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Pool strawberries, old sign still there, but Red Rose Inn in Plant City is now rehab center

 
Joseph Ducey, chief operating officer with the White Sands drug rehab center, oversees the former inn which featured the community’s signature strawberries painted on the bottom of the pool.
Joseph Ducey, chief operating officer with the White Sands drug rehab center, oversees the former inn which featured the community’s signature strawberries painted on the bottom of the pool.
Published May 5, 2017

PLANT CITY

Drive east on Interstate 4 through Plant City and you'll still see the white-on-red sign for the shuttered Red Rose Inn, once a pop culture attraction for its kitschy decadence.

Walk through the inn's former courtyard and you can't miss the strawberries — symbol of Plant City — spread out in red across the bottom of the pool.

But there are few other signs of the old inn remaining — no emerald velvet curtains adorning the windows, no heavy, dark-wood furniture, no bathroom chandeliers, none of the Victorian decor reminiscent of Gone With the Wind.

In its place at 2011 N Wheeler St. are the trappings of rehabilitation with the conversion of the property into the White Sands Treatment Center.

"The Red Rose Inn is gone but I have a feeling the memories will always be here," said Joseph Ducey, the center's chief operating officer.

White Sands had one center operating in Fort Myers when it opened the Plant City location March 9. The new center has 60 employees and 20 patients but is projected to expand in the next year to full capacity with 200 workers and as many as 150 patients.

White Sands paid $3.85 million for the property last year, according to Hillsborough County property records, and has spent more than half a million dollars on the conversion — including the transformation of a parking lot into a beach-themed courtyard, Ducey said.

Still, even at capacity, White Sands will use just 75 of the 261 Red Rose Inn rooms. Nor does it need the ballroom. So, for now at least, the back of the eight-acre property will remain unused.

"I could put 500 people here," Ducey said. "But that doesn't really work for drug and alcohol treatment. Quite frankly, I don't know what we will do with the rest of the property. We don't need it but had to obtain it in all in the sale."

Nor did he need the furnishings and artwork left behind by the Red Rose Inn's owners Evelyn and Batista Madonia.

So Ducey held an auction last weekend.

"It didn't really fit with what we are doing here," he said with a chuckle.

In the early 1990s, the Madonias purchased a Ramada Inn, renamed it the Red Rose Inn and spent $5 million transforming the once prosaic establishment into an opulent Victorian oasis where Rhett and Scarlett would have felt right at home.

There was a modern design to most of the 261 rooms but 28 were VIP suites with a Gone With the Wind's theme, including the Rhett Butler, Scarlett O'Hara and Ashley Wilkes rooms.

Adding to its character were ballroom performances by bands big in the 1950s and 1960s.

Then there was red-haired Evelyn Madonia, dressed in an evening gown, jewels and elbow-length gloves to promote the inn on television commercials.

That the inn evoked powerful memories grew clear during the auction, attended by an estimated 300 buyers.

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"Even some nice pieces of furniture that would normally go for next to nothing went for more because of the history of the inn," auctioneer John Harris said. "A lot of people in the crowd were big fans who were sad and sentimental."

Still more changes are coming to the property.

Before the pool can be brought up to safety codes, the strawberry at the bottom has to go, Ducey said. Someone in trouble might be hard to notice through all that bright red.

The Plant City Lions Club contemplated replacing the inn's sign with one that welcomes people to the community. But the club decided against it.

Still, Ducey is confident the sign will go sooner or later.

Then, the only sign of the Red Rose Inn will be random adornments, like the wrought iron gates designed with vines and birds.

"When I first walked in to this place I knew this must have been quite the place 10 years ago," Ducey said. "I would have liked to have seen it at its peak."

Contact Paul Guzzo at pguzzo@tampabay.com. Follow @PGuzzoTimes.