Outdoor venues and beachfront properties shine for meetings and events in Florida, and for good reason. However, look a little closer and you’ll find many Sunshine State destinations have venues with stories to tell, going back years.
This is certainly true for the Clearwater, St. Pete and Tampa areas, where everything from restaurants and museums to turn-of-the-century buildings are waiting to impress attendees. Here are three you should check out first.
Clearwater
When Hurricane Helene slammed into the west coast of Florida in September, it was all hands on deck for the employees of Bob Heilman’s Beachcomber Restaurant on Clearwater Beach.
“I didn’t even call my staff; they just showed up,” said the owner, Sheri Heilman, who is proud that many of her employees have been with the restaurant for 20-30 years. It was this loyalty and dedication that enabled the restaurant to be the first to reopen on the beach, after some cleanup and new carpeting.
It was imperative to get the restaurant open as quickly as possible.
“We had to be up and running, ready to go and keep it positive,” Heilman said.
As a fixture in the Clearwater Beach community since its opening in 1948, the Beachcomber, according to Heilman, was “a much-needed beacon of hope.”
Through the years, celebrities (Julie Andrews, Harry Connick Jr., Evel Knievel) and titans of industry (Sara Blakely) brought glamour sightings, while sports figures (including the Philadelphia Phillies) were feted each year at the restaurant prior to spring training at BayCare Ballpark in Clearwater.
In fact, one of the Phillies coaching staff members, a former MVP himself, was discovered eating dinner at the bar one night and showing off his diamond-encrusted World Series ring to fellow guests. With his flight delayed the night before, he had missed the team’s party, jokingly lamenting that “no one saved him any crab legs.”
“We’ve had such a great relationship with The Phillies for so many years,” Heilman said. “They were here the night before Covid hit and spring training was canceled. I’ll never forget, it was Friday the 13th.”
Mindful of the ongoing pandemic, the restaurant added a patio so the team could eat outside the following year.
“They are such a part of our community with all they do philanthropically,” Heilman said.
Originally paneled with a dark wood bar, the restaurant welcomes guests with cozy leather banquettes, and in true Rat Pack form, a background piano player tickling the ivories.
The restaurant hosts all kinds of groups throughout the year for up to 120, and the newer side of the restaurant offers a sun-drenched room that overlooks the passing parade on Mandalay Ave.
Opened in 1994 by Sheri and her late husband Bob, The Bistro & Wine Bar’s recent addition is tucked right behind the restaurant. This intimate room accommodates up to 50 when utilizing the outdoor patio. Guests will be thrilled to discover the menu features several notable wines from their Oregon winery Foxy Rock Estate.
Heilman says service and good food are at the heart of everything they do.
“My father-in-law, Robert Heilman Sr., started this restaurant touting service and back-to-the-farm cuisine,” she said. “So, we use organic Bell & Evans chickens for our fried chicken, real cream and butter in our whipped potatoes, and an original recipe from my husband’s mother for her cream slaw and decadent hot fudge.” (A 1956 copy of the menu lists the same chicken dinner for $2.75!)
Robert, who passed away in 2021, is credited by his wife Sheri with conjuring up such popular dishes as French-fried eggplant, escargot and a secret bronzing spice to season local fish dishes.
“The black grouper is like nothing you’ve ever tasted,” Heilman insisted, adding, “and the baked Alaska is to die for!”
[Related: Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater Deliver Delightful Group Cultural Experiences]
Tampa
As you enter The Shop in the 1891 Oxford Exchange, you’ll feel like you’re in an ultra-chic, high-end department store from the turn of the century. Originally built in 1891, this multi-use space was reimagined as a modern mixed-use space. Located across the street from the Tampa Bay Hotel of Henry B. Plant fame, Oxford Exchange impresses guests with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, tables heaped with candles, exquisite note cards and other niceties, all for your perusal.
Since the 1920s, the Oxford Exchange building has hosted an ever-evolving arcade of shops and businesses until a period of dormancy that lasted several unfortunate decades.
However, following a painstaking refurbishment, with every attention to detail meticulously adhered to by brother-and-sister team Blake Casper and Allison Adams, the space came together, and their vision came to life, reopening its doors in 2021.
The century-old brickwork remains but is now revitalized. As you walk through the arched hallway, you can’t miss the light parquet floors that lead to a room with dark leather chairs and soft lighting—it’s like being transported into a sitting room from Downton Abbey. (Except those poor sods had to manage without a champagne bar!)
These premises now feature several event spaces across two floors, suitable for gatherings that vary in size. Receptions can be staged in the Shaw Library, the Atrium or the Conservatory. Combined, these spaces can host up to 200 seated guests and the Oxford Exchange provides a professional and efficient culinary team for in-house catering and bartending services.
As you ascend the grand staircase, you’ll notice the walls adorned with portraits of Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and other notables before you enter the antique-filled entrance to the Shaw Library, a thriving workspace by day, a subtle, stylish event space by night.
The Restaurant dishes up weekday breakfast and lunch, weekend brunch and afternoon tea to guests seated in an art-filled dining room amidst the tempting aromas of an open kitchen, or the sunlit Conservatory, complete with creeping vines and a retractable glass roof.
The Oxford Exchange is also known for its oh-so-posh Sunday Afternoon Tea, another option for groups sure to enchant.
[Related: Destinations International’s Annual Convention Draws Record Crowd in Tampa]
St. Petersburg
Originally founded in 1920 by Mary Wheeler Eaton, who established the St. Petersburg Historical Society, the St. Petersburg Museum of History first opened its doors in 1922.
Admittedly, the building has seen its share of upgrades though the years but remains renowned for its dazzling harbor views and the St. Pete Pier that looks out to the historic 1920s era Vinoy Hotel.
Private groups of up to 150 (banquet) and 200 (cocktails) are welcomed and staged in the Flight One Gallery, located beneath Benoit, the world’s first airliner to make a commercial flight. It was piloted by Antony (Tony) Habersack Jannus, who flew the inaugural flight of the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line on January 1, 1914, making it the first scheduled commercial airline flight in the world using heavier-than-air aircraft.
Another permanent exhibit sure to impress is Shader’s Little Cooperstown. With 5,000 baseballs, it is certified by Guinness World Records as the largest collection of its kind. The exhibit takes guests through the legendary stories and cherished artifacts of baseball legends like Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth, as well as the Women’s Professional Baseball and Negro Leagues.
Another collection worth a visit is the 26 Florida Highwaymen paintings by African American artists, who, in the ‘50s through the ‘70s, asserted their economic independence during and after segregation by painting Florida landscapes. It’s estimated that this group may have created a staggering 250,000 paintings. Once sold at the side of the road to visiting Florida tourists, these artworks now sell for thousands of dollars, coveted and prized by museums and private collectors alike.
[Related: Visit St. Pete/Clearwater Names New President & CEO]
Ferry Fun!
Groups that want to visit St. Pete and Tampa on the same day can skip hitting road traffic and take to the water instead.
The Cross Bay Ferry in the downtown Port of St. Pete is adjacent to the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg Campus and The Dali Museum (which just reopened for group events), and is a fun, convenient alternate mode of transport. The 149-passenger vessel takes passengers to Tampa Ferry Terminal, located on the waterside of the Tampa Convention Center, just west of the Sail Restaurant and Franklin Street, in a half hour.
The ferry operates a full-service bar, and passengers can bring their bikes on the ferry to hit the trails upon docking. Other points of interest upon docking include Tampa’s Historical Center, H. Plant Museum and the 1912 Tampa Union Station.
