Sarasota waterfront bar reopens after storms

By Dana Kampa
| 2:05 p.m. May 7, 2025
| 2 Free Articles Remaining!

Friday marked the day O'Leary's Tiki Bar & Grill bid farewell to the boat washed up on its dock and celebrated its reopening.

Manatee-Sarasota

Greg Corvelle, regional director of food and beverage for O'Leary's Tiki Bar & Grill, jokes the downtown Sarasota restaurant should have sold tickets for the many patrons who gathered along the waterside of Sarasota Bay to see a boat wrecked on the dock by the monstrous winds of Hurricane Milton get hauled away.

By coincidence, removal day fell on O'Leary's official reopening after the storms. The watering hole opened its doors at 11 a.m. May 2, heralding a new chapter in its history since the first grand opening in the 1980s.

The bayside restaurant has idyllic views of Sarasota Bay from its sandy shore, and Lana Jackson, general manager for the past five years, shares how she focused on expanding and fortifying the restaurant for the future.

Builders made notable structural improvements. From the sealed glass walls designed to keep out floodwaters to the Tiki bar support beams cemented into place, the rebuilt restaurant isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

However, Jackson says she is glad they could still maintain the easygoing, breezy aesthetic of the establishment.

There are also some customer-facing improvements they made Jackson thinks visitors will enjoy, like the new on-tap beers, which replaced the restaurant's ice cream offerings.

Permitting was a main factor in the timeline for the reopening, but Jackson says she is pleased with what they've been able to accomplish in the downtime.

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"This has been a long time coming," she says.

Corvelle says the restaurant didn't even know for certain that it could go ahead with its planned opening until the day before. They needed the city to do one final make sure everything was ready.

Among the opening day attendees were Sarasota residents Larry and Susan Siebl. While enjoying a rum runner and Mai Tai and the shade from the sunshine above, they welcomed back one of their favorite go-to spots in the city, especially for breakfast.

"We walk here quite a bit, so we've been monitoring it," Susan says. "We like it a lot because it's a casual vibe with fun people."

This article originally appeared on sister site YourObserver.com.

author

Dana Kampa

Dana Kampa is the Longboat Key neighbors reporter for the Observer. She first ventured into journalism in her home state of Wisconsin, going on to report community stories everywhere from the snowy mountains of Washington State to the sunny shores of the Caribbean. She has been a writer and photographer for more than a decade, covering what matters most to readers.