LEE COUNTY, Fla. — Before the lunch crowd walks up the familiar stairs at Bimini Bait Shack, Amy Lawrence is working the house to keep the true "front of the house" looking as it should.
"We were able to open up four months, to the day, that we were closed," said Lawrence, the well-known restaurant's general manager.
From September 27, 2022, until January 27 of this year, the Bimini Bait Shack endured all of the work to return. Especially during the most unusual "high season" in recent history.
"It was a lot of appointments, contractors, people rescheduling, rescheduling, rescheduling, which is kind of like the new normal now," said Lawrence. "Our biggest delay was getting contractors to commit to their schedules and come out to help us reopen."
Yet they did open back up. Just walking through the raised restaurant, in the early afternoon on Wednesday, music filled the open-air space, baseball games filled the television screens and plenty of people sipped their beverages and took in the best elements of life, or vacation in Southwest Florida.
"The power came back on, miraculously, on Day 10," said Lawrence, pointing to the high-water mark on the posts under the restaurant that holds the Bimini Bait Shack up.
Best of all, for the frequent diners there, the famous residents of the fish tank are also back.
Two miles down McGregor Boulevard, where it becomes Summerlin Road, fences surround Sanibel Outlets.
The damage from Hurricane Ian is closing the shopping center in its current form.
Sara Holderfield, with Dahlmann Properties, wrote in an e-mail, "At this time, the ownership team for Sanibel Outlets has not announced details regarding exact plans but the property will be re-developed."
Holderfield said a demolition date for the property has not been made public.
The damage and the recovery throughout the neighborhood behind the outlets are also apparent to the thousands of drivers who reach Sanibel Island each day.
Given its close proximity to the water, the areas along John Morris Road still show the scars, with mobile homes still not replaced, blue tarps covering roofs and many of the restaurants and other businesses on McGregor Boulevard still closed.
Pair-A-Dice Produce, on McGregor at John Morris, opened just weeks after Hurricane Ian.
It's been a battle but owner John Terlep took us through how business has been to get the produce and other signature, hard-to-find items to a loyal client base.
"We're probably down about 50 percent from normal, which is a lot better than what we thought we might be at this time," said Terlep. "All of our 'six-monthers' who live in the mobile homes right here are not here. That's why our business is down."
Terlep said the store's social media presence has helped plenty to get them back on people's minds and not just when drivers notice on their way to Sanibel.
"My wife has been doing Facebook a lot," said Terlep. "It's working out really well. We're getting a lot of new customers from Naples and even Port Charlotte coming in."
