I’m willing to bet that if you ask a hundred people who owns Higgs Beach, most would shrug and say, “Not a clue.” Ask ’em to guess (no fair asking your politically connected buddies) and they’d offer up “Key West” with half a dozen subsequent question marks. I’ll buy you lunch at Salute if you get more than five who know that until May 1 it was Monroe County.

Nor could they tell you who owns the White Street Pier (city), the adjacent beach where the African Memorial Cemetery is (was county, now city) or the dog park across the street (also transferred). They also probably think the city owns Fort Zach. Be nice if we did, but the state’s not gonna give up a park that’s one of its biggest generators of revenue and visitors.

It never made sense for the county to own the Higgs Beach complex. There have been decades of intergovernmental confusion, overlap and jurisdictional squabbles. Not to mention the public’s confusion. See a guy with a gun and fishing pole waltzing through Higgs? Do you call the Key West cops or the Monroe County sheriff? Don’t like the nastiness of the dog park? Not the city’s job. Until May 1.

Had the transfer taken place 20 years ago — heck, even 10 — it would have been unremarkable common sense. Maybe even cause for celebration that finally Higgs would get the attention it needs. But these aren’t olden times, so cue the conspiracy outrage chorus, which quickly decided there must be nefarious deals afoot. If Higgs is so great, they argued, why would the county “dump” it on Key West? And, they added absent proof, the city’s leadership cabal was in cahoots with folks who disdain environmentally fragile oceanfront in favor of gentrification and a high-rise or two.

Monroe County officially dedicated the Clarence S. Higgs Memorial Beach on April 17, 1949. Seventy-seven years later, on April 30 in a ceremonial transfer of the keys, the county handed off the 16.5-acre oceanfront park to the City of Key West. Effective May 1, it’s up to the city to manage Higgs Beach from the White Street Pier to the Casa Marina Resort. That includes Salute, the Key West Garden Club’s Fort West Martello, the AIDS Memorial, the dog park, tennis and pickleball courts, the playgrounds, the African cemetery, the Reynolds Street Pier and the bandstand — and parking, law enforcement, repairs and maintenance and any future development.

Along with transferring the property’s ownership, Monroe County also transferred about $3.7 million in grants and insurance reimbursements for repairs and improvements. That’s a nice nest egg, though it doesn’t cover operating expenses and I suspect it’ll barely make a dent in deferred maintenance and repairs necessitated by Hurricanes Irma and Ian.

(Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of neglect at Higgs Beach, and its location makes it a prime, unprotected target for storms, major or otherwise. There’s a reason Salute’s ambience is, well, downscale and funky. It’s way cheaper to replace plastic chairs after shoveling out mountains of sand from a big blow.)

Higgs Beach: Opponents of the transfer get these things right

I’ll give the opponents points for being right on these two points:

First, the city WILL throw up parking kiosks at Higgs faster than the iguana swimming laps in my pool. The city did the same when it ended free parking at Smathers Beach in September 2012 — not as an affront to locals’ sensibilities, but as a monumental cash generator. Tourism is Key West’s economic driver, but parking ain’t too shabby. Projected gross parking revenue for the 2025-26 fiscal year is $7,381,277.

And second, there IS the question of “what’s next.” There were discussions in 2011, which never got beyond drawings, for rerouting Atlantic Avenue farther north for more beach area. Salute, the beachside restaurant, also manages the water sports business and the bandstand rentals. What a new Salute lease would look like remains unknown.

Ditto for the Gardens at Fort West Martello, the Key West Garden Club’s iconic location for weddings, local events and visitors. The club’s agreement with the county included county funding for some operational costs and for repairs and maintenance.

That’s unlike the Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden on Stock Island, which has a 99-year lease from the city (91 percent of voters approved the lease referendum in 2022), raises its own funds and operates independently. How the Martello transition will play out remains unknown, but it’s likely any agreement between the city and the garden club would look similar to the botanical garden’s lease.

I’ve tried hard to understand how the transfer of Higgs to the city is a bad deal. I understand it’s frustrating not having the answers to every question, and the arguments are bound to continue. But it just never made sense for the county to own Higgs Beach. Now it’s ours. Let’s do well by it.