Restaurants and hotels smatter the beaches area, but most of them are concentrated in the tourist area of the beaches, Jacksonville Beach.
After major redevelopment, Jacksonville Beach has created a restaurant hub in its downtown complete with a 200-car landscaped parking lot and new restaurants such as Campeche Bay, Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Joe’s Crab Shack, and The Ocean Club have been constructed or opened in the area. Old standbys like Bukkets and Manatee Ray’s are still going strong.
“I think our restaurants are tops,” said Bob Marsden, mayor of Jacksonville Beach.
“Even the chains like Outback Steakhouse and Longhorn Steakhouse are great.”
Jacksonville magazine recently selected the top 20 Jacksonville restaurants and 11 were at the beach.
“I think that is pretty substantial,” said Jill Sprowell, executive director of the Beaches division of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce.
Also, she said, the restaurants are not here today and gone tomorrow.
“A lot of them are doing very well,” said Sprowell. “It seems that the majority of them have been around for a fairly long time.”
“Everything is much better and the reason for that is the growing population,” said Joe Mitrick, chairman of the Beaches division of the Chamber of Commerce and administrator of Beaches Baptist Medical Center. “Previously, a number of the restaurants and hotels catered to more of the summer traffic at the Beaches. Now, with the growth, there are enough residents to sustain a good business for the restaurants and hotels year round.”
Many of the older motels and hotels have been purchased and renovated to meet the increasing tourism demand at the beach.