Hart’s Landing, a bait shop near the western end of the John Ringling Causeway, has been closed since the 2024 hurricane season damaged its waterfront building. Sarasota has filed plans for a replacement, but the city’s current schedule puts completion in 2031.
What Helene and Milton brought to Sarasota
The National Hurricane Center reported that Helene brought deadly storm surge. The center reported that Milton made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane and caused major damage in the Sarasota and Tampa Bay areas; that report likewise does not specify damage to the shop.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that the proposed replacement is a $3.72 million project funded through Federal Emergency Management Agency recovery funding. The nearby Tony Saprito Fishing Pier, on the northeast side of the John Ringling Bridge, was damaged during the same hurricane season, but its repairs are being handled as a separate FEMA project.
The proposed layout combines a 725-square-foot bait shop and restroom building with an open-air pavilion, bait tanks, reconstructed docks, and parking and walkway improvements. The Pembroke Pines News, republishing reporting by Herald-Tribune writer Earle Kimel, describes the site as a potential downtown waterfront destination for bait, snacks and live music. Sarasota Magazine also details the proposed features.
Building Higher to Survive the Next Storm
More than 80 percent of Hart's Landing's building was destroyed in the 2024 hurricanes, and what remained was razed on Nov. 10, 2025, according to Longboat Key News. The new concession building would be rebuilt on higher ground in Florida Department of Transportation right-of-way, elevated to reduce its susceptibility to storm surge.
That same outlet reports the proposed building's floor would sit at 10 feet on the vertical datum surveyors use — two feet above the 8-foot base flood elevation for its zone — with a roof engineered for an ultimate design wind speed of 150 mph. Sarasota Magazine adds that the replacement building would be constructed outside the coastal high-hazard flood zone where the original structure once stood. A raised walkway would connect the concession building to the docks, and the new structure would be reached by a 6-foot-wide ADA-approved sidewalk and ramp.
In an email, Luke Mocherman said the city wants the replacement to endure at the site for as long as possible. The plans also place a covered pavilion and bait wells near the boat docks, within the former building’s footprint.
Years of Paperwork Before Any Shovels
The plans were presented to Sarasota's Development Review Committee at a preapplication meeting on Nov. 4, 2026. The city still needs an updated agreement with FDOT to allow construction within the agency's right-of-way before the project can move forward.
Under the current city schedule, dock construction wouldn't begin until 2029, with the entire project expected to be completed in 2031 — meaning, as the Herald-Tribune put it, the rebirth of Hart's Landing remains years away. The Baldwin family had been running Hart's Landing since 2017, continuing a legacy that stretched back to the shop's earliest days near the foot of the old John Ringling Causeway.
A Family Legacy on the Bay
Deamus Hart established Hart’s Landing in 1934, and the business became one of Sarasota’s oldest bait and tackle shops. It moved to the foot of the Ringling Bridge in 1964 after a new bridge displaced its earlier location, then settled at the base of the new John Ringling Bridge in the mid-1960s.
The Baldwin family took over operations in 2017, carrying the business forward after decades of Hart family stewardship. Dennis Hart first worked at the shop in 1969, when he was 13, and was managing it full time for his mother, Claudia, by 1974. He inherited the business after Claudia died in 1988. Deamus Hart died in 1973.
