Commissioners note concerns about arsenic contamination of property, which is under FDEP management
Even with concerns about environmental contamination on the property, the Sarasota County commissioners this week voted unanimously to direct staff to negotiate with the owner of the Gulf Gate Golf Course for the purchase of the land for a stormwater initiative.
Before making the motion for that action, Commissioner Joe Neunder addressed members of the audience in the Commission Chambers of the R.L. Anderson Administration Center in Venice who had urged the board that morning to buy the property. He told them he believes they “broke a record” with the number of emails they had sent to the commissioners, “and that’s not a small feat.”
Neunder added, “I think that the homeowners did a fantastic job with articulating the ask.”
“After 2024, [with] three back-to-back hurricanes,” he continued, “we are — at least I think we are — hyper-aware and hyper-focused on stormwater mitigation.”
Matt Osterhoudt, director of the county’s Planning and Development Services Department, reported during a Feb. 10 presentation to the board members that the owner of the land, Gulf Gate Holdings LLC, has re-engaged with county staff to determine whether the county has an interest in buying the land.
However, Osterhoudt pointed out more than once during his remarks, Gulf Gate Holdings has not given staff a price for the approximately 48.9 acres, which is about 0.72 miles from Little Sarasota Bay.
Osterhoudt said that a market study that Gulf Gate Holdings produced estimated the value of the property at $25 million, if it were to be fully developed. Conversations among county staff members and the owner and the owner’s legal representative suggested that the asking price “would be lower,” he added.
The manager of Gulf Gate Holdings LLC is Arnaud Karsenti, who also is the managing principal of 13th Floor Investments, a Miami real estate investment and development firm based in Miami, according to its website.
Osterhoudt added that third-party appraisals that the county obtained put the value of the property between $6,527,000 and $9.5 million. A certified appraiser on county staff came up with the figure of $5.3 million, he said.
State law requires such appraisals, he reminded the board members, whenever a local government is considering the purchase of property. However, the commission could pay a higher price by pursuing certain steps also outlined in state law, he indicated.
Further, Osterhoudt cautioned the board members, the county has no funding identified for the acquisition of the golf course, remediation of contaminants, or the design, construction or long-term maintenance of the land if it were to be designated for stormwater purposes.
However, he did note, staff could work on obtaining state and federal stormwater and resilience grants. Further, Osterhoudt said, stormwater assessment revenue could be allocated to the effort, if the commissioners voted to take such action.
“So we need a lot more information,” Chair Ron Cutsinger said at one point during the discussion.
During Osterhoudt’s presentation, he also explained that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) is managing the property and overseeing its remediation, with arsenic contamination the primary factor.
County staff could be faced with securing FDEP permits for improvements of the site, if the county bought it, he said.
Although Commissioner Neunder has been a champion of the county’s purchase of the land, he, too, acknowledged the environmental issues as he and his colleagues discussed how to proceed.
Part of the motion that Neunder ended up making on Feb. 10 called for staff “to engage the services of a qualified third-party engineering firm to analyze the site and develop cost estimates associated with environmental remediation, including arsenic impacts.”
A December 2008 report by multiple authors that has been made available on the website of the National Library of Medicine, titled Arsenic Transport and Transformation Associated with MSMA Application on a Golf Course Green, says, “A survey conducted on Florida golf courses showed that about 96% of golf courses spray herbicides containing the active ingredient monosodium methylarsonate (MSMA),” which contains arsenic.
The study points out, “Long-term exposure to low concentrations of arsenic in drinking water can lead to skin, bladder, lung, and prostate cancers.”
County staff will return to the board, Osterhoudt said, with a report on the negotiations with Gulf Gate Holdings, as well as the result of the environmental findings and “a proposed agreement for board consideration.”
A brief history of the site
Osterhoudt explained to the commissioners that their predecessors in 2016 approved the rezoning of the Gulf Gate Golf Course property from Residential Estate 1 to Residential Single-Family-1/Planned Unit Development, which would allow up to 106 single-family homes.
The board members seated at that time approved a Binding Development Concept Plan for the site, he added.
That rezoning “generated a significant neighborhood opposition at that time, which has continued on till today,” Osterhoudt pointed out.
The developer has received approval to begin site development, he noted, but “Construction has not commenced.”
The authorization for the construction will expire on April 16, 2027 if the developer does not seek an extension, he added.
“No building permits have been issued,” Osterhoudt also pointed out.
Last year, he continued, the commissioners included the consideration of the potential impacts of the county’s acquisition of the golf course for a stormwater initiative. Then, they agreed that their 2026 Strategic Plan should include a focus on “Legacy Regional Stormwater Facilities.”
The Gulf Gate Community Association, Osterhoudt noted, has called for the county to buy the property for flood mitigation, the improvement of water quality and for the resiliency of their neighborhood. He added that the commissioners heard residents of that area talk of even more benefits when they spoke during the Open to the Public comment period that morning.
The cost of dealing with the contamination issue
During the discussion, Commissioner Mark Smith asked Osterhoudt about what Smith said he understood to be “a considerable amount of contamination on the site.” Smith added that he wondered whether potential buyers of lots — if the site were developed into a single-family community — would be made about the condition of the land.
“I’m for the purchase of the property,” Smith said, “if nothing else, to save people from living on top of arsenic.”
Nonetheless, he continued, “I really need to know how much it’s going to cost to clean it up in order to negotiate with the property owner … We have to justify what we eventually come to as the … purchase price,” he added. “We have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers,” Smith pointed out. “Paying five times the amount for poisonous property doesn’t seem to be the thing to do.”
Commissioner Teresa Mast said, “Commissioner Smith and I are on the same page here. … I know it’s kind of a ‘buyer beware’ type thing.”
She was not interested in seeing the county purchase the site if the price is $25 million, Mast pointed out. “I’m in favor of purchasing it, but I want it to be at the right price.”
She asked for confirmation from County Attorney Joshua Moye that it would become the county’s responsibility to clean up the site if the county purchased the property. Moye indicated that she was correct.
“I think what’s critical in this case is for us to have a due diligence period that might need to be an extended period of time,” Mast continued, if she and her colleagues agreed to try to buy the land. “That information [about the expected expense of cleaning up the property] is very vital [to the process].”
Further, based on data about recent real estate sales, she estimated that the value of each of the 106 lots — if the site were developed for single-family dwelling units — would be between $200,000 and $250,000. “That’s $26.1 million, give or take.”
Mast added that she was struggling with the potential price that Gulf Gate Holdings mighty ask of the county. “We’re under very restrained times, budgetary, right now.”
Yet, Mast continued, “I think this could be an incredible opportunity for us to be able to have a legacy project here.”
At one point, Commissioner Tom Knight asked County Attorney Moye, “If [the contamination] is as bad as we hope it isn’t, and we want to buy [the land] … could that property be condemned? … How does that work legally?”
County Administrator Lewis asked Chair Ron Cutsinger whether he could reply before Moye. When Cutsinger agreed, Lewis said, “The questions you guys are asking are exactly the types of things that [Osterhoudt] needs to hear, because those are exactly why we want to go through that process, if the board’s even interested in a potential acquisition. We do have some of the documents that are publicly available through [FDEP],” Lewis added.
Since FDEP “is the regulatory agency [handling the remediation],” he continued, “it’s their job to inform [the public about the department’s findings].”
If directed by the commissioners that day to proceed with negotiations regarding purchase of the site, Lewis said, the details about the contamination would be part of the information that he and his staff would provide to them.
“We need to look out for this county,” Knight responded. “The owner may not be able to build on it.”
“If the county did buy [the property],” Lewis told Knight, whatever requirements FDEP staff stipulated for use of the site would become the county’s responsibility.
Pleas to consider the potential
Among the 14 speakers — by count of The Sarasota News Leader — who talked that morning about the potential county purchase of the land, 9-year-old Ayla Duenes told the board members that she had come to talk with them “about protecting the wildlife and keeping the nature in my neighborhood. Each day when I go outside,” she said, “I get to see so many different animals and insects. Many of them visit from their homes on the golf course.”
Ayla added, “I love watching the bunnies eating and petting the lizards as they sunbathe. One thing I really love is watching the birds.”
While she and her family have worked to entice birds to their yard, she continued, “My mom says they need their own habitat. This is why I want to thank you for considering making the old golf course behind my house a forever home for these creatures.”
David Hauser, treasurer of the Gulf Gate Community Association, noted that the organization represents 1,500 residents. He is one of those whose property abuts the golf course, he told the commissioners, adding that 128 other homesites are like his.
The association dates to Feb. 1, 1963, Hauser explained. “Today, Gulf Gate stands as a multi-generational, walkable, deeply connected community whose character, history and stability are tied directly to the abutting green spaces that buffer its homes and define its sense of place.”
Referring to the golf course, he pointed out, “This property is not simply another developable parcel. It is a vital component of Sarasota County’s stormwater system.”
Another Gulf Gate resident, Miguel Rivera, who served on the county’s Stormwater Environmental Utility Advisory Committee (SEUAC) for seven years, pointed out that the potential purchase of the nearly 49 acres “is a unique opportunity.” The land could store stormwater “during extreme rain events,” he noted, “and avoid the flooding of streets and homes.”
That water storage also would allow time for residents to evacuate, if that were necessary, Rivera told the board members.
Further, he said, the diversion of stormwater to the property would allow for the removal of harmful nutrients and sediment as the water filtered into the ground. The elimination of those nutrients, he explained, would help improve water quality and lessen the potential for red tide. (Nitrogen, which is common in stormwater, as scientists have explained, is the primary food for the algae that causes red tide.)
Thus, removal of the nutrients would be a step in protecting the county’s economy, “waters we enjoy and quality of life,” Rivera said.
The removal of sediment, he added, would decrease the need “for costly dredging.”