Treasure Island Beach Parking: The Honest Guide
Treasure Island is the easy one. Of the four barrier-island beaches we cover, it has the most public parking per foot of sand — the city counts 24 parking areas and close to 600 spaces — and most of it sits in plain paved lots right behind the dune. If Pass-a-Grille parking is a puzzle, Treasure Island beach parking is mostly just a transaction.
Mostly. The south end works differently, and two rules catch visitors every week. Here's the honest version.
Where the lots are
The city lots are named after birds and marked with blue-and-white numbers, which makes them easy to spot from Gulf Boulevard. North to south, the ones that matter for a beach day:
Sunshine Beach (north end): Ibis Lot at 121st Ave (19 spaces), 124th Ave street parking (17), White Egret Lot at 126th Ave (12), and Kingfish Drive (28). Small lots, quieter beach.
Downtown / mid-island:Gulf Front Park Lot at 104th Ave and Gulf Blvd (77 spaces) is the main beach lot — restrooms, showers, and a roll-out mobility mat that runs about 500 feet toward the water. City Hall at 10451 Gulf Blvd (62), the Community Center lot at 106th Ave and Park Place (104), and the Old City Hall lot at 108th Ave (41) are a short walk back from the sand.
Sunset Beach (south end): Tern Lot at West Gulf Blvd and 77th Ave (55), Ring-Billed Gull Lot between 81st and 82nd (43), Black Skimmer Lot near 80th Ave (16), plus a few smaller ones. The Sunset Beach Pavilion at 80th Ave has restrooms and showers and reopened in June 2026 after the 2024 hurricanes.
One more worth knowing: the lot at 112th Ave and Gulf Blvd belongs to the City of St. Petersburg, not Treasure Island. It's open to the public, but it runs on its own rules and rates.
What Treasure Island parking costs
As of August 2026, the city's posted rates are:
City lots and spaces: $5.00 per hour Monday–Friday, $5.50 on Saturday, Sunday and holidays
Sunset Beach side streets: $6.00 per hour Monday–Friday, $6.50 on weekends and holidays
There's no day rate and no overnight rate. If you stay eight hours, you pay eight hours.
These numbers have moved quickly. In September 2024 the lots were $4 an hour and the Sunset Beach streets were $5. Two increases later, here we are — and every Pinellas beach town has been raising rates at the same time, so don't trust a figure from a forum post or a page without a date on it.
How you pay, and the rule that gets people ticketed
You pay by phone: text-to-park or the ParkMobile app, tied to your license plate. There's no paper ticket to put on the dash.
That plate is also how enforcement works. The city uses license plate readers, which means backing into a space is prohibited — the plate has to face the lane. This is the ticket people genuinely don't see coming. Pull in nose first.
All parking is enforced 24/7. There is no free-after-8pm window like St. Pete Beach has. An evening walk to watch the sunset is metered the same as noon on a Saturday.
Is there free parking in Treasure Island?
Not at the beach, not anymore. The Sunset Beach side streets were the last free option and went paid on July 29, 2024. Today those streets are the most expensive parking on the island, not the cheapest — a dollar an hour more than the lots two blocks away.
The practical answer: if you're headed to Sunset Beach, use the Tern or Ring-Billed Gull lots first and treat the streets as the overflow.
Where it's easy and where it isn't
Easy: mid-island, around 100th to 108th Ave. Between Gulf Front Park, City Hall and the Community Center there are roughly 280 spaces within a few blocks of each other, and this stretch is also where the beach is widest. Even when Gulf Front Park is full, the lots behind it usually aren't, and the walk is five minutes.
Less easy: Sunset Beach on a weekend. It's the best sunset on the island and everyone knows it. The lots are smaller, the streets cost more, and the neighbourhood is residential, so there's nowhere else to go. Arrive early or arrive on a weekday.
Don't bother: RVs, boat trailers and travel trailers can't use any city lot or right-of-way. And a disabled placard only works in city-operated areas when the permit holder is in the car.
A few beach rules you'll see posted
Because they're on the same signs as the parking rules: no dogs on the beach, no glass, no smoking or vaping, and anything left on the sand after 9pm is treated as discarded and removed. The beach itself closes 1am to 5am. Fill in your holes and flatten the sandcastle before you leave — it's a turtle-nesting coast.
The walk from the car
We're based on Gulf Boulevard in Treasure Island, so this is the beach we park at most, and the honest note is that the parking isn't the hard part here. The walk is. That beach is wide — it's a real hike from the Gulf Front Park lot to the waterline with chairs, an umbrella and a cooler, and then the same hike back while the meter runs.
If you'd rather not make two trips, we deliver the gear to where you're staying and pick it up when you're done. If you're packing your own, go light and use the mobility mat at 104th — it's there for everyone.
Rates and rules current as of August 2026, taken from the City of Treasure Island's parking pages. Rates have risen twice since 2024 and may again; the rate in the app when you pay is the final word.
