People arrive at Mexico Beach on Thursday, June 2, 2022, where one of its landmarks, the iconic Driftwood Inn, background, was reopened 3. and a half years after it was destroyed when Hurricane Michael struck on Oct. 10, 2018. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP) (Douglas R. Clifford/AP)

MEXICO BEACH — Standing on the deck of the new Driftwood Inn, 3½ years after Hurricane Michael obliterated the old one, Tom Wood spoke of the months after the storm.

One of his daughters had urged him and his wife, Peggy, to pocket the insurance money and leave the hotel behind.

The Driftwood was a nest of splintered wood and ruined history then: pictures, receipts, mattresses, tables, chairs, all tumbled together and streaked with mold. A 14-foot flood and 150 mph winds had dismantled Mexico Beach, turning the gulf-front oasis into a 3-mile field of rubble.

Now 82, Tom was addressing a few dozen guests for the hotel’s ceremonial reopening, held in early June. The deck where they sat was 8 feet off the ground, part of a building perched atop 97 concrete and rebar columns — higher to avoid another flood, sturdier to blunt the wind.

Mexico Beach was home to four hotels and motels before Michael. The Driftwood, three stories high with 23 rooms, is the first to come back, a symbol of the city’s ongoing recovery. It is taller, stronger — and more expensive.

Rebuilding from Michael cost about $13 million, according to Tom, more than double the roughly $5 million they got from insurance.

Siblings, from left, Madilynn Todd, 9, Clayton Todd, 2, and Ryan Todd, 5, run the boardwalk to the beach from the Driftwood Inn, background, on Saturday, June 4, 2022, while attending a welcome gathering for the hotel's reopening weekend in Mexico Beach. (Douglas R. Clifford/AP)

Purple martins flitted and ducked into birdhouses off the deck. Small waves rolled into the white sand. Tom, clutching a microphone, wore a straw hat, pearl earring and Hawaiian shirt.

These first guests were not paying. They were people the Woods family wanted to thank — architects and builders, family and friends (old and new) who sent supplies or picked through the wreckage.

Behind Tom, on the western edge of town, the trees were shadows of Michael, bare and bent, silhouetted by the fading sun.

“I want to build a monument to the town of Mexico Beach,” Tom said, thinking back. “I want to leave a legacy. And we have.”

At daybreak on Oct. 10, 2018, Mexico Beach was a vision of old Florida. Concrete-block duplexes, level with the sand, lined roads that ended in the dunes. There was a coffee shop, a hardware store, a pier.

By nightfall, the town had been shattered. The storm ripped off roofs and floated them hundreds of feet inland, onto the two lanes of U.S. 98. The Woods’ hotel hung in a state of semi-collapse, awaiting a wrecking crew to deliver the final punch.

They hadn’t known what rebuilding would cost. $3 million? $10 million? Their bill soared as months dragged and the pandemic made workers and materials scarcer. Tom and Peggy paid for blueprints of the new inn, which their daughter Shawna said “looks like the old Driftwood grew up.”

They paid to keep a few people on staff. They paid for concrete in the parking lot, metal on the roof and tile on the floors. They paid for every chair, sink and toilet.

Tom Wood, left, and Peggy Wood arrive at the site of their Driftwood Inn, background, where they were meeting an engineer, architect and builder on Jan. 11, 2019 in Mexico Beach, Fla. The Inn was destroyed by Hurricane Michael and the Woods wanted to discuss plans to reconstruct the beachfront hotel. (Douglas R. Clifford/AP)

The family sold other properties — an office building in Atlanta, a pizza shop in Mexico Beach — to pump more money into the inn.

Around the Driftwood’s skeleton, the city’s real estate market, as in the rest of Florida, started to boom.

Today, bright new multistory homes, lifted on stilts, soar above vacant lots sprouting weeds. Vacation rental signs hang out front.

Mexico Beach hasn’t regained its pier, but the marina is flush with boaters. The city has a gas station, too. And a Subway.

The inn sits on five beachfront lots. A half-mile down the road, a single vacant lot is on the market for $1.2 million.

“There used to be a home here,” the listing reads, “so water and sewer tap fees have been paid.”

The “For Sale” signs and open land brim with possibilities — for some.

Every longtime resident knows friends who were forced out. They didn’t have the money, the insurance or in some cases the stamina to slog through rebuilds.

The city had always attracted out-of-towners looking for second homes, mostly from Georgia. Now people come from farther away and rent to vacationers until they can retire. Some pay cash.

Shawna, 56, who will run the new Driftwood, said there are no affordable homes for store clerks and bartenders. She believes that’s why she can’t fill two housekeeper positions or find a part-time desk worker.

Her own daughter, unable to cover rent, has moved 25 minutes away to Callaway.

“We’re no longer a sleepy little village,” Tom said. “We got so much publicity after the hurricane.”

The new Driftwood’s doors are heavy. The glass is thick. Slick, modern furniture fills every room, instead of hand-picked antiques. Touchscreen pads have replaced keys.

Summer rooms will cost between $325 and $425, about twice as much as before the storm. When Shawna posted the rates on Facebook, some people commented that they couldn’t wait. Others said they couldn’t afford it.

After the rebuild, Peggy, 81, said this is what the family has to do. They’ll miss some of the regulars who made the Driftwood so special. They bought the original inn for $138,000 in 1975, when it had only eight units.

They still don’t know how much their flood and wind insurance will cost, or property taxes. Liability insurance is up to $17,000 a year, around double what they used to pay, Shawna said.