Since the 1960s, visitors of Florida’s Everglades National Park have flocked to the Flamingo Lodge, located on the south end of the wildlife-rich region.
Originally built with cinderblock construction, the lodge faced back-to-back hurricanes, Katrina and Wilma, leading to its demolition in 2009.
Rebuilding it seemed like a pipe dream. With more furious and frequent hurricanes and tropical storms, as well as dwindling finances, stakeholders thought it was the end of an era.
But National Park Service employees and private tourism partners persisted.
“There were many reasons to rebuild Flamingo Lodge. We heard from visitors that generations of people who had come that this was a destination, the opportunity to spend the night inside a national park and expand and enhance their experience,” Allyson Gantt, the NPS chief of communications for Everglades, told The Guardian.
“You’re there to see the stars at night, see the sun rise, or hear the birds in the morning, or to encounter the mosquitoes at night, to see the difference from the daytime.”
So, they began rebuilding. The lodge’s parent company, Flamingo Adventures, started by rehabilitating its campsite, marina, and general store, but quickly realized the lodge would need to be able to withstand the inevitable extreme weather events of the future.
Previously, the lodge offered more than 100 rooms and a swimming pool. Now, it’s a more petite 24-room hotel, built entirely from durable steel shipping containers.
The containers form four individual clusters of six rooms, plus a separate restaurant and bar. They sit atop 13-foot concrete pillars, designed to withstand hurricane-force winds.
“Sustainability was hugely important and integrated into the design and the building of the lodge. It was finding that balance, just like we do with many things in the National Park Service, between what we have today and what we want to take into the future,” Gantt told The Guardian.
“In light of sea level rise predictions and climate change impacts, we sort of circled back to the drawing board to make sure we were doing our due diligence to use the right materials.”
The new shipping container approach complies with building codes and adds an even more thoughtful element of sustainability to the hotel, which also features low-flow plumbing fixtures, energy-efficient windows, LED lighting, and solar panels.
Flamingo Lodge reopened at the end of 2023 and is ready to welcome visitors for a new summer season, which begins on June 1 of this year.
It’s an exciting time for the NPS, as the hotel is the only one that exists inside the national park. For about 15 years, the only other option visitors had was to camp in the park or find lodging nearly an hour away in Florida City.
The hotel also illustrates the persistence and cooperation required of the NPS, especially in the face of a $12 billion maintenance backlog, along with severe staff and funding cuts by the Trump administration.
Flamingo Adventures vice president of hospitality, Laura Sherman, told The Guardian that the private-public partnership between her company and the NPS is vital to ensuring people can enjoy these public spaces, even in a changing climate.
“When you think about the Everglades, you think about the wildlife, the fauna, and the ecosystem that’s the only one like it in the world,” Sherman said. “To be able to develop and build something like this, where people can come and stay and experience it all, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for some. It’s really very special.”
Gantt feels the same way.
“Incorporating considerations for durability in the face of climate change for both the new lodge and visitor center provides resiliency for these visitor facilities,” Gantt told Travel & Leisure.
“We hope the new lodge, restaurant, and visitor center will encourage more travelers to discover and rediscover this unique public land.”
Header image courtesy of Flamingo Adventures
