The Magic Beach Motel, located just minutes from the water in Vilano Beach, has been featured in several TV shows since it opened the better part of a century ago. | Noah Hertz, Jacksonville Today
Published on June 30, 2025 at 4:43 pm
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Plans to demolish an iconic 75-year-old motel building in Vilano Beach are off the table for now, but that could change in the next 30 days.
Developer Rick Johnston’s plan to demolish the Magic Beach Motel in favor of condos and businesses hit a snag when St. Johns County’s Cultural Resource Review Board determined that his plan did not properly acknowledge the building’s local cultural significance.
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Although the building is currently operating as a motel, Johnston and the building’s current owner and operator, Tejal Patel, say it is losing money and not worth renovating.
Leslee Keys, chair of the Cultural Resource Review Board, wasn’t sold on the developer’s proposal. She was more worried about the current owner letting the building become dilapidated despite his responsibility as a property owner to ensure it remains in good working order.
The Magic Beach Motel isn’t recognized as a cultural landmark by the State of Florida, but St. Johns County recognized its cultural significance in 2021. As such, any proposals to tear it down and replace it with something else must be approved by the Cultural Resource Review Board.
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Ultimately, the four members of the board who were present — Keys, Blair Knighting, Christine Newman and Nick Jonihakis — voted unanimously to deny Johnston’s application.
Jacksonville Today approached Johnston and Patel after the hearing for their reactions, but the developer and motel proprietor declined to comment.
Members of the community who attended the meeting to oppose Johnston’s plan were pleased with the board’s decision.
Among them was Sallie O’Hara, a local historic preservation advocate and founding member of the Florida Downtown Association, an organization that seeks to drive more state funding to Florida’s small-town communities.
O’Hara celebrated the decision because she doesn’t believe Johnston involved the community in his plans to tear down a building she and other members of the community love.
“I’m a great supporter of property rights, but there’s a marriage between a community and property rights, and a quality of life we’re talking about,” O’Hara told Jacksonville Today. “In Vilano Beach, it will be diminished if that thing is bulldozed. There’s no concrete plans that he has presented to replace that structure in a coherent fashion.”
Johnston had proposed incorporating elements and homages of the Magic Beach Motel into the building he wanted to build to replace it, but the board ruled that wasn’t enough.
The board’s decision on the Vilano Beach motel ends the latest attempt to demolish the building unless Johnston appeals it to the Board of County Commissioners.
If the developer chooses to appeal the decision in the next 30 days, it will come before the St. Johns County Commission, which will have the final word on maintaining the denial or overruling it.
