FOLIO
“I guess I have built something.”
By Ambar Ramirez and Carmen Macri
It was a sunny afternoon when “Folio” arrived at the sky blue-painted hotel located on Atlantic Blvd. We had heard whispers of a man who runs an empire out of Jacksonville’s beaches, so we decided to meet with the man behind it all. Curtis DeWitt started from humble beginnings, but through dedication and immense love for the city he calls home, he has made it his mission to transform the beaches into a hospitable hotspot. Dewitt not only runs Beach Life Rentals from St. Augustine Beach to Atlantic, he now runs and operates the Jacksonville Beach Pier along with the newly renovated Salt Air Inn and Suites. So, you could say that Curtis DeWitts’ job is … beach. (The girls that get it, get it).
Maybe DeWitt was born with a hospitality gene (if that’s a thing) or maybe his father is to blame (or shall we say “thank”). Growing up, DeWitt recalls all the house parties his father used to throw at their home in Neptune Beach. With a big pool in the backyard and a grill, DeWitt’s dad would host a cookout almost every weekend, opening the doors to whoever wanted to be there. He was the type of person who wouldn’t leave a room without asking if anybody needed anything.
“My dad was very just giving. He liked to entertain and to host people,” DeWitt said. “So without knowing it, I was kind of raised in hospitality, and I grew up in a household that was just welcoming.”
Those cookouts inspired more than just hospitality for a young DeWitt. It, unknowingly, inspired the rise of Salt Air Inn. Of course, opening a hotel doesn’t happen overnight, and neither does the idea of opening one. After graduating high school and getting his fill of house parties, DeWitt attended the University of North Florida where he earned a degree in business management and marketing with a focus on entrepreneurship. DeWitt was just 21 years old when he introduced his first business, inebriated, which basically involved organizing beer pong tournaments at nightclubs. With inebriated, DeWitt got a taste of starting a business, but he quickly found out that investing in nightlife was not for him —s pecifically, the people who did business in nightlife.
“I wanted to do something that brought obviously financial stability for me but provided an experience for people that was enjoyable, and they only cared about the money,” DeWitt explained.
DeWitt then got his license to sell health insurance and annuities. He began a call center out of the UNF library, and even though they were able to get leads, DeWitt had to shut the business down.
“I don’t ever like to think anybody fails at anything. It should be looked at as a learning experience because you’re still here as long as you’re still on this side of the dirt,” DeWitt shared. “You should learn from something, not feel like you’re a failure.”
Which is exactly what DeWitt did. Leaving health insurance sales behind led Dewitt to get a job at One Ocean Resort as a docent aide. As a docent aide, DeWitt was in charge of being a host and offering the best service possible to the hotel’s guests. Not only did this position bring back DeWitt’s love for hospitality, but it is also what started Beach Life Rentals.
Back then, there were no reliable rental services available near the beaches. DeWitt grew frustrated with the lack of hospitality in the beach area and took matters into his own hands. Instead of waiting for the rental service, he would personally drive to the shop and load his Honda Civic with whatever he could fit.
“So I put it in my hands and I went to the GM [of One Ocean] and told them, ‘We’re going to start Beach Life Rentals,’” DeWitt recalled. “At the time, we were just going to rent bikes. So I built the system at One Ocean to rent bikes through the resort [and] that led to more people wanting it.”
Initially, he could only accommodate three bikes on the back of his car in one trip. So, if customers rented four bikes, he would make two trips to ensure they got what they needed. This continued until DeWitt realized the high demand for beach rentals was far more than his Civic could provide. As a result, DeWitt decided to purchase a truck, enabling him to transport a larger number of bikes in a single trip. Moreover, the added space in the truck allowed him to accommodate surfboards, paddleboards, and other beach essentials with ease.
“Like, it’s not about the money at that point because they’re happy. They’re going to tell all of their friends. Everybody’s going to keep calling us because we will help them,” DeWitt explained. “And that’s the biggest thing you know, why make it an inconvenience for them? Our job is to make it convenient for people to come to the beach and enjoy our beautiful city.”
Because of DeWitt’s ingrained hospitality and dedication to offering great service, Beach Life Rentals grew so much that it led to DeWitt getting contracts with Margaritaville, Best Western Springhill Suites and Casa Marina. So essentially, wherever you are at the beach, Beach Life Rentals is there.
Even though DeWitt boasts that his work doesn’t feel like a job since he does what he loves, everyone deserves a break every now and then. And when DeWitt went to a wedding and ran into his uncle who encouraged DeWitt to invest in something tangible, he didn’t know that simple advice was about to change his life. DeWitt returned home from the wedding with the idea that he was going to buy a house. He hit up his longtime friend and soon-to-be business partner, Kyle Stucki, who suggested looking into a huge property in Palm Valley. But Stuki had it in his mind that they could turn the property in Palm Valley into a business, which led to a whole bunch of restrictions. Still, DeWitt wasn’t gonna pass up an opportunity to start a business with his best friend.
“Then I was like, ‘Why don’t we just look at the Salt Air Motel. This old 13-unit hotel that has been for sale a couple of times on and off, and they never sold,” DeWitt said. “So we start running the numbers.”
DeWitt called the original owner of Salt Air Motel who revealed that the motel was not technically for sale, but they would be willing to sell it for the right price. It took DeWitt and Stuki 13 months and being shut down by 20+ banks to come up with enough money to buy it. But buying the motel was just the first step in a long, long journey.
“How are we going to take a 1946 built hotel where codes are completely different and turn it into a hotel in 2022? Like, how do we find all these ways without breaking rules?” DeWitt said. “So, instead of being like, ‘Why can’t I do that?’ I go, ‘What can I do?’ That’s how you get answers.”
It took three years to completely rebuild and renovate the inn. But when they started in 2019, they thought it would only take a few months. Not only did Covid mess up the process, they realized they would need to deconstruct the Inn down to its bare bones and build from the ground up – which worked in DeWitt and Stuki’s favor in the end.
“The end product is so much better than we originally thought it could ever be,” DeWitt shared. “It’s almost like every time they put a hurdle up for us, it would give us another opportunity to make things better because we’d have to think about why we’re not allowed to do what we really wanted to do, work around it and figure out our plans.”
The Salt Air Inn you see today looks nothing like the one built 77 years ago. The parking lot that originally was situated in front of the motel was relocated to the back, leaving enough room for a pool to be placed smack dab in the middle. With the hotel now being fully blocked off from Atlantic Blvd, gives guests a more private home-away-from-home experience. Not only do guests have the option of choosing between a standard king or a double king room, (something no other hotel in the area offers) but inn guests are granted unrestricted access to an array of Beach Life Rentals complimentary amenities, including bikes, surfboards and paddleboards.
“At the end of the day, I genuinely find joy in helping somebody. While I might be at the bottom of the people that get to eat that day, it’s like I put myself first. I want those people to get what they need because that’s what makes me happy,” DeWitt shared.
But it doesn’t end there. When the pier reopened last July, DeWitt saw another opportunity that he was not gonna pass up because when opportunity comes knocking at your door, you answer it.
“I sat at the computer, and I submitted this proposal. I had the support of pretty much everybody that I had spoken to. They said ‘you are probably the best candidate, but we still have to see the proposals’,” DeWitt recalled. He was sitting in the Zoom meeting when they announced that they were going to award it to Beach Life Rentals.”
Slowly but surely, the new Jacksonville Pier is becoming the Beaches new hub. Since being granted jurisdiction of the pier, DeWitt has begun transforming the once-barren wooden walkway into a beach lovers’ paradise. Picnic tables and umbrellas were the first on the agenda. Next was to make the pier an entertainment destination, hosting silent discos on the last Saturday of every month.
And while we are all thinking the same thing, no, he won’t.
“No. I will not be mayor,” DeWitt concluded.
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