🌅💰 Crabby’s Deal Falls Through

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A deal to assign the lease to a new operator has fallen through. So here we are again.

If you have not been following this one, here is the full timeline of what happened with Crabby’s and here is the last update from the commission where staff came back asking for another 30 days to finalize a potential ownership transfer. That transfer is now off the table.

Quick recap of where things stand: Crabby’s vacated the waterfront property back in February. Since then the city has been trying to figure out what to do with the outstanding balance and whether someone could take over the lease. The current tenant of record, Winking Starfish LLC, now owes the city $333,942.71 as of today. That number has grown from the $215,000 that was on the books when they left.

What the commission has to decide this morning 📋:

That third option is worth watching. This is a prime piece of waterfront land in downtown Fort Pierce and if it goes to open bidding there will be no shortage of interest. The flip side is that whoever comes in has to be able to actually sustain a restaurant operation that can cover the rent on a property like this. That has already proven to be harder than it looks.

We will have an update after the meeting 👀.

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