What’s your Pier Sixty-Six memory?
Megan Lagasse, who runs the marina at the landmark Fort Lauderdale resort, says she asks everybody who pulls into a dock slip the question all the time.
“It’s amazing, people coming from all over, people have a story, whether it happened at the marina or at the top of the hotel,” she says in our story this issue. She even has childhood memories of the property of her own.
“I used to be the kid fishing off the docks. They had the best pools and the best pool bar,” she says. She’d search for bananas among the trees and catch needlefish. She was 7 years old, and she had no idea that her playground would someday become her life.
Part of my life, too.
Thirty-one years ago, I got a chance to do a writing rotation with the staff of Sunshine, the Sun Sentinel’s Sunday magazine. I was happy working on the features desk – editing the chess column and the horoscopes, among other duties – but I really wanted to write. Always had. One of the reasons I’ve been with the Sun Sentinel so long (going on 34 years) is because the company has always given me a chance to try new things. So I applied for the writing rotation, got in and left the features desk for a three-month stint with the late great editor, John Parkyn.
The first story I pitched him was on the Pier Sixty-Six, now undergoing a billion-dollar renovation. Mr. Parkyn gave me an extravagance of time to write it, compared to normal newspaper deadlines. As I recall, I was on it – reporting and writing – for almost a week. During that time, the newspaper paid for me to stay a night in the Liza Minnelli suite at the hotel – so I could spend 24 hours straight working on the story.
I met seemingly everybody who worked there, from the basement laundries to the rooftop restaurant that revolved every 66 minutes. I looked for details, telling quotes, sat down to write – and the story you see here wound up on the cover of the holiday issue of the magazine. Mr. Parkyn wanted a story that might resonate with readers who had guests coming into town looking for rooms. That the hotel’s distinctive crown was decked with a massive Christmas tree decoration helped sell the story for the cover.
It was my first cover and still one of my favorite stories, populated by a cast of incredible characters. The pool man who wouldn’t let anyone near his pool until he’d vacuumed every little bit of green stuff off the bottom. The chef in a starched tunic scrambling to come up with a menu to commemorate the 187th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar (he settled on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.) The maids who were so happy to reunite a newlywed bride with the negligee she’d left behind in her and her groom’s room, only to be horrified to discover … it wasn’t hers.
Bellhops. Lounge singers. Wait staff. All with all sorts of juicy hotel-insider info.
“Everyone wants to know who the fire-red Ferrari belongs to outside the front door under the mural of palms and pink flamingos. ‘He’s staying on a boat in the marina,’ valet Dan Brown said. ‘He slipped us $20 when he came in, so he can leave it there as long as he likes.
“A line of fast or expensive cars parked outside give the hotel a certain marquee value, the valet said. Everybody wants to stay where the high rollers stay.
“‘…Then again,’ Brown said, ‘We’d put a VW wagon out there, if they tipped well.’”
Tavistock Group / Pier 66/Courtesy
As part of the redevelopment of the Pier Sixty-Six resort, a family pool would stretch behind the iconic Pier 66 tower and a new 10-story hotel addition.So much of South Florida is here today, gone tomorrow. I think back on all the places, now gone, I used to think would last forever. Tugboat Annie’s on the Dania Cutoff Canal. The Kapok Tree in Davie. The Sportatorium in Pembroke Pines. Searstown in Fort Lauderdale. So many more.
What a holiday gift to be getting the Pier Sixty-Six under our tree again soon. All dressed up, and ready for more.
