Jeff Barganier Uptown on

Travel Experiences with Jeff Barganier Uptown on Bridge Street

Jacksonville, Florida businessman Daniel Villareal enjoys staying in vacation rentals (VR’s). “They’re more comfortable and have kitchens. If I feel like making a smoothie, it’s all there.” When he visited the Montgomery area on business in 2016, there may have been just two vacation rentals. One of them was at The Waters in Pike Road. And it was always booked. But while planning a trip up from Florida, Daniel was finally able to reserve it. He had no idea where he was coming. It was late at night when he arrived. “I grabbed my bags, went upstairs, and it was this really great place. I get up the next morning to go running and, I go running and think, where did I land? It was like a Leave it to Beaver, you know. It’s like, this is crazy.” So, he calls his wife, Scottie, and says, “Hey, you need to get up here. This place is really cool.” The Waters reminded Daniel of Florida’s 30A, one of their favorite spots where they would spend months at a time. Soon, Scottie arrived and they fell in love with The Waters.

As he was in the area all time, Daniel and Scottie eventually decided to buy a home in the resort-like residential development. Initially, the Villareal’s made an offer on a third-floor condo unit in the live-work building that defines the Town Square at The Waters. But when that deal failed to materialize, they ended up purchasing a house with a separate apartment over the garage which they quickly turned into a vacation rental. “My interest in vacation rentals came from my experience being a guest. We stay in thirty to forty vacation rentals a year. It has been a great experience for us. So, we decided to create our own.”

They didn’t think the Montgomery area was a vacation destination; so, they were pleasantly surprised when their rental did quite well. “There are so many people who come here. And then they fall in love with The Waters,” he says. In 2022, the Villareal’s purchased two residential spaces in the Town Square building and proceeded to create four additional VR’s. They derived design and decorating ideas from their perspective as vacation rental guests. “If it was me, what would I like?” Daniel asked himself. “What would make me comfortable? What would make me interested?”

Cindy and I live and work in the same building. We recently toured the Villareal’s new units for the first time. Cindy says she loves every single one. She wants first dibs on a Villareal VR for our kids and grandchildren to stay in next Christmas. “A lot of people come just because they find us,” Daniel says. “They look at the pictures online at VRBO.com or AirBnB.com and say ‘that’s a really cool place.’ We have people who come every year. But they’re not coming to Montgomery. They’re coming specifically for The Waters. We had people from Chicago reserve for four days. And they extended for another day...then another day...then another day. They stayed two weeks! Didn’t want to leave. And that’s kind of the feeling we got, too, when we came here. It’s such a unique place. We’ve had four people come who weren’t looking to move. But they ended up buying a house here. I love Destin and 30A but there’s something uniquely different about this place...the sun is brighter... sky clearer… people friendly.”

Travelers from overseas reserve these VR’s, too. Daniel explains, “We had a guy from England who worked at Sotheby’s. He had vacation rentals on the gulf coast. Coming here on his way to his rentals, he wanted a few days off. We didn’t know

anything about him except that he had an English accent and really loved our place—there’s a lot of European art in it. I invited him to see the bird show—it was the time of year that we have this unbelievable bird show on the lake early in the morning. I see him the next morning. And he has this camera with a boom lens that must have been three feet long. We find out that he’s a published photographer and had been trying to win certain awards. He took twenty-five hundred pictures here. From those shots, he won three awards, two of which he’d been trying to win for years! The next morning, he said, ‘you can’t even know how much I appreciate you telling me about this because I would not have done it. I don’t get up at six-thirty in the morning.’” Daniel also says a major movie producer has rented from them.

The Villareal’s vacation rentals have different design themes. “Scottie has all kinds of ideas and has had them for years. She especially loves European architecture and style; so, she wanted to do that.” She came up with a Euro-chimney design in one unit. She also styled masculine and feminine looks. The Westscott, for example, has the masculine look. Each rental is named for one of their children: The Laura, the Anne Clair, the Victoria, the Westscott. Three of the Bridge Street units are twelve hundred square feet and one is nine hundred. The largest unit comfortably sleeps six. “There’s a European-French feel about them—lighter colors, brighter, more minimalistic, Scottie did all that. I bought some software and worked on the layouts for about a month. My father was a builder so I learned a dangerously little bit from him. So, I had to go in there and learn all kinds of stuff. Flights of stairs, I rebuilt entirely.” Daniel started out with a general contractor but the project proved too complex. He, Scottie and their industrious son, Sailor, ended up doing the lion’s share of the work, using subs along the way, starting out with mere shells and creating amazing spaces. The work was completed for the combined units in about seven months. “Taking on four at one time was…woo!” Daniel says.

These units come with all the amenities available to The Waters residents which makes the total package an attractive vacation option. They range $195 to $245 plus 13% Pike Road resort tax and a cleaning fee of $110 -$130, depending on the unit. Reservations may be made online at

com or www. AirBnB.com, by calling the Villareal’s at 904859-0354, or by emailing them at uptownonbridgestreet@gmail.com.

Jeff S. Barganier is a novelist, travel writer and manager of Cindy Barganier Interiors LLC (www.cindybarganier.com). He travels far and wide upon the slightest excuse for something interesting to write about. Contact: Jeffbarganier@knology.net. Instagram: @jeffbarganier. You may print out Jeff’s features at www.jeffbarganier.com and take them with you when you travel!