Feature Story ... Palm Pavilion, Serving Sunsets Since
1926
 The
Hamilton’s Clearwater Beach Legacy
By Carol Cortright
Some people get to go to the beach every day.
For the Hamilton family of Clearwater, two generations
have been doing just that while running the venerable
Palm Pavilion, a beachside restaurant and inn, for the
last four and a half decades.
“I was 9 years old when Dad bought the Palm Pavilion,”
remembers company president Ken Hamilton, whose family
establishment sits perched on the edge of Clearwater
Beach’s shimmering white sand. “I can say I’ve been
selling Coca Colas to girls in bikinis since I was 12,”
he adds with a smile.
In 1926, Jesse Smith and his business partners started
the Palm Pavilion as a concession stand, back when the
beach was little more than wide open spaces dotted with
just a few tourist establishments. Ken Hamilton believes
the Palm Pavilion holds one of the state’s oldest liquor
licenses, granted shortly after the repeal of
Prohibition.
Patriarch and engineer Howard Hamilton, a Georgia Tech
alum, worked for General Electric in Pinellas County,
but he’d had his eye on the Palm Pavilion for awhile.
Howard approached Jesse Smith about buying it and took
over on April 1, 1964. While raising four sons, Howard
and his wife Jean ran the Palm for three decades before
retiring and handing the reins to sons Ken and Wade.
The two brothers take care of the day-to-day enterprise
under the watchful eye of their father. “We have
breakfast with Dad and keep him in the loop,” Ken says.
“He still likes to give advice from time to time.” Ken
works with the managers of the hotel and restaurant and
handles the business and financial side of Palm
Pavilion. Wade handles operations and maintenance at the
Palm venues as well as the family’s other investment
properties. He’s the problem solver, making the calls
and getting things fixed—which in a building as old as
the Palm, with some of its original wooden latticework
still visible, can be often. Both brothers sit down with
management teams and make sure everything stays on
track, making adjustments here or there as needed.
 Ken didn’t plan to join the family business. While
attending the University of South Florida, he’d attend
classes in the morning and then head over to the beach
to work at the Palm, but after graduation, he moved away
to try something different. “The last thing I wanted to
do was work seven days a week as a career—I did that
when I was a kid and I saw how it wore out my parents,”
he said. But he acknowledges that his parents prepared
him for success in virtually any line of work by
teaching him the importance of customer service at an
early age.
So Ken worked for Hormel, selling pork loins and
pepperoni in Philadelphia during the mid- to late-1970s.
He honed his skills, learning valuable advice from his
former father-in-law, calling him “a consummate salesman
and a great guy to talk to.” But after a few years, his
dad asked him to come back home and help run the South
Beach Pavilion, a concession and umbrella rental stand
on the southern end of Clearwater Beach.
Howard and Jean also had been branching out in the
restaurant business. In 1980, they took a “rough and
tumble dive bar” and turned it into a fine dining
establishment called the Gazebo, a white tablecloth kind
of place on par with Heilman’s classic Beachcomber. They
sold the Gazebo in 1985 and the property changed hands a
few times before becoming Frenchy’s Rockaway Grill.
The Hamiltons bought the adjacent 1950s-era Sea View
Hotel in December 1988; it opened as the art
deco-inspired Palm Pavilion Inn in May 1989. The Inn
retains the charm and accessibility of the “Mom and Pop”
accommodations that have been rapidly fading from the
beach scene in recent years. It was recognized in a
summer 2007 issue of the Tampa Tribune’s Travel section
as one of Florida’s best beach getaways that won’t break
the wallet.
 The dynamics of the beach are changing a lot, Ken
confirms. It’s on the way to a whole different feel
about what customers expect when they travel. The new
resort hotels that are coming up offer a higher end
product. “Today’s customers are not the same as the
customers in the 1960s. People travel differently now.
Businesses like ours will have to adjust to what the
market calls for,” he says.
Taking a cue from successful neighbors like Frenchy’s,
the Palm started making those adjustments in 1996—adding
the bar and live entertainment—they could no longer
afford to run the kind of place where someone could get
a hotdog, fries and a drink for two bucks. “It was a
challenge for Dad when we started to change things, but
the Palm wasn’t generating the revenue we needed to
grow,” Ken says. “There was a lot of angst transitioning
from him to us—he did this for thirty years, so it was
hard. Look at our location, though—the wind and flood
insurance, property taxes, liability insurance…we had to
look at different things we could do to increase revenue
while still remaining the family place on the beach.”
One of the rewards of running a long-standing
institution like the Palm, he says, has been watching
generations of travelers grow up and return with their
kids and grandkids in tow. Ken describes the allure of
this 81-year old tourist destination: “We’ve had guests
from age 100 to newborns in the same family that have
been coming here for decades. It brings back a lot of
good memories for people and they want to share the
experience.”
Another pleasure has been watching the Palm’s staff grow
and change. “We love to help the young people take on
new challenges and move on to other things. We’ve seen
them become doctors, attorneys, accountants, and
business owners after leaving the Palm,” Ken recalls.
“One of the most effective ways you can run your
business is to hire great people,” he advises, “and
allow them to do their work—give them space. But at the
same time, you have to be able to let them fail—nothing
catastrophic, of course—but let them make a decision
once in a while that you know is not going to work,
because learning something like that firsthand will have
a greater impact. We also do our best to take care of
our employees,” he says, mentioning the health insurance
that is available to all staff, plus paid vacation,
bonuses and reasonable business hours. “We want to
create an environment that helps our staff take care of
their families.”
The Hamiltons are dedicated to maintaining a comfort
level for all guests that meets the expectations of both
out-of-town visitors and locals. “We’re not a raucous
beach bar that’s open late at night, but at the same
time, we’ve built a quality product that allows the best
of both worlds,” Ken explains. “We have great food and
entertainment and we’re right on the beach. We know it’s
important to our customer base that we present a
relatively wholesome environment.”
 They’ve been plenty successful so far, recently
attracting the attention of the luxury lifestyle guide,
the duPont REGISTRY Tampa Bay, which named it Best
Beachfront Restaurant in its July/August 2007 Best of
Tampa Bay issue.
Word of mouth is still the best marketing strategy by
far for promoting businesses like the Palm Pavilion,
along with traditional ad buys in newspapers and
magazines. “The greatest thing is for someone to go back
to their office or church, or talk to their friends
about the rockin’ band they heard at the Palm, or the
beautiful sunsets and delicious food,” he says.
But there is a new method out there that he readily
acknowledges. “(Marketing) is completely different now
than it was 10 or 12 years ago,” he says. “The Internet
has changed everything. Your web site has to be included
on everything now—and branding is important too. I have
to say—it was a lot of fun developing the Palm Pavilion
brand and logo.” It delights Ken to no end to see folks
wearing sweatshirts with the Palm’s logo in places like
Cleveland, Chicago, Denver and Atlanta. He’s pleased and
proud that the Palm’s reputation has traveled so far.
Ken learns a great deal from the business contacts he’s
made through his chamber of commerce involvement and
participation in various organizations, including Ruth
Eckerd Hall and Little League. “I’ve had the good
fortune to work with others on different boards and I
admire the integrity with which they operate,” he says,
underscoring the importance of networking.
Palm Pavilion has developed a great working relationship
with the Phillies baseball team over the years, starting
in the early 1980s when Ken first became involved with
the Clearwater Chamber. The Palm also advertises on
National Public Radio (NPR) and has done some creative
advertising with local cable channels like Bright House
Networks and Knology.
“The Palm Pavilion is here because of our family—it’s a
local institution and I feel very blessed to continue
that tradition. My parents worked very hard to be able
to turn something like this over to us,” Ken says,
speaking of the tremendous contribution everyone makes.
“And the Palm is successful because we have great
employees, the staff that our customers see every day.”
Ken admires the strengths that every member of his
family brings to the table. His brother Wade complements
Ken’s salesmanship talents with a hands-on ability to
fix things. Wade is also an inspiration for the way he
gets everything done at work and makes all-important
time for his family. He also respects his brother Hoyt,
a former Clearwater city council member, for the dignity
he maintained as an elected official in the public eye.
As for upcoming Hamilton generations taking over, so far
there hasn’t been much indication, but who knows? All
that could change as the younger family members make
their way in the world and decide that life is better on
the beach. Right now, the kids are off doing their own
things, so the family has begun working with lawyers,
accountants and financial planners to ensure that
business operations continue into the future, whether or
not a Hamilton is there to handle it.
Meanwhile, Ken looks forward to starting each day with
the confidence to meet whatever new challenges come his
way. He hopes that he’ll have the chance to put a smile
on someone’s face and help make a memory by ordering up
a perfect sunset for his guests at the Palm Pavilion.
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