By Ned Steele

Sanderling Club, the gated beachfront community whose landmark cabanas were wiped away by Hurricane Helene with its adjoining clubhouse heavily damaged, is starting to see brighter days ahead.

While individual homeowners proceed with their own rebuilds and repairs, the community is preparing to move forward on a restoration of the two-story clubhouse, which was completely flooded.

“It will soon be the focus of our community again,” said local architect Max Strang, who is working on the project.

Concept drawings provided to Siesta Sand show what the restored clubhouse, designed to complement the now-vanished cabanas, might look like.

Decisions about whether – or how – to replace the historic cabanas, designed by famed Sarasota School of Architecture figure Paul Rudolph in 1952, are still off in the future, with discussions in preliminary stages.

But the clubhouse, with its meeting and event space, kitchen and bathrooms, remains structurally sound, and will be rebuilt in some fashion, according to Strang and Sanderling Club’s president. Unlike the cabanas, it was not designed by Rudolph and is not on the registry of historic buildings.

“We are in the process of restoring it back to a usable manner,” Strang, a resident and former Sanderling board member, said. “It is still a delightful, beachy place to be.”

While the clubhouse previously was air-conditioned, Sanderling’s current thinking is to convert it into an open-air pavilion. “A little shade and breeze go a long way,” Strang said. “We’re not trying to do anything crazy or beyond what is there.”

Sanderling will work with county officials on permitting and with historic consultants to come up with final plans that hit the correct balance between historic preservation and rebuilding to modern code for resiliency and protection in future storms. Work could start in the late spring or early summer, Strang indicated.

Sanderling Club president John Amato said in an interview, “The community is excited about moving forward and having the clubhouse back. The community is upbeat. There’s a sense of satisfaction, of people pulling together.”

Phase one of the clubhouse rebuild, Amato said, will be to restore the previously air-conditioned first floor kitchenette, bathroom and meeting space, bringing the facility back to “where it can be a gathering place again.”

It will be “basic and simple,” he said.

Plans are uncertain for the clubhouse’s second floor, which formerly held individual cabanas. Amato said a community cabana was one option up for discussion.

Amato also envisions, for the surrounding area, shade structures, Adirondack chairs, fire pits, possibly a kayak launch and other amenities.

As to the site of the 25 destroyed cabanas, Amato said: “We’ll figure out what we want there.”

The cabanas, Strang said, are “a topic for 2026,” adding that “we want to be smart about it” so that any possible rebuild will be resilient to future storm damage. One option, he suggested, might be to have an architectural competition to develop new ideas.

Architecture Sarasota president Morris “Marty” Hylton, whose organization has been advising Sanderling and other Siesta Key homeowners on rebuilding issues, said of rebuilding the cabanas: “It’s too soon to make any decision. Can they? Yes. Should they is a whole other question,” he said, because of the spot’s exposure to future hurricanes.

They shouldn’t be constructed as they were on the same spot because the same thing would happen again, so they would have to be moved inland – which, as he noted, would defeat the purpose of having beach cabanas.

Meanwhile, since the storms, Strang said, the community has gotten its marina, tennis courts and pickleball courts back in action, and the water quality in adjoining Heron Lagoon has improved.

“It’s definitely going to be a new era for Sanderling,” Strang said.

The Sanderling Club community has about 105 homes, several of which were destroyed by Helene and Milton. Former Sanderling president Brian Hudson, who still lives in the community and whose house survived, estimated that about ten homes had to be demolished.

Photos: submitted by Max Strang, Architect

Caption: Conceptual renderings show the Sanderling beachfront clubhouse, adjacent to where 25 landmark beach cabanas were wiped away by Helene, reimagined as an airy, open space with amenities.