Vintage St. Pete: Guy Lombardo and Tierra Verde

Bandleader Guy Lombardo was famous for his sentimental rendition of “Auld Lang Syne,” which he and his Royal Canadians performed every New Year’s Eve, somewhere in America, for close to half a century.

Their 1947 recording is still played every midnight, Jan. 1 in New York’s Times Square, as the big ball drops.

Variety magazine said Lombardo was “the only Canadian ever to create an American tradition.”

Less known is Lombardo’s association with St. Petersburg. In the early 1960s, he lent his name to the development of Tierra Verde, a man-made island community between the mainland and Pass-a-Grille.

Guy Lombardo’s Port-o-Call was a restaurant, nightclub, marina and motel that brought in prospective homebuyers, as well as business conventions, testimonial dinners, charity balls and fashion shows. Port-o-Call was a swanky dinner destination for locals who wanted to get out, enjoy a nice meal and catch an entertaining stage show from name performers.

Including Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians, of course, whose tagline was “The sweetest music this side of heaven.”

However, for all the buzz about Lombardo, he and the orchestra never performed at Port-o-Call on New Year’s Eve. Never once did their “Auld Lang Syne” ring out in Tierra Verde.

And his association with the venture ended almost as abruptly as it began.

Pre-Tierra Verde map, 1959, from the St. Petersburg Times.

In 1958, Texas oil moguls Clint Murchison and his brother John paid $12 million for 16 scrubby barrier islands in Boca Ciega Bay, between the St. Petersburg shoreline and Mullet Key, where the ruins of Fort DeSoto, a remnant of the Spanish-American War, stood sentinel at the entrance to Tampa Bay. New York developer Louis Berlanti and his son, Fred, became partners in charge of development and construction.

Their purchase included Cabbage Key (the largest, at 300 acres), along with mostly-uninhabited islands known for a century as Pine and Pardee.

The Murchisons and Berlantis also paid the county for rights to the submerged lands around the islands, for a total of nearly 2,000 acres.

Dredge and fill permits were obtained. A concrete manufacturing plant appeared on site, and immediately began turning out slabs for “man-high” seawalls. The named islands disappeared as soon as they were artificially grafted together.

Via a bond issue, the $9.5 million Pinellas Bayway (roads and over-water causeways) was built to link the mainland and Fort DeSoto, which would become a county park in 1962.

The Bayway became Tierra Verde’s central boulevard.

In its first years, Tierra Verde (“Green Land”) was home to a number of model homes, invasive Australian pine trees, imported palm trees and a whole lot of sand. And some big dreams.

A profile of Louis Berlanti in New Orleans Architect magazine gushed over the development’s promise, including the fact that all electric, telephone and other essential wires would be buried underground, resulting in a “complete absence of unsightly antennas.” Music would be piped to every home 24 hours per day. A 120-foot “space-age tower” was being designed to serve the entire island community, with a TV signal then sent into homes via underground coaxial cable.

Other features pointed out by the magazine: “Precision engineered manhole covers which would not clank; specially designed noiseless plastic garbage cans; water faucets that gush re-set temperature and volume of water; mercury vapor street lighting turned on and off by photo electric cells; polished terrazzo light poles; sculptured eye-level street signs; central air conditioning in all homes and buildings.”

In his book Dreams in the New Century: Instant Cities, Shattered Hopes, and Florida’s Turning Point, historian Gary Mormino wrote that “not everyone applauded the ambitious plans to alter the face of bay and beach. Local and state opponents criticized the project for its finances — some argued the project amounted to a massive giveaway of free roads for private gains; others understood the environmental implications of dredge-and-fill that was ruining Boca Ciega Bay. With the opening of bridges and highways, legions of cars were arriving by the early 1960s.”

Before the Pinellas Bayway, workers and equipment – along with the developers and money men – got to the Tierra Verde site via ferry. Photo provided by Jerry Hawk.

Enter Guy Lombardo. The bandleader, who had sold millions of records since his debut in the 1920s, had recently ended his 33-year winter residency at New York’s Roosevelt Hotel. Management changes, along with serious financial problems, meant the hotel might not be able to afford Lombardo and His Royal Canadians any longer.

To put it another way, Lombardo, 60, was looking for a gig.

In Florida, Tierra Verde was well under construction by then, with a 50-room motel and a coffee shop nearly finished, and a nine-hole golf course underway.

Lombardo credited public relations counselor Arthur Etkus with putting him together with the Murchisons and the Berlantis. “It had occurred to him that Guy Lombardo was ideally suited to help the Murchison brothers succeed in a business that had already cost them $20M,” the musician wrote in his autobiography Auld Acquaintance.

His dance band famously included brothers Carmen and Victor on saxophone, and Lebert on trumpet.

“A number of Canadian residents had already made inquiries about Tierra Verde as a place to retire. Who could pull them in better than the Canadian-born Lombardos?”

The Tierra Verde Corporation proposed a yearly winter residency, with Lombardo’s name and likeness prominently featured in every newspaper, magazine and television ad, along with every postcard and every colorful page of promotional material being used to attract home buyers to “Green Land.”

To sweeten the pot, the Murchisons and Berlantis offered to turn the coffee shop into an expansive showroom and restaurant (a Miami-style “supper club”) with the appealing name Guy Lombardo’s Port-o-Call.

When I first saw the islands of Tierra Verde, from the air, they appeared as a diamond necklace on blue velvet … the blue, blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. And when we landed our plane on Tierra Verde’s private landing strip, I knew I had found my isle o’dreams. – Guy Lombardo, from Tierra Verde promotional brochure.

The motel was increased to 128 rooms. The pool was enlarged. There was talk about constructing a “marina amphitheater” that could potentially seat 3,000.

“All that would be done if the Lombardo organization agreed to come into the deal, which offered us a 50 percent cut of the food and liquor profits,” Lombardo remembered. “The band would receive its regular fee.”

He was intrigued. “If Tierra Verde was really the Shangri-La that Etkus was describing, we might even be on our way to that elusive fortune that had always escaped us. And with no investment.”

(In the September 12, 1962 St. Petersburg Times, Louis Berlanti said the bandleader was a “major stockholder,” who “has his own money in this thing.”)

The contract signed, the Lombardo Brothers were allowed input into the design of the showroom and to oversee its construction. So they visited as often as they could, and moved their wives and kids into model homes as their own houses were being constructed.

“Our families could have winter vacations with us while we were working,” Lombardo wrote.

The Port-o-Call Room had a capacity of 680. “The room, lavishly decorated in tones of green, yellow, lavender and blue, is graduated in four tiers,” the Times reported. “On the lowest and most visible level is the semi-circular stage and dancing area. The bandstand, designed like a carousel, is draped with a white sequined canopy.” A 1,200 pound ruby and crystal chandelier hung over the 60-foot bar.

Adjacent was the Salon Rouge, a cocktail lounge with its own small stage for entertainment.

The Pinellas Bayway (and Fort DeSoto Park) opened Dec. 21, 1962, but Guy Lombardo’s Port-o-Call wasn’t ready for the public until Jan. 18.

WFLA-TV began filming the Royal Canadians’ Friday night sets and showing them Sundays; radio station WDAE broadcast live from Port-o-Call later in the season, and the performance led with “Tierra Verde,” a new song written by Carmen Lombardo (hear an excerpt at this link). 

The promotion machine kicked immediately into high gear. A deal was made with Screen Gems Productions to shoot an episode of the popular TV drama series Route 66 on Tierra Verde. Filmed in April, “But What Do You Do in March” revolved around a hydroplane speedboat race, which happened to be Lombardo’s favorite pastime (he owned numerous boats and had won races in his younger years). Two of his own boats were used in the episode.

READ MORE: Vintage St. Pete: ‘Route 66’

“Boat Race Day,” April 1963. Locals ogle the famous gold Corvette from “Route 66.” Photo by Steve Harris.

The plot, however, was incidental, as Sterling Silliphant’s script, half of which was written on the spot, after filming had begun, was really an advertisement for the fun ‘n’ sun of the Tierra Verde development. Lombardo appeared in two brief scenes.

Because Route 66 was always shot on location, with tight production deadlines, each day’s film was airlifted to Los Angeles for editing the next day.

Another location snapshot. Provided by Bonnie Crapser.

“But What Do You Do in March?” aired on CBS May 3, just three weeks after production began.

Lombardo did his part as spokesperson for Tierra Verde. Once the band’s winter commitment was complete, they hit the road; the tour bus was decorated with a colorful banner advertising the property. The bandleader took several minutes at every concert to invite people to his fabulous new place in Florida.

He then pointed the bus towards Jones Beach, New York, where the Royal Canadians’ spectacular, Around the World in 80 Days, would run all summer long.

In Lombardo’s absence Port O’ Call entertainment that first year included, among others, the Ralph Flanagan Band Liberace, Homer & Jethro with Betty Clooney, Vaughn Monroe, Stan Getz, Tony Martin and Marlene Dietrich, who was accompanied by pianist Burt Bacharach.

Screengrab from “Route 66”: Louis Berlanti, left, and Guy Lombardo.

Everything changed on Aug. 13, when the Berlantis’ private plane, piloted at night by Fred, burst into flames and crashed into Lake Okeechobee. Father and son were both killed on impact.

The Berlantis were flying home from a business meeting in Miami.

According to Lombardo, by that point the bloom was already somewhat off the rose. “We played for several hundred people a night, most of them from nearby St. Petersburg and the West Coast towns as far away as Sarasota,” he wrote in his memoir.

“The huge motel, however, was virtually empty. By next year when the golf course was built, we felt it would be doing capacity business. There were no profits from that first season, but the band worked those winter months and all the members in it enjoyed what amounted to a paid vacation on a paradisiacal island.”

Postcard image.

Port-o-Call revelers missed the Lombardo touch on “Auld Lang Syne” again in 1964, as Lombardo and the band didn’t return to Tierra Verde until Jan. 3. This second residency ran until April.

Negotiations for a third year began badly, as Lombardo clashed with the Murchison Brothers over the band’s fees, and the booking calendar. “They made an offer that just wasn’t acceptable,” Lombardo told a Times reporter in August. “I feel really badly about it.”

The brothers, he continued, “seemed to show a lack of interest” when Lombardo said his schedule, by necessity, had to be planned many months in advance.

St. Petersburg Times, Aug. 24, 1964.

Eventually, he agreed to perform at Port-o-Call – which still bore his name – over 11 days in April, 1965.

The skies had darkened considerably by then. In January the Murchisons announced they would cede ownership of all 9.5 acres of Port-o-Call to the mortgage holder, First Federal Savings and Loan Association of St. Petersburg. Approximately $2 million remained on the mortgage.

The brothers’ Centex Construction Co. retained ownership of Tierra Verde and the housing development, although they filed foreclosure papers against Tierra Verde City, Inc., whose other major stockholder was Berlanti Construction. “The corporation is unable to repay its indebtedness,” the Murchisons’ spokesman announced.

On Jan. 25, four days after the announcement, employees arrived at Port-o-Call to find the doors locked. Pianist Peter Duchin, who was booked at the time, came back from a fishing excursion in time to see his name being removed from the big sign out front.

“The project collapsed,” Lombardo wrote in Auld Acquaintance. “The Port O’ Call Room was still attracting people who lived in the area, but the rooms with beds remained mostly unoccupied. You couldn’t always count on summer weather in the winters off St. Petersburg.

“The planned golf course was still on the drawing boards and that didn’t help. A nine-hole Par-3 course was hardly a drawing card for golfers seeking a sun that did not always shine in December, January, and February.”

Lombardo and the Royal Canadians sold out the St. Petersburg Coliseum for a one-nighter Feb. 3, 1965, but Port-o-Call was out of business, so the scheduled April dates never materialized.

When the complex re-opened in January, 1966, Lombardo’s name was conspicuously missing.

Port-o-Call limped along for another decade, changing ownership and design, and in 1976 the facility was purchased by the massive Deltona Corporation, which also bought a 50 percent stake in the Tierra Verde development itself from the Murchison brothers.

St. Petersburg Times ad, 1980.

The extensively remodeled Port-o-Call Room became Le Club, with 450 seats. Entertainers played two dinner shows a night. The initial season included Mel Torme, Billy Eckstine, Rosemary Clooney, Clint Holmes and other big names.

Performers in ’78 included Phyllis Diller, Steve Allen, Al Martino, Kay Starr and Frank Gorshin.

Deltona’s financial troubles forced the sale of the Tierra Verde Hotel, Yacht & Tennis Club (as it was then known) the following year.

By the 1980s, Le Club was mixing pop, rock and jazz shows with big band appearances. It struggled along for another decade, operating as a concert venue under different names, under different ownership.

Tierra Verde, of course, eventually found its footing and is now wall-to-wall condominiums, as is Isla del Sol, a 1970s dredge-and-fill project on the northern side of the Pinellas Bayway.

There isn’t a trace left of Guy Lombardo, Port-o-Call or “the sweetest music this side of heaven” on Tierra Verde. The bandleader died in 1977; the original buildings were demolished in 2007. Look now and you’ll find the Tierra Verde Marina Resort and the Island Grill restaurant.

Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot
In the days of auld lang syne?