Snell Isle Enters Its Second Century With Neighbors Still Tending Perry Snell's Panthers

Who keeps the panthers on Snell Isle standing? Not the original developer, and not a city maintenance crew working through a list. The Snell Isle Property Owners Association asks every resident for a donation each year. That money is how it pays to "repair, renovate and renew community assets," and its 2026 results show what the money covered.

The list includes a renewed South Entrance Fountain, 40 planters cleaned and replanted, 89 panthers cleaned and repaired, and holiday lighting that SIPOA calls "reimagined." That list came out the year after the neighborhood's 100th anniversary. The Gabber reports that C. Perry Snell launched his Snell Isle development on Oct. 15, 1925, when much of what is now Snell Isle was still underwater in Tampa Bay. Snell designed the place around statuary and landscaped boulevards. Since then, upkeep of that design has passed from the developer to the neighbors, and this holiday season, early in the second century, runs along the same Parkway they just restored.

Snell planned the statues before most of the island existed

According to SIPOA's history of the neighborhood, Snell bought the property on April 4, 1911, and development officially started in 1925. He planned a 275-acre community, built up through dredging, seawalls and new streets, even though only about 39 acres sat above high tide when work began. The same history says statuary and landscaped boulevards were part of his design from the start.

The panthers belong to the plan for the island. Snell placed them along streets that had only recently been dredged out of the bay. A missing or cracked panther takes a piece of that 1925 plan with it, and a repaired one puts it back.

The panthers have needed neighbors for a long time

The record of residents looking after the statues goes back at least 30 years. In 1996, the Tampa Bay Times reported that SIPOA had spent years trying to replace statues missing from neighborhood streets. The association asked the city about two stone panthers at a ball field in Campbell Park that looked like the ones Snell placed around Snell Isle in the 1920s. Campbell Park's neighborhood leaders pointed to a November 1962 City Council vote to put up a monument honoring Thomas Campbell, who donated the land for the park. The city agreed that the statues may always have been there.

The same article explains why the question was hard to settle. A Snell Isle historian told the paper that people had cast concrete copies of the statues over the years. Panthers, original or copied, turned up in yards and around pools across the city, and the city had kept many of them in warehouses at different times. At least one search did end in a homecoming. The Times noted that about six years before that article, several statues depicting the seasons were moved from the Mirror Lake library branch back to Snell Isle.

Today's panthers have that history behind them. The goal was never just a pleasant streetscape. Neighbors were working to keep a scattered collection together in a city where copies were common.

2016 and 2026, ten years apart

The most useful comparison for this year's work is the campaign ten years earlier. The Northeast Journal's September/October 2016 issue reported that more than forty resident volunteers had taken SIPOA's beautification project past the halfway point.

The planter count barely moved in ten years, from 41 to 40. The upkeep is the same job on the same corners, done again. The 2016 effort also brought in more than residents. On Sunday, Aug. 14 of that year, Boy Scout Troop 219 gathered on Brightwaters Boulevard. Twenty-five scouts and family members washed, restored, sealed and painted ten animal statues on Brightwaters Boulevard, Estado Way, Maron Street and Lamara Way. Those streets are worth walking this season with that work in mind.

SIPOA's 2026 list goes past repair. It says the association worked closely with the City of St. Petersburg on Parkway beautification, spearheaded burying utility lines, hosted its first Landscaping Expo in October 2026, and celebrated Snell Isle's 100-year anniversary at the Women's Club. Its plans for 2027 and beyond include more Parkway work, including a Canary Island Palm solution.

The lights came back on

Holiday lighting is the 2026 item that will matter most over the next six weeks. SIPOA's homepage describes it in one line:

"2026 glowed after 2025 was dark."

The Parkway is where the neighborhood's own holiday events take place. SIPOA's Santa visit is set for Snell Isle Parkway at 600 Snell Isle Boulevard, the address of the golf clubhouse.

The clubhouse at 600 is the other century-old fixture

The golf course is older than Snell Isle's official launch. The Florida Historic Golf Trail says Snell opened the nine-hole Coffee Pot Golf Club in 1920 and added a second nine and practice facilities a year later. In 1926 he hired Wayne Stiles and John van Kleek to build an 18-hole course from nine old holes and nine new ones, and renamed it Snell Island Golf Course. The trail lists D.L. Clark's 1932 purchase and renaming to Clark's Sunset Golf and Country Club, the Alsonett Hotel Corporation's purchase in 1948, and Ron Garl's redesign in 1992. The Vinoy Golf Club's history names J. Franklin Meehan, who worked with A.W. Tillinghast, as the designer and builder of the original Coffeepot Golf Club in 1920, and gives 1927 for the Stiles and Van Kleek 18-hole course.

The trail describes the clubhouse as a 1927 Mediterranean-inspired building with a restaurant, bar and pro shop. In The Gabber, historian James Schnur writes that the completed club was Moorish in style and furnished with art and furniture Snell picked himself. The club's golf page lists it today as an 18-hole, par-71 course of 6,626 yards, open to resort guests and club members. The Vinoy Club Grill in the clubhouse also limits access to resort guests and Vinoy Club members. It serves Sunday brunch from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The season on and near the Parkway

The neighborhood calendar starts Friday, Nov. 13. Each SIPOA event below uses SIPOA's own wording about who can attend. The Vinoy and downtown events take place just across the Snell Isle Bridge.

RSVP for Flamingo Friday through the link on SIPOA's events page. The boat parade details come from Visit St. Pete/Clearwater. The Vinoy Sunday Market, which I Love the Burg covered when it launched, is part of the hotel's 100th-anniversary programming. The Vinoy opened on Dec. 31, 1925, about eleven weeks after Snell launched his island.

At The Salamone Group, we follow the work that keeps Snell Isle's 1925 plan visible, from the panthers on Estado Way to the fountain at Brightwaters Boulevard. If you want to talk about what this streetscape means for your own corner of the island, The Salamone Group is glad to help. Let's Connect.