Shalimar Beach Resort reopens three years after Hurricane Ian

Shalimar Beach Resort will reopen Sept. 28, exactly three years after Hurricane Ian destroyed it. The Sanibel Island property at 2823 West Gulf Drive will welcome guests back to its 33 rebuilt rooms, designed to meet stricter hurricane codes and featuring a new look that replaces the wood-frame structures washed away by the storm surge. 

This is the first new hotel to open on Sanibel since 1984, when West Wind, also destroyed by Hurricane Ian, debuted. 

“We made it,” south Fort Myers resident Sean Niesel said. He owns the resort now, after his grandparents had bought the structures that dated back to 1959. 

“We hope, we pray we don’t get another Hurricane Ian,” Niesel said. “But if we were to, this place can survive a Hurricane Ian, and we’d just being doing landscape and cleanup.” 

Since Hurricane Ian, about 84.5% of Lee County hotel rooms have reopened. On Sanibel, the recovery rate is lower at 56.4%, with only Fort Myers Beach faring worse at 50%. 

With the opening of Shalimar, that percentage will tick upward, from 56.4% to 58.4%, as the number of available rooms rises from 917 to 950 out of 1,626 total. 

In the days after the storm, in October 2022, Niesel began making decisions that reverberated to the soft launch, with 23 of the 33 rooms booked for opening night. There are 21 hotel rooms, 10 one-bedroom villas and two, two-bedroom villas spread across seven buildings. They comprise a little more than 52,000 square feet. Each room comes equipped with a kitchenette, with a full-size microwave, refrigerator and stove. 

Resort General Manager Romas Vaickus, who immigrated in 1996 to the U.S. from his native Lithuania, with his wife and daughter, then 7, approached Niesel after the hurricane. Vaickus said he expected to be told to find another job. He had worked there since July 4, 1997, and did not expect to be retained, not with the resort lying in ruins. 

But Niesel not only promised to keep him as the on-site, resident general manager, but to pay him in the interim. 

“I agreed to stay with Sean and help him to rebuild,” Vaickus said. 

During the immediate days after Ian, the Sanibel government relocated to a hotel at Bell Tower in Fort Myers. That’s where Niesel met with and agreed to hire architect Joyce Owens. 

From there, the team grew. 

When Niesel saw his $15 million construction budget climb by $1.4 million, he brought in Stevens Construction to trim costs and finish the project within 18 months and under budget. 

Studio AJO, Owens’ interior design company, and R.S. Landscaping also worked on Shalimar. 

Dan Adams, executive vice president of Stevens Construction, noted there were many firsts in this project. 

“It’s our first resort,” Adams said of his company building one, with more projects under way. “It’s the first to meet Sanibel Island Resort Housing Development District Standards. 

“Our biggest challenge was tourist season. Getting materials and manpower out to the island during season was our biggest challenge.” 

The construction crews usually could get there early enough to beat the traffic rush, but getting off the island proved problematic. 

“From 3 (p.m.) to 6 (p.m.), you’re just sitting in traffic,” Adams said. 

Adams credited Construction Superintendent Tom Porter with staying the course, especially while dealing with damage to his own home from the storm. 

“He really poured his heart and soul into this project,” Adams said, noting it had 559 concrete pilings, about 3,000 cubic yards of concrete and about 69,000 concrete blocks. There were 35 subcontracting companies that worked on Shalimar. 

“It’s a surreal day for us, but also a really humbling one,” Niesel said to about 50 elected and government officials, guests and friends from Sanibel and beyond.