The Story of Nathan Benderson Park
By Tracy Miller, Strategic Management Adviser, Sarasota County
The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity. The development of Nathan Benderson Park as a world-class rowing venue is a story of opportunity that inspired Sarasota County’s vision to tie a large-scale, mixed-use development project with county-owned parklands, leading to the creation of one of the premier rowing venues in the world.
The story actually begins in the mid-1950s as the Federal Department of Transportation unveiled a plan to construct Interstate 75 south from the Georgia border to the Interstate 4 terminus in Tampa. As construction neared completion in the late 1960s, and growth of Southwest Florida rose sharply, FDOT would unveil an expansion plan to tie southwest Florida to Miami via Alligator Alley.
You might ask yourself, why is this important to Sarasota’s Nathan Benderson Park? Well, the answer is, had it not been for the creation of the borrow pit on Sarasota County’s northern border used for fill to construct I-75, there would be no lake at Nathan Benderson Park and therefore no rowing venue.
The borrow pit would later fill from a nearby creek and become a local fishing hole. The 600-acre property with a 400-acre lake was purchased by the county in 1995. There was no development around the park until the mid-2000s, when Benderson Development Company looked to build a large-scale, mixed use development and high-end mall adjacent to the park. By this time, the lake was being used by local rowing clubs for small-scale regattas. But there were no amenities on the property, which limited its use.
As part of the development project, Benderson Development wrote a Master Park Plan and merged two ideas into one. In 2007, as the recession started to take hold, plans for the mall halted, leaving the park as the only viable development in the area.
By 2009, the idea of hosting collegiate regattas started to grow. It was especially impressive to local leaders, as famous rowing coaches such as Harry Parker from Harvard University would visit the park and confirm that the lake had the ideal conditions for the flat water needed in competitive rowing. Since most rowing in the U.S. is done on rivers, a contained lake bed with no present tides is ideal.
As momentum picked up around the park and the idea of a venue of world-class caliber took shape, it wasn’t long before the connection was made to bid to host a future international regatta. The bid demonstrated Sarasota’s full commitment to the park and the master plan. To make this a reality, it would take a number of partners, including Benderson Development, Manatee County, Visit Sarasota, Florida Sports Commission, and the towns of Bradenton Beach, Anna Maria and Longboat Key. A park of this sort also takes funding. In addition to significant investment by the county, this would not be possible without the support of the state of Florida, which pledged $10 million to the project.
Nathan Benderson Park will be the site of the 2017 International Rowing World Championships. The event is expected to bring more than 40,000 visitors to the region and millions of dollars in regional impact. But the story doesn’t end there.
The way leaders look at sports tourism as a result of the success of the park is truly visionary and inspiring. It has stimulated thinking around other niche sports markets such as BMX, clay and skeet shooting, pentathlon and stand up paddleboarding, to name a few.
But the impact of the park doesn’t end with sports tourism, either. With an improving economy, the mall project, known as University Town Center, has also proceeded and will open in 2014. Nathan Benderson Park truly has provided a bridge from the dark times of the recession, to the now improving outlook of today.
The moral of this story is to have the foresight to look at the assets in your community in new ways. This may mean a borrow pit or brownfield, but it also means the partners you can assemble to do amazing things. It has taken leadership, bold action and fortitude in times of economic uncertainty to see it through. We hope you will all join us for the regatta in 2017.
To learn more about this story, join Sarasota County Administrator Tom Harmer as he presents this unique case study in the Alliance for Innovation Rapid Fire Session at ICMA – Charlotte. The session will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 16 at the conference center in room 213.
