Facility expected to cost up to $80 million
Not only has Benderson Development Co. provided a commitment to pay for 20% of the expense of the planned Multi-Sport Complex and Boathouse, the chief operating officer of the Nathan Benderson Park Conservancy told the Sarasota County commissioners this week, “but, I think more importantly, we have a guarantee from Benderson Development” to cover any funding gap for the facility.
The total estimated cost of the structure at Benderson Park is $75 million to $80 million, as shown on one of the slides that Bruce Patneaude presented during the board’s Aug. 25 regular meeting in the new County Administration standing at 1 Apex Road, near the Celery Fields.
“We are now in our capital campaign,” Patneaude further noted. If that undertaking does not bring in the rest of the necessary money, he said, Benderson will make it possible for the complex to be completed by the time the park hosts its second World Rowing Championships, in August 2028.
Benderson Park is named for the founder of Benderson Development.
In 2014, the Benderson family put up nearly $6 million to pay for the Finish Tower on the park property; it was the solitary structure necessary to the park’s hosting the 2017 World Rowing Championships.
Along with the Benderson Development pledge, Patneaude reminded the commissioners that their predecessors seated in 2022 agreed to commit to the project $20 million out of the county’s Tourist Development Tax — or, “bed tax” — revenue, and the state awarded the park $10 million this year for the sports complex. The state funding, Patneaude explained, was in recognition that the facility could be used in the aftermath of natural disasters as a center for logistics and organizational purposes, plus meetings regarding post-recovery initiatives.
At one point, Commissioner Teresa Mast asked Patneaude, “When is this going to be completed?”
The belief, he replied, is “that it will be completed in the summer of 2028.” The groundbreaking is anticipated to take place this November, Patneaude added.
“I just wanted to be sure that was stated loud and clear,” Mast said.
“There’s nothing like a deadline of having the World Rowing Championships coming to your county,” Chair Ron Cutsinger, who represents the county on the Benderson Park board of directors, teased Patneaude.
“If I could push it,” Patneaude told Cutsinger, “I’d push June … It’ll work out.”
He spent 12 years at IMG Academy in Manatee County, “doing the same thing,” Patneaude added. “And we built buildings within 14, 15 months every single time — similar facilities.” (Patneaude was vice president of operations at IMG from August 2010 until Aug. 2022, his LinkedIn account says.)
The brochures for the Multi-Sport Complex/Boathouse capital campaign recently were printed, Patneaude told the commissioners. “We’ve been in a quiet period for about six months,” he continued, but with the capital campaign team in place, that initiative will be getting fully under way, he indicated.
Another major announcement Patneaude made during his Aug. 25 remarks is that USRowing leaders are looking into the prospect of moving into the new complex. Further, he said, the USRowing national team will make Benderson Park “its permanent base.”
“And the [National] Rowing Hall of Fame is interested in moving its base, its home, into Sarasota, Florida, into this building.”
Patneaude also told the board members that the park itself generates approximately $20 million a year in economic impact. With the new facility open, he added, he expects, conservatively, another $20 million per year. “Between the two of them,” he continued, he believes that the total, annual economic impact will be in the range of $50 million to $60 million.
Design details and renderings
“We are at a point where the architects we hired a year ago have made tremendous progress,” Patneaude told the board as he discussed the design. “We’ve almost completed the schematic drawings,” which deal with form and function, he noted.
Thus, he continued, the Benderson Park staff knows what the structure will look like on the interior and mostly on the exterior.
“We’re also in for permitting,” he said. The site permit is expected in the October timeframe, Patneaude added.
The facility will have eight basketball courts, with “100,000 square feet of hardwood flooring,” he noted. That space could be transformed into “16 volleyball courts [or] 32 pickleball courts,” he said. That facet of the design also will allow for the Conservancy — which manages the park and oversees events — to bring in dance and cheerleading competitions, for examples, he added. “You name it; wrestling, martial arts.”
Patneaude also pointed out that when he began his work with the Conservancy, Nicole Rissler, then the director of the county’s Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Department — and now an assistant county administrator — told him “this building needed to elevate the current situation with rowing — not that it was bad.” It just needed to be better, he paraphrased another remark from Rissler.
Over the past three years, Patneaude continued, “We’ve been talking to stakeholders, to [representatives of] different venues, different boathouses,” to various event holders, in an effort “to figure out what’s the best we can do to make this [design] even better than what it is currently.”
For example, he pointed out, the weather is typically hot for events at Benderson Park. The facility will serve the athletes as a place where they can get out of that heat, and it will allow them to warm up before their competitions, he said.
“This gives volunteers a better place to eat,” he further noted.
Patneaude presented a number of renderings to the commissioners to illustrate the various aspects of the plans.
“We spent a lot of time on the west side of the building,” he said of one second slide. “We wanted it to be as festive looking during an event as it currently does,” he added. Team tents are brought in for every event, Patneaude noted.
“We added more shade, basically, to this side of the building,” he continued — a feature “that USRowing has asked me to do … to bring down [the outdoor] temperature” for the athletes on-site.
Turning to the boathouse, Patneaude pointed out, “We’ll have 10 boat bays. Some will be for paddling, some for repair, and some will be for storage,” he said. “And the national team will have some bays as well, because they’ll be housed in this building.”
He next showed the commissioners an aerial rendering, so they could see where the complex will be located on Regatta Island in the park. The building footprint, he noted, “is a little under 4 acres …” Therefore, he added, the sports complex/boathouse will comprise about 15% of the island’s 25 acres.
Parking for both trailers and vehicles will be on the east side of the island, he pointed out. “We will make every event work,” based on the experience with those that the park has been hosting, he said. “A lot of studies and a lot of research has gone into that.”
One slide showed the stairway planned to lead up to the National Rowing Hall of Fame, he noted.
“I’ve been to more boathouses and venues than I thought I ever would,” Patneaude pointed out, referring to the research that has gone into the design.
The comment was reminiscent of a remark that Paul Blackketter, the former president of the first nonprofit organization that managed the park — Suncoast Aquatic Nature Center Associates, or SANCA — used to tell groups in discussing plans for the boathouse that go back about 13 years.
During his visits to other complexes, Patneaude told the commissioners this week, he has learned about mistakes that representatives of those facilities said they had made, which helped guide the work on the Benderson Park plans. “We’ve put a lot of that knowledge into this building …”
Commissioner Tom Knight, a former three-term sheriff in the county, did tell Patneaude that his biggest concern “is parking and traffic and the pedestrians … So please keep an eye on that.”
If the events go well with the new complex in place, as the commissioners hope, Knight indicated that the pedestrian traffic will become heavier. Yet, Cattlemen Road, which Benderson Park borders, is a four-lane road, Knight noted. (Mote Marine Laboratory’s Mote Science Education Aquarium — Mote SEA — and the Mall at University Town Center both are located in close proximity to the park.)
Knight also prompted laughter from Commissioner Mast when he inquired about the age an adult must be to enter the Masters Rowing program, so all of the board members could participate in it.
Glancing at Chair Cutsinger, Knight added, “It’s a drive up from Englewood,” where Cutsinger lives, to Benderson Park, “but it’s good to know [that age].”
Patneaude explained that the Masters level is what anyone beyond college age is eligible to participate in; the minimum age is around 22, “and we have Masters that are in their 80s …”
After that conversation, Mast told Patneaude, “I would just like to say, ‘Thank you very much.’ This is in my backyard,” she continued, referring to the fact that she represents District 1 in the county, where the park is located. “And I want you to know that there’s a level of high expectation, and I know you know that. …
“Thank you for the attention to detail,” she continued, adding, “I’m looking forward to that ribbon cutting. I can’t wait.”
Mast also pointed out that the site of the park years ago was a borrow pit for the construction of Interstate 75. “And now we have a world-class — and I do mean, world-class — facility that is one of the many gems in Sarasota County.”