Thursday, February 09, 2006
Five Flags Inn & Hurricane Ivan
who wonder if
Five Flags Inn
survived Hurricane Ivan
I would
say it did...
We've talked about our favorite place to stay in Pensacola, Florida. A little family owned motel on the beach where Baker makes warm coffee in the morning and you make new friends. We meet people who have been vacationing every year for the last twenty years or more.
Five Flags Inn took in evacuees and allowed pets for the duration of the last hurricane. And today we find people searching Mandarin for Five Flags Inn. They are wondering whether it survived Hurricane Ivan. We wondered too and found a photo in the Pensacola News Journal photo gallery. Today I called to see if there was a recording 
but the phone lines are still down in the area so you get only one ring, the same as when I call my sister's home. Then the call just stops. No recording. And so,
for those who wonder if Five Flags Inn survived Hurricane Ivan I would say it did. It's the blue structure in the foreground.
Lisa lost everything and asked for blankets for Christmas to keep little Alyssa warm. They sleep in a trailer together in a twin bed. She hadn't been through a hurricane, most hadn't. But she put all of the clothes and kids toys on top of the beds before they evacuated. The water came in higher than the beds and all was lost. Like a lot of people, they didn't have insurance... they abandoned the little home.
The Five Flags Inn web site is gone, but we still link. Maybe someday...in the meantime, the Pensacola Visitor's Center has some interesting Web Cam Pictures and a couple of live web cams.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Five Flags Inn Update
Five Flags Inn Update: January 2006
It is now January 2006, fifteen monhts after Hurricane Ivan. We found an update in the Pensacola News Journal. For many of us Five Flags Inn was the vacation spot to look forward to all year. People from all over the US and the world search to find out what happened to Five Flags Inn. People search for Baker and Mal. For a long time after Ivan the Five Flags Inn Web site stayed online, frozen in time.
Hotels that were operational before Ivan and are now being razed, or have been razed, include the Holiday Inn, Five Flags Inn, Beachside Resort and Conference Center, and Clarion Suites.
Holiday Inn replacement
One of the biggest questions in the Pensacola Beach hotel picture is what will replace the Holiday Inn.
Marilyn Hess, chairman of the board of American Fidelity, which owns the several hotels in the Pensacola area, including the Dunes...
Published - January, 1, 2006
Beach Hotels Returning
Pensacola News Journal
Carlton Proctor
The biggest question across the US and the world is what will happen with Five Flags Inn. People land here searching for the status, wanting an update, hoping that Baker will be back to make coffee for us in the morning. Baker, we miss you.
Five Flags Inn
Owner Baker Clark said he has not decided what to do with the property.
The Five Flags building has been razed, and the Gulf-front property is vacant.
"Right now we're still looking at rebuilding," Clark said. "But I don't know if it will be like it was."
Clark said the "economics" of rebuilding, and the fact the property is below, or seaward, of the coastal construction setback line established by the
Department of Environmental Regulation are hampering efforts to get construction under way."After Ivan when we were talking about rebuilding, construction costs were at $110 per square foot," said Clark. "Now we're talking about $250 per square foot."
Published - January, 1, 2006
Beach hotels returning
Pensacola News Journal
Carlton Proctor
Opacity for Pullquote
This is a good opportunity to show an example of Opacity for pullquotes. This is an easy copy and paste method where you only need to plug in one color. We used the color #033 but a named color works as well.
Copy and paste this in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
say it did...
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Nothing Too Fancy
In early May of 2004, Anton Caputo of the Pensacola News Journal wrote this about Five Flags Inn
You can't get a facial at Pensacola Beach's Five Flags Inn, and the decor is more motor inn than posh Mediterranean. Yet the little two-story motel made of concrete block thrives in a market dominated by multimillion-dollar luxury condominiums and flagship hotels. Going into what many business leaders believe will be the beach's busiest tourism season ever, there are lots of changes on the beach, and nearly...
Monday, February 09, 2004
How to Post an Image
Insert an Image in a Blog or Web Page
Want a square? Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.
That's colorsquare3.gif. It will look like this.
Friday, January 09, 2004
Not the blog
This is not the Mandarin Blog or the Mandarin Main page. It looks the same. This is a testing area where we have line breaks turned on for coding in Blogger.
Five Flags Inn
It's also a place to grieve the loss of Five Flags Inn. Hurricane Ivan cleaned the beaches and took Five Flags Inn with it. But the memories live on, and someday if they rebuild, we can have coffee in the morning and talk about the sunrise with Baker who always had the coffee ready 10 minutes early.
...if youbuild it we will come...
Thank you Baker and Mal for giving us a place that was affordable for our families, for never complaining about any guest, and for being who you are. I'm not sure you can imagine how much Five Flags Inn meant to so many of us. Then again, maybe that's why you did it the way you did. If you build it, we will come.Michelle Goodrich
West Sacramento, California
(native of Pensacola, Florida)
