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The lot included off street parking. The building was certainly usable or worthy of remodeling, but the location begged to be re-purposed and made into something more important. 

The former La Brisa (pictured below) was located on the opposite side what became Logun's Lobster House at 1420 Simonton Street also at water's edge. La Brisa was severely damaged in a hurricane and was later moved to South Street where it is now a house. The La Brisa site later became the Sand's Beach Club which itself was razed. That site is now the Reach Resort.

I found a couple of photos in the Monroe County Public Library files which hows South Beach as photographed 1940 from the end of Duval Street looking east toward the Casa Marina Hotel. The lower photo was taken in 1950 and shows a motel which I believe later became a part of the Atlantic Shores Resort.

The aerial photo below shows the location as photographed in the late 1990s - thirty years ago my friends. Only two of the buildings that existed then still exist today - the Reach Resort and a portion of the South Beach Motel which is now the Southernmost Resort complex. The lower photo was taken in 2018 and shows the Southernmost Beach Resort and Reach Resort plus the Santa Maria Condominiums on South Street.

My buyer looked at Logun's Lobster House twice on the same day - once mid-morning and a second time around 2:00 PM when we looked inside with the listing Realtor. Later my buyer and I stood in the middle of Simonton Street admiring the location when he absolutely seized up.

Logun's was located next door to the Atlantic Shores pool which was an institution back in its day. Guests and locals hung out by the pool from 10:00 AM until closing drinking cocktails, eating, sunning, and dancing at Sunday Tea By the Sea.  Nudity was not only allowed, it was encouraged. The music was normally respectful of other businesses in the area but was always loud during tea dance and when certain bartenders rocked the house during their shifts. On the day I showed the Logun's, the bartender from Hell was rocking out of control. My buyer decided that property was not suitable. He could only hear the music blare.

Logun's Lobster House was listed at $3 million. It sold at $2.3 million and was torn down. I happened to drive by the location in 2007 as Logun's and the Atlantic Shores were razed to make way for the new Southernmost resort.

I urge buyers to focus on the goal of buying the property they want and not worry about little things. That can be a difficult and costly lesson for buyers anywhere. There is no real estate lesson worse than remembering the one that got away.