Gasparilla Inn
Written by Marcy Shortuse
Photos provided
& Club
for the
The landscape of Boca Grande’s Beach will be changing in the next two years, as The Gasparilla Inn &
Club will begin construction on nine new guest cottages right on the Gulf of Mexico where the 7th
Street dog park is currently located.
According to Tina Ekblad, planning partner for Morris Depew, they are hoping the continuity between the
current cottages and the new ones will be seamless.
“When you work through a design, right up until submittal time things are changing,” she said. “There have
been at least four different versions of this plan before we gave it to the county to look at. What we are
looking at now is very low-key. The architecture will relate to the historic buildings that already exist in the
area, we will be carrying the theme of the older buildings through into the theme of the new buildings. The
cedar shake roof look will continue, and we are going for a natural landscape plan that doesn’t look like it’s
brand new. We want it to look like the whole property and buildings have evolved together.”