Homeowners buy Useppa Island in $16M deal, plan $35M rebuild

As Simon Bound talked about the new ownership group of Useppa Island, the new CEO appeared, almost out of nowhere. Steven Mezynieski climbed out of an excavator he had been operating, working to restore the island’s main pier.

“This was a complicated transaction,” Bound said as Mezynieski joined him. “We needed to dismiss a class action lawsuit. We needed to negotiate a price.”

Useppa Island Partners paid $16 million on Sept. 23 for Useppa Island, which includes the seven-room, historic Collier Inn and five-room Gasparilla Cottage. The former site of the Tarpon Bar in front of the marina will soon be converted, for the next couple of years at least, into a beachfront area.

“We’re bringing in 2,000 cubic yards of sand,” Mezynieski said of the temporary beach. “It needs to be phased.”

Eventually, the beach area will be redeveloped into a modern and hurricane-resilient restaurant and bar.

On the western end of the island, the Collier Inn has been shut down and is being rebuilt, wood panel by wood panel and concrete block by concrete block.

Useppa Island, located on the northern end of Pine Island Sound, has about 110 homeowners and about 600 members of the Useppa Island Club and Marina. Only about a half dozen homeowners live there year-round. Peak season for part-time residents happens between New Year’s Day and Easter Sunday.

Barron Collier bought the island in 1911, establishing the Collier Inn.

The island, which is about a mile long and half a mile wide, has other historical significance. The CIA used the island to train for the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Native American artifacts have been found there dating back 6,000 years.

The late Gar Beckstead paid $2.2 million for the island in 1976. He later transferred ownership to a trust company. He died in 2021 at age 82.

Since then, Useppa Island has endured three hurricanes. A group of residents filed suit against the trust company, claiming mismanagement of the island.

As part of the sale, the class action lawsuit was dropped.

The new ownership group consists of 10 longtime homeowners. They bring their own set of experiences that will contribute to the island’s future, said Bound, who for 25 years worked in finance at Morgan Stanley.

“There’s all sorts of experiences that make this work,” Bound said.

Mezynieski has a background in farming and large-scale snow removal, two things that won’t tie into Useppa Island. However, his company also does excavation services, site development, drainage, septic installations, golf course construction, land clearing, dune restoration and road construction throughout the Hamptons and North Fork, New York.

Mezynieski also recently restored a 24,000-square-foot potato barn off County Road 39 in Tuckahoe, New York. He is managing reconstruction efforts instead of hiring a lead contractor, which he said would save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“This is going to be a major rebuild of the entire island,” Mezynieski said. “We’re looking to invest about $35 million into the infrastructure out here and bringing this island to the next level.”

Co-owner Joe Salas has a background in developing internet technology for the hotel industry for his company, Innovative Systems Group. He and his wife Rowena Salas own Hotel Baker, a 53-room, riverfront boutique hotel in St. Charles, Illinois, about 35 miles west of Chicago.

“I think we’re going to build something really special here,” Salas said of Useppa Island’s revival. “It’s going to be world class. Who would think 30 years ago that we’d be running the island?”

In addition to the Collier Inn and the island’s infrastructure, the business model needed to be repaired, Bound said.

Because it’s a private island, taxpayer dollars aren’t in play whenever trouble arises. But there wasn’t enough incoming revenue from island dues to cover everything. That had to change, Bound said.

“Two hundred dollars a month was way too low,” Bound said of the island’s homeowner’s association fees. The monthly fees rose from $222 to $444. Homeowner assessment fees also doubled, from $800 to $1,600.

“That’s how the business model made sense,” Bound said. “The island is going to be worth more than money. The business is going to be a profitable business.”

The new foundation for Useppa Island’s future is being laid, both figuratively with the purchase and literally at the Collier Inn, where Mezynieski brought in a concrete crew. They can pour and build the concrete blocks right there at the site instead of boating the blocks and carrying them there.

“This is a new foundation,” Mezynieski said of the concrete blocks that will be tied into the wood frame portions above. “This wasn’t here three days ago. The footprint of the building, it’s not changing at all.”

Mezynieski first saw the island with his family about 12 years ago while dining on nearby Cabbage Key.

Salas has been a part-time resident for three decades.

Bound’s father-in-law had owned a Useppa Island home since the 1980s.

“We’ve been visiting for many years,” Bound said. “Bought a house here 12 years ago. We love the calm. We love the Old Florida feel.”

The goal is to restore the Collier Inn by early 2026.

“We will keep all the charm that comes with the historic buildings but hopefully not the historic building troubles,” Bound said. “The history is part of the island. Doing away with that would be a disservice and would be counterproductive. We’re going to be putting a fair amount of money into it right out of the gate.”