Wanted to thank you so much for your on-line edition of the Clearwater Gazette. I read it thoroughly and faithfully every week and thank you for the opportunity of staying in touch with our favorite vacation spot in the whole world, well formerly our favorite, we have yet to see what the future has in store to see if it will ever be our favorite again.
We are not going to Clearwater Beach this year. We put up with construction, inconveniences and excuses for a few years now but have come to the end of our understanding. Last year we were so disappointed and embarrassed, as we had some fellow co-workers who were vacationing on the opposite coast of Florida join us for a couple of days so that we could "show off" our favorite area...NOT! We stayed at one of the few small motels left on Hamden Drive and it was in a deplorable state as the owners I presume were deciding which way to go, which way would put more money in their pockets, whether or not to spend any money on upkeep or whether or not to just take our money, which they gladly did, and let the place decay into the ground, which it is...it was disgusting! On our formerly wonderful evening walks to Pier 60, we were greeted by the smells and sights of a demolished former landmark on the mainstreet that had been torn down and left there with a fenced barricade around it. I do mean left there to rot! Piles and piles of soiled mattresses and I don't want to think of what else was in that mess but it was there for our whole vacation, all 2 1/2 weeks of it! How is it that this was allowed to happen in the middle of Clearwater Beach? Why wasn't this stuff loaded up and taken away somewhere? No one was working on the site, it was just sitting there rotting and stinking!
It is my opinion that there are only so many millionaires or "wanna be" millionaires in this world and you can only sell so many "million dollar plus" condos and I fear that Clearwater Beach has distanced itself and thought so little of its tourists as of late that it will never get us back. What a waste. I will be checking back every once in a while...for a while, but soon we will be used to a new area and Clearwater Beach and all the wonderful things it had to offer will be nothing but a nice memory.
Thanks for listening.
Lynn Fleming
St. Thomas, ON
Canada