Title

200 posts about Pinellas County real estate

I started this blog about Pinellas County real estate a little over five years ago. Lots of things have changed since then — I started the blog under a different blog name, and I used a different blog platform back then.

I mention all this because we just reached an important milestone — 200 blog posts, all of which relate in some way or other to Pinellas County real estate. The blog entry about three entries back, entitled “What’s the outlook for first-time homebuyers in the Pienllas County real estate market?”, was our 200th entry.

Just for fun, I scrolled all the way back to the beginning and took a look at our first blog entry, back on May 4, 2006. It’s about Strachan’s Ice Cream. (I think I may have posted a few before that one, but I seem to remember that a handful of blog entries didn’t survive the transfer of content from one blog platform to the other.)

Anyway, that’s a lot of stories just about real estate in Pinellas County, even though a few of them have strayed a little bit from that single subject.

Feel free to page back through the old entries. Most of them are still informative about homes and real estate in Pinellas County, or more specifically real estate in Palm Harbor, Clearwater, Dunedin, Tarpon Springs, Crystal Beach, Ozona, Oldsmar and Safety Harbor.

Tags: Crystal Beach, Dunedin, Oldsmar, Ozona, Palm Harbor, Pinellas County real estate, real estate, Safety Harbor, Tarpon Springs

A visit to the Tarpon Springs farmer’s market

If you’ve spent any time reading this blog you know that I love farmer’s markets, and there’s plenthy of them around North Pinellas County.  I’ve been meaning to get up to the market in Tarpon Springs — in fact, I have driven up there only to find that my visits were on off weekends when the market wasn’t operating.

Anyway, today we headed up there and got there on the right weekend.  Everything was in full swing, and we made good use of it.

There was a cheese booth, operated by a business called the Cheese Lodge in Elfers, Fla., and we bought some absolutely great brie, which we sampled as soon as we got home. Too bad, they don’t have a website.

We also bought a couple of kielbasa sandwiches, which we ate while we watched the beginning of the Rays-Yankees game on TV once we got back home.

We also stumbled across a Palm Harbor bakery which we didn’t know about.  Sweet Caroline’s had a booth at the farmer’s market, and the food on display was really eye-catching.  We bought two apple turnovers and a thick, crumbly chocolate cookie with powered sugar on top, and we took them home and ate them after those keilbasa sandwiches.

Sweet Caroline’s is in a strip mall at 3347 Tampa Rd, Palm Harbor, a few doors down from the Surf & Turf Market. Definitely worth a try!

Tags: farmer's market, Tarpon Springs

Owner financing on this great Tarpon Springs townhouse

I don’t make a habit of putting my listings on my blog (they are on my website at www.bethfrederick.com) but this is such a gorgeous townhouse that I thought I would share it with you.

Almost new (build in 2006 by Lennar Homes), this home has some dandy finishing touches (crown molding throughout, granite countertops), and there is plenty of room to stretch out in its 2,301 square feet of living space.

Many two-story town homes are concrete block construction on the first floor and wood construction on the second floor. Not this one, though — it is concrete block construction throughout.

And this may be the most attractive and compelling feature of all — the sellers are interested in providing owner financing — just 10 percent down and a very attractive interest rate, and a term of up to 30 years.

Selling price: $237,400. Give me a call and we’ll go take a look! See more at http://www.bethfrederick.com/Nav.aspx/Page=/ListNow/Default.aspx , and click on the picture.

Tags: owner financing, Tarpon Springs, town house

Rodie’s — a great breakfast in Tarpon Springs

There was time not too many years back when one of our favorite breakfast stops was a place called Rodie’s, in Tapron Springs.

Rodie's Restaurant in Tarpon Springs

Rodie’s was a small hole-in-the-wall diner kind of place on Alt. 19 just south of the Tarpon Springs downtown area.  It was a place very much favored by the locals, and the Rodie’s folks put out a very good breakfast for a very fair price.

Rodie’s did so well that they acquired a piece of land across the street from the original restaurant and built a new place — much fancier, much bigger, and a lot more upscale, at least in appearance.  They still are only open for breakfast and lunch — they close at 3 p.m.

They may have lost a little bit of the charm they offered when they were in the older, smaller place across the street. But they still really pack the place on weekend mornings, a testament to their excellent food and fair prices.

Rodie’s offers some very good burgers and sandwiches, but breakfast is when I like to go there. Besides the good assortment of pancake dishes and omelettes, they also offer some southern favorites and some Greek-inspired dishes, everything from biscuits and sausage gravy to gyro rollups and Greek salads.

Rodie’s is right next door to the brand-new Sweetbay supermarket on South Pinellas Avenue (Alt. 19).  I’m going to post something about that Sweetbay a little later on.

Tags: breakfast, pinellas county, restaurants, Tarpon Springs

Downtown Tarpon Springs lamp posts

Lamp post in downtown Tarpon Springs

Time for another lamp post.

Just to refresh your memory, I posted a picture of a lamp post from downtown Dunedin not too long ago. It was a pretty fancy one, and it went well with the overall charm of the downtown area of Dunedin, which has been fancied up quite a bit in recent years.

Next up was a lamp post from Disney World’s Boardwalk area. Not a real local lamp post, to be sure, but a nice one that illustrated how antique-looking lamp posts can be used to lend an authetic touch to a restored downtown area.

This one was taken in downtown Tarpon Springs just this morning.

Apparently Tarpon Springs one-ups the other local downtowns by adding fresh flowers to their lamp posts. Other local communities may do the same thing, but I haven’t seen any.

You can see more of the Tarpon Springs downtown area here.

Tags: downtown, lamp posts, Tarpon Springs

A proud Greek heritage is on display in Tarpon Springs

Tarpon Springs is a charming Florida Gulf Coast town known for its Greek restaurants, bakeries, gift shops and sponge merchants. It is very much a Greek community, and it traces its Greek roots back more than 100 years, when Greek divers and their families immigrated to Tarpon Springs to work in the town’s sponge trade.

Florida’s sponge industry really began in the early 1800s, many miles south of Tarpon Springs, in Key West. Men would crisscross the shallow waters off Key West in rowboats or sailboats, scooping grass sponges off the bottom with long rakes. The harvested sponges would be carried by boat to Tampa Bay, and then shipped from there to New York City.

Key West quickly became the major source of sponges for customers in New York and throughout the Northeast, but that was about to change as technology allowed men to dive to the ocean floor. Divers soon found there were larger sponge beds, and a much larger variety of sponge types, in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, further up the west coast of Florida.

By the late 1880s, a wealthy Philadelphia banker named John K. Cheney sought to take advantage of those bountiful sponge resources off Florida’s coast.  He built warehouses in the town of Tarpon Springs, and soon he, along with another businessman named Ernest Meres, became the town’s first sponge merchants. He bought sponges locally and then sold them to associates in New York City.

In 1896, a Greek immigrant who had been working in New York as a sponge buyer, John Cocoris, arrived in Tarpon Springs. He went to work for John Cheney, and soon recruited 500 sponge divers from Greece.

The Greek divers were amazed to find that the floor of the Gulf was thick with sponges of all kinds. Baskets of large wool-sponges could be quickly sent in baskets from the sea floor up to the boats that waited on the surface. Cheney and his associates added boats and divers to increase their harvest.

Just a few years after the turn of the century, there were more than 1,500 Greek sponge divers and other workers employed in the Tarpon Springs sponge trade. By 1936, that number had increased to more than 2,000, and Tarpon Springs was recognized around the world as the sponge capital of the world.

However, the sponge industry faced a number of serious challenges in the 1940s. First, Red Tide attacked the gulf and killed most of the sponges. Then, synthetic sponges were developed. and they cut into market previously dominated by natural sponges. It took more than 20 years for the sponge market to right itself.

Now, tourism has replaced sponge diving as Tarpon Springs’ major economic activity. Tourists enjoy Tarpon’s Greek influence and culture, which have survived the ups and downs of the 100-year-old sponge trade.

-0-

Marc Washburn is a sponge merchant in Tarpon Springs and also on the Internet. His e-store, Natural Bath & Body Shop, carries traditional Greek olive oil soaps, Loofah, and a large selection of sea sponges.

Tags: Greek, Tarpon Springs

Hitting the bricks in Tarpon Springs

If you love historic old brick streets enough to actually work on them, the city of Tarpon Springs has a great deal for you.

Tarpon Springs decided a few years ago that one way to preserve the old brick streets within the community was to offer local residents the opportunity to rebuild and repair the streets on a volunteer basis.

City officials learned that the city of Punta Gorda, Florida, had a similar program that was working very well. So last fall they decided to give it a try in Tarpon Springs, asking local volunteers to help with the reconstruction of Cedar Street.

The city hired a professional contractor to prep the street, remove the old bricking and install new water and storm sewer lines. Then the volunteers were turned loose to install the bricks.

It worked out so well on Cedar Street that the city is now having a contractor prep Bay Street from S Spring Boulevard to Lime Street. Once Bay Street is rebuilt, some other historic brick streets in town may be rebuilt with volunteer labor, too.

Want to learn more, and maybe take part? Get in touch with the Tarpon Springs Engineering Division at 727-938-3711.

Tags: brick streets, Tarpon Springs