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Treasure Island’s iconic Thunderbird: Past, present and future
It’s as tall as a medium-sized lighthouse, if not as bright, but it has shone like a beacon across Gulf Boulevard for 68 years.
The Thunderbird Beach Resort’s neon sign, with the hotel name in white, set against a colorful bird with a majestic wingspan (it’s the mighty thunderbird from Aztec mythology), lets motorists arriving from the mainland know they’ve arrived on Treasure Island. Once you’re face to face with the Thunderbird sign, you’re at the main drag and can only turn right (north towards Madiera Beach) or left (south, in the direction of St. Pete Beach).
The aqua paint was a relatively recent addition. Photo: Thunderbird Beach Resort.
Lots of things have changed on the Pinellas beaches over the decades. Not that intersection. Not that sign.
At five stories high, it’s the first thing that appears on the horizon, as the crow drives, west over the Treasure Island Causeway. At night, it’s the brightest thing for miles, like a luminous come-on for the Las Vegas strip.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused severe damage to the property last year, and for a while the Thunderbird’s owners anticipated repairs and refurbishments.
This week, in a prepared statement, brothers Avi and Gilad Ovaknin said the destruction was too great. “Sadly,” wrote the Hollywood, Florida-based co-owners of Thunderbird Holdings LLC, “the back-to-back hurricanes that struck our coast last year caused catastrophic damage to the property. Although we have chosen not to publicly share images of the devastation, we can share that over 80% of the resort sustained substantial damage.
“After extensive evaluations and much deliberation, we were left with no choice but to move forward with a full redevelopment of the hotel.”
The Ovaknins also own the adjacent Best Western Sea Castle Suites, another vintage 1950s facility. Like the Thunderbird, it has been shuttered tight since the twin hurricanes.
In addition, their portfolio includes two vintage coastal hotels in Daytona Beach, and Surf Style Retail, a chain of beachwear shops with 60 locations in three states; there’s a store directly across Gulf Boulevard from the Thunderbird, and another in Madeira Beach.
They will bulldoze the Thunderbird and build anew. According to documents filed with the City of Treasure Island, demolition will start in June (presuming the requested permits are issued), with an opening date for the “new” hotel scheduled for June, 2027.
The Ovaknins, who declined to comment for this story, said the Thunderbird name, and the iconic neon sign, will remain, “while enhancing the property to be more resilient to the challenges posed by severe weather” (The inhabited buildings will be elevated, to reflect new post-storm ordinances).
“Our new plans reflect a thoughtful balance of preservation and progress. While the structure and layout will evolve, the spirit of the Thunderbird will live on.”
They weren’t called resorts in the early days. They were motels.
Built in 1957, the Thunderbird Motel officially opened in January of ‘58. Treasure Island mayor Ralph Milliken leased, then sold, the approximately two acres of sand and scrub, with nearly 300 feet of prime access to the beach, to Redington Beach residents Tom King and his wife Hazel. The Kings were co-owners of the Cocoanut Grove Motel on 4th Street in St. Petersburg.
King told a reporter that his total cost – for the land, plus construction and furnishings – was approximately $750,000. By opening day, he was saying $800,000.
The 64-unit facility (32 with kitchenettes) was designed and built in three sections: Two stories facing Gulf Boulevard, and three on each side of the “king-sized” pool, open to the beach at the far end. Every room was air conditioned, with TV and telephone.
The Aztec restaurant and coffee shop were the street-facing building; the Headhunter cocktail lounge would be added to within a year or two.
There from the start was the five-story brown brick pylon, erected with the sole purpose of displaying the enormous multicolored bird – and the business’ logo – far higher than anything else on the beach at that time. According to an opening day report in the St. Petersburg Times, the sign – designed by Roland Jette, who also created the Sunken Gardens neon sign – contained 1,460 separate lights. The original plans also called for a clock to be mounted on the tower.
The Kings lived in one of the slender rooms inside the pylon. The others were used for storage.
Image: Treasure Island Historical Society.
To the new building’s north was the circa-1956 Sea Castle Motel; next came the Buccaneer Motel, with its flashing neon, Vegas-style parking lot sign depicting a sexy lady pirate.
The Treasure Island Cabana Club, to the immediate south of the Thunderbird, would give way in 1961 to the state-of-the-art, $1.2 million Bilmar.
In the 1950s, Pinellas County began marketing its barrier island beaches as the Holiday Isles. There was no Don CeSar-type luxury available – that vintage 1928 beach hotel was government-owned, and serving as a regional office for the U.S. Veterans Administration – so vacationers’ choices were limited to the Mom and Pop motels that ran from Indian Rocks to St. Petersburg Beach (as it was then called) and Pass-a-Grille.
There were a few exceptions, of course, but in the late 1950s and into the ‘60s, Treasure Island was the nexus of nice. And tourism was the indisputible king.
A suit brought by the owners of the Thunderbird Motel in Miami Beach alleged that their facility had a national reputation; they sought an injunction against King using the name for his Treasure Island inn.
During the courtroom proceedings, the plaintiffs screened (on kinescope) an episode of The Phil Silvers Show, in which Sgt. Bilko and his chums cavorted at the Thunderbird Motel on Miami Beach.
The suit was eventually dropped.
Postcard image, 1950s.
During that first summer, actor Lee Marvin and his wife vacationed at the Thunderbird. Marvin, who was then starring in the TV police series M Squad, had resided in Lakeland as a teenager and spent many a summer weekend on Clearwater Beach. “I remember when these islands were just sandspits,” he told a reporter who’d tracked him down at the Thunderbird.
And so the decades passed. Snowbirds came and snowbirds went; some seasons were better than others. Several generations of Kings endured hurricanes and other calamities but kept the motel open. Upgrades and remodels were done as necessary, and the name was changed to the tonier Thunderbird Beach Resort around 2006. Tourism was, and remains to this day, everything.
The Buccaneer Motel was demolished in 2005. The six-story, 77-room Treasure Island Beach Resort rose on the site. The Sea Castle became the Best Western Sea Castle Suites.
At the same time, although some held out, most of the tiny Mom-and-Pops, all up and down the barrier islands, sold out for tall hotels and apartment buildings. Beach sand had become worth its weight in gold.
In 2021, the King family sold the Thunderbird for $25.5 million to Thunderbird TI Holdings LLC, whose principals are Avi and Gilad Ovaknin. At the same time, the brothers paid $7 million for the Best Western Sea Castle Suites.
No one anticipated the devastation that arrived with Helene and Milton last September and October, respectively.
“Like many of you, we are heartbroken by the loss,” the Ovaknin brothers wrote. “But we are also incredibly optimistic and energized by what’s to come.”
1970s brochure.
