Yesterday afternoon I stopped to take a few photos of Little Jim Bait and Tackle, seen in the photograph on the left. This is a waterfront restaurant, marina, and bait shop located in Fort Pierce, Florida. It has live music almost every weekday and always on the weekend. It was originally a guard shack next to the bridge leading to North Hutchinson Island, restricted at the time to authorized personnel and where thousands of soldiers and sailors trained during World War II. When the Navy departed the area in 1944, the abandoned guard house opened as a bait shop, started selling cold beer, and has been in operation ever since. And I must say, this place is very popular. On weekends, whenever I pass by, every parking space is filled.
I was pretty surprised to see how many people were there on a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of summer, as seen in the photograph on the right. The property is owned by the City of Fort Pierce, and the lease has expired, requiring a new Request for Proposal (RFP) to be completed, resulting in multiple bidders for that lease. There was some question as to whether Little Jim would have to shut down during this process. Patrons and employees showed up en masse to a city council meeting to support the owners, who were granted a month-to-month lease during the process. One of the reasons for the RFP is that the city is paying way more to maintain the site than they collect in rent, and so no matter who wins the bid, it will be a much more expensive proposition to run the place. What else is new?
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