With a $400,000 Loss in 5 Years, Flagler Beach Pier’s Bait Shop Will Close Permanently as a City Business

No more rentals of its 25 fishing poles, no more snacks, drinks hot coffee, or backdrops for whimsical selfies for the folks back in Hoople, N.D. The bait shop that for decades burnished the Flagler Beach pier’s quaintness and served as gatekeeper to pier fishers and visitors, will close permanently as a city-run business on June 1.

The city may consider leasing the small space to a private company, whether as a shop or as a different kind of business, but it won’t decide that until May, and the likelihood that a business would occupy the space in the next two years, with the demolition of the pier ahead, is remote.




“Sometimes hard decisions have to be made. I know that when discussion of either closing the bait shop temporarily or permanently until the new pier is in place comes with heartburn for some,” Commissioner Scott Spradley said. “These numbers that we’re looking at offer a stark contrast in how much traffic there is over there.” So far this year, he pointed out, the bait shop has generated just $7,700 in revenue, compared to $143,000 last year.

Downtown Flagler Beach isn’t without a bait shop: Big Al’s at 323 North 2nd Street is still an option.

The commission asked the administration to conduct a cost-benefit analysis. The result was not good. The analysis took in the last four and a half years of bait shop revenue and expenses. “The Bait Shop really has not turned a profit,” City Manager Mike Abels said.

The numbers are stark, with losses in each of the past five years analyzed: $83,000 in 2019, $124,300 in 2020, $76,000 in 2021, $87,500 in 2022, and $24,000 so far this year. Obviously, the closure of the pier in 2022 after it was damaged in that autumn’s storms affected those numbers. Covid affected them before that. Closing the pier meant lost revenue from admissions to the pier. Still, all that money had to be made up with subsidies from the general fund.

“When we set up an enterprise fund, like the pier, like any other enterprise fund, it has to be self sustaining,” Commissioner Jane Mealy said. “We can’t keep moving money from the general fund into that.”




The enterprise fund is not the bait shop alone, but the entire pier, including pier rentals, which generated close to $120,000 in normal years. But without a pire, there’s nothing to rent. And while the bait shop and the pier together generated close to $400,000 in 2019-20, total expenses that year still added up to $570,000, leaving a deficit of $171,000 that had to be made up through the general fund. There’s been deficits every year since. Insurance costs alone–almost twice as much as salaries–was $216,000 in 2020-21. Salaries were around $121,000. (See a breakdown of the last five years’ figures for the whole enterprise fund here.)

“What is going to occur now that the pier is closed is the drain on resources that will be at the bait shop is going to get increasingly worse,” Abels said. “Remember that the pier is going to be closed at least–the estimate today is through 2025,” since the pier is to be demolished and a new one will be built in its place.

That’s going to increase deficits at the bait shop, which won’t capable of fulfilling its mission: to support pier fishermen, visitors and pier rentals.

“The best alternative is to close the bait shop,” Abels said. One full-time employee and five part-time employees will lose their job. The city manager is recommending that if a position is available, the city would offer the full-timer another position. (An offer has already been made to the full-timer.) The part-timers can’t be offered jobs because there aren’t part-time positions available.




The city manager gave the commission the option of issuing a request for proposals either now or when the new pier gets ready to open to find out of there’s interest in the private sector to run the bait shop. But it would no longer be a city operation. It would generate revenue through rent and other fees, “with whatever private sector business being the gatekeeper for the pier when the pier reopens,” Abels said.

That proposal drew mixed reactions. Commissioner Rick Belhumeur is reluctant to see the space given over to a business that would change its character. Commissioner James Sherman is “on the fence” about it. The remaining commissioners and the mayor see no harm in at one point or another issuing an RFP, defining its parameters to the city’s desires, and seeing whether there’s any interest. The lease could also be strictly term-limited. But the more restrictions, the lesser the chance of drawing an interested business. Commission Chairman Eric Cooley floated the idea of leasing the space to the county’s tourism bureau.

There’d been some vague social media or email criticism that the shuttering of the bait shop was Cooley’s idea. A resident wrote officials that the bait shop should be subsidized the same way that the library is. “I’ll take responsibility for this,” Sherman said, seeking to tamp down the rumor. “I brought this up,” he said, “The facts are the facts and the numbers are the numbers.”




Cooley said the commission as a body agreed to look at the issue. He said there was no comparing the pier to, say, the city library, which the city attorney described as “a pure public service.” The pier’s bait shop was set up as a business that would be at least self-sustaining. The public library is not set up as a business, but as a public service. Cooley said the environment would be “volatile” during the coming construction. He favored opening up the space to an RFP once the built is built, though the commission would have to decide what sort of pier it wants first.

Keeping the shop closed won’t spare the city from having to pay its enormous insurance bills, though those bills were generated by the entire pier, not just the bait shop.

The commission’s vote to close the bait shop was unanimous. It will discuss the future of the space at a May 3 workshop.

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