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The best snorkeling on the Gulf Coast

Sarasota County OKs $40 million for rowing venue

By Robert Eckhart

Published: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 7:14 p.m.

STAFF PHOTO / ROBERT ECKHART

Drainage pipes line the east side of the county-owned lake at Nathan Benderson Park, where Cattlemen Road will be extended to connect to University Parkway. The $14.5 million road construction project will coincide with a $19.5 million park renovation.

The lakes at Nathan Benderson Park span 366 acres, a series of huge mining pits that filled with water.

Though fabled to be the spot where the biggest largemouth bass in Florida was caught and released, the 600-acre park was not considered a world-class anything when Sarasota County bought it 15 years ago.

Now it is the epicenter of sports tourism development in the area, as county commissioners on Tuesday approved a $40 million plan to transform the park into the No. 1 competitive rowing facility in the nation.

About half of the improvements will be paid for with county-controlled hotel occupancy tax funds. The rest will be sought from the state and federal governments and charitable donations.

As commissioners cast their unanimous vote for the rowing plan on Tuesday, other groups that have been at work boosting sports tourism in the area were announcing successes.

The Pan Am Masters Championships in swimming will be held in Sarasota in 2013, the first time the event has been hosted in the U.S. The 10-day event is expected to bring millions in tourism spending.

Tuesday the Premier Sports Campus in Lakewood Ranch announced it had landed an international 78-team youth soccer tournament that will bring an estimated 15,000 visitors and will be broadcast on cable TV.

“The economic impact of this campus will be tremendous,” said Rex Jensen, president and CEO of Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, Inc., the developer of the campus.

Schroeder-Manatee estimates the sports campus will have an economic impact of more than $60 million next year.

“We’re not just talking about the future benefit,” Jensen said in a press release. “We’re doing it now — and the results are tangible.”

There are 57 tourism-generating sports events planned this year in Sarasota County, according to data collected by the county’s sports commission. Last year, sports tourism generated an estimated $34.3 million in economic income, the sports commission reports.

“It’s bringing people into the community that have never been here before,” County Commissioner Joe Barbetta said.

The payoff for such events is threefold, he said.

The sports aficionados come, spend money here and discover Sarasota. When they go home they are “walking billboards” for the community. And the events all promote health and fitness for the children who already live here.

The rowing venue at Nathan Benderson Park is the most ambitious project yet. And at $40 million, it will cost substantially more than the $31.2 million plan that brought the Baltimore Orioles to Ed Smith Stadium for spring training starting in February 2010.

Rowing presents an even bigger opportunity for economic development, said Barbetta and other commissioners.

“It’s going to cost a little more to do it right,” Barbetta said. “But the return on investment is going to be huge.”

An economic study has shown that the rowing facility at Nathan Benderson Park can generate $157.5 million a year in economic benefit in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

The rowing course would be the only one in the U.S. to receive an A-rating from the international rowing group that hosts the annual World Rowing Championships.

Benderson Development Corp., the county’s partner in the rowing venture, is now preparing a bid to host the championship in 2017, which would bring 50,000 visitors from 80 countries. The contest has not been held in the U.S. in two decades because of the dearth of qualified courses.

Tuesday’s vote from the County Commission includes a five-month deadline for Benderson to deliver a set of more refined design plans and a guaranteed maximum price for the county-funded improvements.

“We have a lot of work between now and April,” said Paul Blackketter, the developer’s point person on the rowing project, as he celebrated the vote with supporters on Tuesday.

Smaller regattas held at the park over the past three years have generated $10 million in economic activity, according to the sports commission.

Copyright © 2011 HeraldTribune.com — All rights reserved.

By Kevin McQuaid & Doug Sword

Published: Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 11:31 a.m.

Despite a still-lumbering economy in Southwest Florida, Benderson Development Co. intends to begin construction of its long-delayed University Town Center mall by the end of next year, officials say.

If that timeline holds, the opening of the upscale retail hub in late 2014 would dovetail with the anticipated completion of Sarasota County’s $40 million rowing facility and extensions to Cattlemen Road.

New plans submitted to Sarasota County for approval also show a shift away from the glitzy mall originally planned in 2005 to a focus on the rowing complex the development company is backing in concert with the county.

“All three projects have been synchronized,” said Paul Blackketter, Benderson’s executive director of planning. “And our whole direction has changed out of necessity from University Town Center to developing a world-class rowing center.”

Largely gone, as well, is the integrated, “new urbanist” design that accentuated pedestrianism and that mixed residences with commercial space and cultural amenities.

A new site plan, which will be unveiled to county officials Thursday, depicts a more traditional retail configuration, with stores and other buildings surrounded by surface parking. A planned parking garage does not appear on the new two-dimensional layout Benderson will present.

Approval of the plans is required before construction could begin.

At the same time, Benderson has reconfigured the siting of a pair of new hotels it plans to build, also by 2014, to be closer to the rowing lake at the county-owned Nathan Benderson Park, which is named for the company’s founder and chairman. Stemming from an agreement with the county, the hotels will contain at least 250 rooms, Blackketter said.

“The lake had been the back door for the residential homes we were planning,” he said. “Now, it’s the front door for the hotels and, to an extent, the retail.”

Benderson also hopes to develop a nearly 30-acre island from dredged fill dirt within the rowing complex, where it plans to construct a boathouse with corporate meeting space, docks and parking.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reviewing permit applications for the $12 million island now, and work there could begin within six months, Blackketter said.

If approved, the nonprofit Suncoast Aquatic & Nature Association, the entity that will operate the county-owned rowing center and raise money for developments there, could begin applying for international regattas. Blackketter said the nonprofit hopes to lure the World Rowing Championships to the planned 2,000-meter lake in 2017.

that event comes, Blackketter said, it would consume between 30,000 and 40,000 hotel room nights in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

Benderson is less specific about plans for its 1.1 million-square-foot mall, which had been slated to feature Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and a host of luxurious retailers before the Great Recession shelved the project.

If plans hold, Benderson would be debuting its shopping complex just after one of the dullest economies in seven decades, leaving doubts about its ability to land upscale tenants.

While luxury retailers have outperformed generally in the past two years, Neiman Marcus and others in the sector have been reluctant to commit to new stores.

Likewise, many traditional mall merchants have suffered as consumers have embraced online sales or shifted shopping patterns to discounters like Costco Wholesale Corp.

“The economy, unfortunately, is what it is at this point,” said Mark Chait, Benderson’s executive director of leasing for the Southeast.

“But looking forward, we feel it will be the right time when we are ready to begin construction,” he added. “And with all of our other leasing around University Park, it’s been unbelievably phenomenal. We are truly one of the most under-retailed areas in all of Florida.”

Chait said, however, that the company has not struck any deals with prospective mall anchor tenants. The town center will debut with at least three anchors, though it will be designed for four.

The company has been in negotiations with Saks Fifth Ave., Macy’s and others within the past year, retail sources say, to anchor University Town Center, a regional mall expected to compete with both Westfield Corp.’s Southgate Mall and Tampa’s International Plaza.

Westfield fought Benderson’s efforts after the mall won county approval in early 2007, but it could not be determined if the Australian mall owner would attempt to block University Town Center again.

Westfield officials have not returned a Tuesday afternoon telephone call or e-mail.

Blackketter added Suncoast Aquatic will also be focusing on raising $20 million to construct a boathouse and other amenities on its planned island within the lake. That money would be in addition to the roughly $20 million in public funds to develop the rowing complex at Nathan Benderson Park.

Blackketter said the park operating entity will focus on revenue-generating activities to repay public funding and make the park self-sufficient and financially sustainable.

It also hopes to attract community-oriented events and competitions such as triathalons or kayak races, he said.

Copyright © 2011 HeraldTribune.com — All rights reserved. Restricted use only

Sarasota Herald Tribune

Staff report

Published: Monday, October 17, 2011 at 11:29 a.m.

SARASOTA – Their local digs are not quite ready, and it is not yet showtime, but the endangered black-footed penguins who will be the star attraction at Mote Marine Laboratory next month still had on their tuxedos Monday.

The six endangered black-footed penguins were on display briefly Monday — with all their tuxedo-like feathering — during a sneak-peek provided to local media as a way to build anticipation about the new Penguin Island exhibit opening at Mote on Nov. 1.

The penguins were flown to Sarasota recently from their permanent home at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif. as part of an exchange program. The penguins are native to South Africa, where they are endangered in the wild. Mote wants to display the penguins to show how marine life across the world faces the same threats — loss of habitat, pollution and environmental changes – as species native to this area.

Mote is still building the island home for the penguins; the display will open on Nov. 1 and run through February. For more information, call 388-4441, or online at www.mote.org. Viewing of Penguin Island will be included in the regular Mote admission price.

Tickets are $17 for adults, $16 for seniors older than 65 and $12 for children age 4 to 12. To learn more, call 388-4441. To learn more about Penguin Island, go to http://penguinisland.net/

The penguins flew by plane to Sarasota from Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif. Mote’s penguins are named Sly, South, Rudy, Oswald, Ninja and Coaster.

Sotheby’s International Realty network held a successful and sold out 2011 Global Networking Event October 24-27, 2011.

They were proud to welcome nearly 1,100 attendees from 30 countries!  Held in Miami, Fl at the Fontainbleau, this year’s event was touted as being the best networking event ever.

Staff and Wire Reports

Published: Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 1:00 p.m.

The number of homes under contract in the Sarasota-Bradenton market dropped about 8 percent from August, mirroring a trend that has been under way nationally for three months.

A total of 1,156 homes were under contract in the market last month. That figure — usually a reliable indicator of where the housing market is headed — is still up about 14 percent from a year ago.

Nationally, the index fell for the third straight month in September after the spring-and-summer peak buying season failed to entice new buyers. There is typically a one- to two-month lag between a contract and a completed deal.

The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that its index of sales agreements fell 4.6 percent last month to a reading of 84.5. A reading of 100 is considered healthy. The last time the index reached that high was in April 2010, the final month buyers could qualify for a federal tax credit.

The measure for the South was down 5.5 percent.

In the territory covered by the Sarasota Association of Realtors, 723 homes were under contract last month, down from 744 a year ago and 813 in August.

In Manatee, there were 433 pending sales, down slightly from 447 in August but still up about 41 percent from the same time a year ago.

The National Association of Realtors said there has been a growing number of buyers who have canceled contracts after appraisals showed that the homes were worth less than the buyers had bid. A sale is not final until a mortgage is closed. That means more “pending” sales are not turning into final sales.

“It is especially troubling, given the big August decline in long-term interest rates,” said Pierre Ellis, an analyst at Decision Economics.

Homes are the most affordable they have been in decades. Long-term mortgage rates are hovering at record lows, near 4 percent. Prices in some metro areas have been cut in half. Still, sales in most areas remain weak.

In part, that is because loans are harder to get. Many lenders are requiring 20 percent down payments and strong credit scores to qualify.

In September, sales of new homes rose after four straight monthly declines. But that was largely because builders had cut their prices in the face of depressed demand. This year is shaping up as the worst for new-home sales on records dating to 1963.

The number of people who signed home contracts had risen in both May and June before falling 7 percent over the past three months.

Contract signings fell across the country. September’s index fell 2.1 percent in the West, 4.7 percent in the Northeast and 6.2 percent in the Midwest.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Copyright © 2011 HeraldTribune.com — All rights reserved.