Teaching Piano - Destin or 30A communities? (Niceville, Laguna Beach: home, neighborhoods)

[maryrossi]

Hi everyone,
My husband is a very experienced player/teacher/composer of Blues-based Jazz - piano - and after a lifetime of running his nonprofit for at risk kids, we're moving to the "Emerald Coast" and he will be teaching and playing. Our understanding is that there are permanent residents in all of the smaller coastal towns including Grayton Beach, many of whom would have the resources to pay well for lessons (he charges a fair amount and is worth it). Please tell me if this is true! Thanks in advance!

[jghorton]

I have a friend in Destin who started up a piano teaching business a few years ago and the business has exploded --- She now has several teachers and a full slate of students in multiple classes running the gamut from kids to adults. From my understanding, there is nothing cheap about it.

Our church in Destin has also opened a performing arts academy, for which classes are beginning to fill.

[maryrossi]

Thanks for your great (and very hopeful for us) reply. It's good to hear the arts are thriving there. Can you tell me the name of the church with the academy?

Do you have any sense of the other, smaller towns? The problem is that we need to zero in on a place to live before we have a chance to spend more than a day down there, and we want to be sure we don't move to a small town (our preference) and be in the wrong place for students. Along with the home we've found in Destin we found one at Laguna Beach, which could draw students (we think) west and over to Grayton Beach. Does that sound probable or iffy or somewhere in between? Thank you!

[slduvall]

Laguna Beach, as over in Bay county. That is a completely different demographic that you will find in Grayton Beach area. I wouldn't really classify any of the communities along 30a (where Grayton Beach is) as small towns. They are really just neighborhoods. Very affluent ones, yet not towns. The entire area - Santa Rosa Beach - is an unincorporated area of South Walton county. Destin is of course a town and with a population of about 12000K might be considered small. Destin would be a decent commute for anyone in the Grayton Beach area (as they would most likely visit there often as that is where the stores are). I would think going east into Bay county would be less desirable. Destin would also attract people from Niceville and other surrounding areas. Going between the areas on that section of the Emerald coast is not unusual.

[maryrossi]

You have been so helpful ... these both were perhaps the most helpful answers I've ever gotten on CityData, and that's saying something. We will now look in or close to Destin and feel much more comfortable committing to something. If you like Blues/Jazz ("Uniquely American Music" is what I'm calling the style he's evolving now with his experience) please let me know and I'll send y'all a couple of tunes when he gets to recording, in about a month or so.