Updated: July 2026
The Anna Maria City Pier is the kind of place that means something different to everyone who has spent time on it. For me, it means fishing, enjoying a cold beer, eating, listening to live music, and sitting on the worn wooden benches trading stories with whoever else happened to be there that night. I have watched the lights on the Skyway Bridge from that pier more times than I can count, and after decades of visiting Anna Maria Island, it remains one of the places I return to without ever really leaving behind.
How the Pier Began
The City Pier dates back to 1911, when the Anna Maria Beach Company built it to bring steamships full of tourists over from Tampa and St. Petersburg. Before there was a bridge connecting the island to the mainland, this pier was the only way on or off, which made it the true starting point of Anna Maria Island as a destination rather than just a stretch of undeveloped coastline. At 776 feet long, it was built to reach water deep enough for the steamers of the day, and it quickly became the drop-off point for visitors headed down Pine Avenue toward what is now Sandbar Restaurant. For the fuller story of how the island itself came to be, see my The History of Anna Maria Island: My Insider Guide.
In the early 1900s, a private residence called Belle Haven Cottage was built right out over the water near the end of the pier. Waves under the floorboards and boats passing by the porch were just part of daily life there, at least for a while. About six years after it was built, the pilings supporting the cottage failed and it fell into Tampa Bay. Rather than losing it for good, Lyman Christy purchased the cottage in 1926 and had it moved by barge around the north end of the island to Palmetto Avenue on the Gulf side, where it remained for more than 80 years. Eventually the cottage was saved once more and relocated to its current home at the Anna Maria Island Historical Society, sitting right alongside the Old City Jail.
A Landmark That Keeps Coming Back
What makes the pier’s story so remarkable is not that it was built once and has simply stood there for over a century. It has been rebuilt or significantly repaired after storm damage again and again, in 1921, 1935, 1974, 1988, 2017, and again after Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused major damage in 2024. Each time, the island has chosen to rebuild it rather than let it go, and the current reconstruction is being designed with storm resistance in mind, aiming to outlast whatever comes next.
That resilience is part of why the pier feels different from a typical tourist attraction. It is not polished or manufactured to look historic. It simply is historic, weathered by generations of sun, storms, and the people who have walked its planks.
Where Things Stand Now
As of mid-2026, the walkway itself is expected to be substantially complete by summer, though the pier is not expected to fully reopen to the public until fall, since the buildings at the T-end still need restoration work. When it does reopen, the restaurant and bait shop will return under a new name, PIERadise, run by GSM Partners under a five-year lease approved by the city in June 2026. The group previously operated the City Pier Grill and Bait Shop in the smaller building before the hurricanes, and they are now taking over the larger building as well. The plan includes more room, a separated bar and kitchen, live local music, and a public bait and tackle counter, all with a family-friendly focus.
More Than a Place to Fish
Long before it became a spot for casual visitors, the pier was a working part of island life, used for dockage, supply runs, and the fish trade between the island and the mainland. Locals and tourists have fished off its edges for over a century. Over time the restaurant at the end of the pier became something more personal to islanders and visitors alike too, going through several distinct eras.
In the 1970s and 1980s, that spot belonged to Fast Eddie’s, a classic old-school pier hangout known for its tongue-in-cheek slogan, Warm Beer, Lousy Food, and its more divey, bar-with-food vibe. Signs from the era welcomed visitors to Fast Eddie’s Oyster Bar, Food and Drink, and it captured a rougher, more unpolished side of Old Florida that later iterations of the pier restaurant would not quite replicate. By the early 1990s, the space had transitioned through concepts like the Anchorage Oyster Bar before Anna Maria Oyster Bar took over in the mid-1990s, serving up seafood, cold drinks, and a front row seat to Tampa Bay. That original pier location closed in 1999, and while Anna Maria Oyster Bar later returned to the island at a different pier on Bridge Street, it was never quite the same setup as the one so many longtime visitors remember. Locals rarely called it by name anyway. It was simply the pier, and grabbing a drink there needed no further explanation.
For years, one of the pier’s most touching features was its collection of over 1,000 engraved wooden planks, each one dedicated to a family member, a friend, a beloved pet, or someone the island community wanted to remember. The plank program took hold around the pier’s 100-year celebration in 2011, and when damage from past storms forced sections of the pier to be rebuilt, the fate of those planks became its own small piece of island history, with some returned to the families who dedicated them and others folded into an ongoing memorial project. It is a small detail, but it captures something true about how much this pier means to the people who have spent time on it.
Why It Still Matters
The pier remains one of the most visited spots on Anna Maria Island, and for good reason. It is one of the last places on the island where a visitor can feel exactly what it was like decades ago, before condos and crowds, when a wooden dock and a steamship were the only way to get here. Watching the sky change color over Tampa Bay from the pier, with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge lit up in the distance, is one of those experiences that has not changed in all the years I have been coming here, even as the pier itself has needed to be rebuilt around it.
Coastal Close
The Anna Maria City Pier has been knocked down by hurricanes more times than anyone would like to count, and every time, the island has built it right back. That says something about the place. Whether you come to fish, to eat, to listen to music, or just to sit on a bench and watch the bridge lights come on, you are taking part in something that has been happening here since 1911, and something that is not going anywhere anytime soon.
— izzy