Longboat hotel reopens nearly a year after storm

The Sandpiper Inn on Longboat Key has reopened — less than a year after the owners said the property would be "closed forever" following extensive hurricane damage.

Sandpiper Inn owners Christine and Harold Cullison announced its reopening on Aug. 16. The hotel, built in the 1960s, has hosted visitors from all over the world in its decades of operation.

"We were going to try to sell it, initially, after Helene," Harold Cullison tells the Longboat Observer, sister paper of the Business Observer. The property at 5451 Gulf of Mexico Drive was on the market for $6.9 million from late January to mid-July, according to online real estate listings.