Live in Snell Isle

C. Perry Snell, a Kentucky druggist who had come to St. Petersburg in 1900, opened it in October 1925 on a muddy mangrove island where only 39 of 275 acres stood above the high tide line, and sold more than seven million dollars' worth of lots in the boom. In 1926 he opened a golf club on the island, the one now run as the Vinoy's, and its clubhouse at 600 Snell Isle Boulevard NE is a City landmark under its first name, the Sunset Golf and Country Club. He built the Woman's Club on Coffee Pot Bayou too, dedicated in 1929. Those buildings are listed one at a time: no City historic district covers any street here.

The City draws no line called Snell Isle. This guide takes the area the Snell Isle Property Owners Association filed on the City's map of neighborhood associations. It is 699 acres measured with the bayou and bay water inside it, so a density from it understates. Coffee Pot Bayou bounds it on the south and west, 34th Avenue NE on the mainland side, Placido Bayou on the north and Tampa Bay on the east, so it holds mainland blocks as well as the island. The 2020 census counted 2,883 residents in 1,337 homes there, all in City Council District 3.

Almost all of it is flood zone. FEMA's Pinellas map of August 2021 puts 99.8% of the area and 2,839 of the residents in the 1% annual chance zone; at the reference point on Snell Isle Boulevard the ground is about 3.6 feet above sea level and the base flood elevation is 9 feet. The point is in Pinellas County's evacuation Zone A, with 2,637 of the residents. On 26 September 2024 Helene's surge reached 6.31 feet above mean higher high water at the St. Petersburg tide gauge, more than two feet over the record Elena had set in 1985. The City assessed 1,074 parcels here afterward and recorded water inside 766, a foot or more in 425, and major damage at 310. Those are assessment points, one per parcel rather than per home; Milton added 81, none with water inside. Under the City's rule, repairs or improvements whose cumulative cost reaches 49% of a structure's market value require the whole building to meet current flood rules, which can mean raising it; the City's page names no period after which the count resets.

No price index follows the line. Zillow's typical value for ZIP code 33704 was $735,185 in August 2026, up 0.7% on the year, but the ZIP holds 16,031 people, the Old Northeast, Euclid-St. Paul and Crescent Lake among them. Every address here pays the same 19.9197 mills for 2025, the City's 6.4525 among them. A homestead at the ZIP figure owes about $13,806 a year after the exemption ($25,000 off every levy, a second $25,000, indexed since 2025, off all but the school board's); a landlord, about $14,645. Save Our Homes caps a homestead's assessed value at 3% a year and ends with a sale, so the seller's bill understates yours. The City's stormwater fee, $12.67 to $59.08 a month from 1 October 2026, comes on the utility bill. The arithmetic is on the St. Petersburg page.

The bus does not come onto the island. No PSTA stop is inside the line. Route 38, downtown to Madeira Beach, stops hourly at Coffee Pot Boulevard and Snell Isle Boulevard, about 0.8 km from the reference point; Route 4 runs every 15 minutes on 4th Street North, 1.8 km west; the SunRunner leaves downtown for St. Pete Beach every 15 minutes. PSTA's schedule changes on 4 October 2026, and Route 38 keeps its weekday trips in it.