A Jacksonville-area developer wants to demolish an iconic motel in Vilano Beach, but he hit a snag Monday night during a meeting with St. Johns County’s Cultural Resource Review Board.

While the 74-year-old motel does not appear on the National Register of Historic Places, it has been acknowledged as culturally significant at the local level. The motel is home to several murals and has appeared in TV shows including Safe Harbor and the Netflix adaptation of sci-fi author Liu Cixin’s novel The Three-Body Problem.

Rick Johnston plans to build town-homes on the property adjacent to the Magic Beach Motel, and he wants to tear down the motel to build two 10-unit residential buildings that would have space for ground-floor commercial uses.

He told the county’s Cultural Resource Review Board that residential units would be better for the community than a motel where people just come and go.

Architect Mike Koppenhafer said that while he recognizes people’s nostalgia for the Vilano Beach of decades past, and that the building “has some charming elements,” the building is ultimately not worth saving.

Not only is it not a truly historic building, Johnston argued, but it is wholly incompatible with what he would like to develop on the property.

“The building is not salvageable,” Johnston said during the board meeting. “It’s not salvageable for our use.”

The motel’s future

To bring down the building, Johnston and his team have to go through the Cultural Resource Review Board — and board Chair Leslee Keys wasn’t impressed by Johnston’s proposal.

The building currently operates as a motel, but Johnston and his team argued that the existing structure is prone to flooding and structurally unable to facilitate the changes it would need to be brought up to modern standards.

Tejal Patel is one of the building’s current owners. He was involved in purchasing the building in 2022, but he claims that “the infrastructure isn’t what we thought it would be” when they purchased it.

“It will eventually become unusable,” Patel told Jacksonville Today. “We’re keeping it going by spending quite a bit of funding every year.”

Some members of the community support Johnston’s plans to put something new on the property, including the current heads of Vilano Beach Main Street, the organization that promotes local business and preservation of the area.

Others, like local historic preservation mover and shaker Sallie O’Hara, believe Vilano Beach is “a gem in the making,” but only if people work to maintain the area’s local landmarks.

While the final project would not resemble the original Magic Beach Motel, Johnston and architect Koppenhafer did propose plans to incorporate elements, like the pink flamingos on the building’s facade, in the final product.

By the end of the Monday afternoon meeting, the Cultural Resource Review Board was not swayed.

Chair Keys and Johnston exchanged barbs during the meeting.

Keys said Johnston hadn’t done his homework, while Johnston said Keys came into the meeting biased against him.

According to the board, because Johnston demonstrated that he had not fully investigated a plan for the property that did not include destroying the Magic Beach Motel, Johnston and his team must come back to the board with a new plan later this year.

The Cultural Resource Review Board unanimously agreed to defer Johnston’s application to a later date. The Magic Beach Motel demolition proposal is expected to come back before the board in June.