Commissioner Knight casts lone ‘No’ votes
On May 5, representatives of Siesta Key Watersports again asked the Sarasota County Commission to allow the business to continue to operate, at least in the short-term, on the 2.04-acre site known as The Boatyard on Stickney Point Road, if the board that day approved the county’s purchase of the property.
However, the majority of the board members agreed to proceed with a “clean sheet of paper,” as Commission Chair Ron Cutsinger put it.
The company will have to vacate the site by May 14, in accord with the county motion that passed 4-1, with Commissioner Tom Knight in the minority.
Addressing representatives of the business in the audience at the Robert. L. Anderson Administration Center in Venice, Commissioner Joe Neunder noted that it is his understanding that Siesta Key Watersports has found another location to which it can move, “albeit [to a site that is not like] what you currently have.”
No representative of the company disputed that.
A Sarasota News Leader check of the business’ website found that, as of May 15, Siesta Key Watersports will be making its home at 5253 S. Tamiami Trail in Sarasota.
On May 5, the board members also adopted the necessary resolution so the county can issue $20,770,000 in bonds to cover the $18.1 million price, plus “the closing costs and a portion of the debt service [on those bonds] and start-up activities and improvements,” as a staff memo in the May 5 agenda packet explained the need for that amount.
Commissioner Knight also voted against the bond motion, which passed 4-1, as well. He again expressed his concern about the purchase price, though he said the seller, Chris Brown of Osprey, “is a fine man.”
Brown owns a number of businesses on Siesta Key, including the Hub Baja Grill and the Beach Club in Siesta Village.
The funds for The Boatyard deal will come out of the revenue derived from the voter-approved tax that supports the county’s Land Acquisition and Management Program, which includes the Environmentally Sensitive Lands Acquisition Program and the Neighborhood Parkland Program.
As Shawn Yeager, acting director of the county’s Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Department (PRNR), pointed out during his May 5 presentation on The Boatyard purchase proposal, the county commission’s 2024 Strategic Plan called for staff to work on more boating access and “possible opportunities for the county to create more.”
During the discussion — which lasted about 40 minutes, including the staff remarks — both Chair Cutsinger and Commissioner Neunder talked of their vision of the acquisition as a legacy project for the county.
Even Commissioner Teresa Mast, who represents District 1, — which is “out east,” as she pointed out — also noted her constituents’ support for the county’s efforts to gain more public access to the water.
“They don’t have a lot of water access unless you talk about hurricanes,” Mast said of the District 1 residents. Yet, during her conversations with them, she indicated that their responses to her inquiries about their views of the purchase of The Boatyard were, resoundingly, “ ‘Can we please have more access?’ ”
Nonetheless, Mast continued, “Do I wish we were getting this at a lot cheaper price? Heck, yeah.”
Options for amenities on the site
During his presentation, Yeager of Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources acknowledged that questions had arisen about staff’s assertion that the property has 700 feet of frontage on Little Sarasota Bay. That figure, he said, “includes the 336 linear feet fronting the [Intracoastal Waterway]” and the Stickney Point Road drawbridge, “plus 390 linear feet [of] the boat basin.”
While those figures add up to 726 linear feet, he continued, that results from “overlap and redundancy.”
Then, as he had during the Feb. 10 commission meeting, Yeager reviewed the benefits to the county of acquiring the property, as detailed in a slide.
Public meetings would be conducted about the use of the property before a full concept plan were brought to the commissioners for review, Yeager noted.
Further, he told the board members, questions had arisen about the number of slips at the dock. The tally estimated to be available, in accord with the provisions of the County Code, is 30 to 40, as they are laid out, he added.
He stressed that another slide listing potential amenities on the site reflected options only. “Things that we wouldn’t necessarily consider,” Yeager continued, are “a motorized boat ramp, a full restaurant and a playground …” However, he said, staff might consider allowing concessionaires to operate on the property.
Turning next to the preliminary concept plan that Chair Cutsinger had requested on April 21, Yeager referenced Section A, explaining that the existing structures include “the iconic lighthouse as well as, potentially, an operation support building.” If that latter structure “is viable,” Yeager said, it would be kept on the site for county use.
Section B, he noted, contains the parking and pedestrian access. Mobile vending opportunities could be situated in that area, he pointed out.
One portion of that section already is in county ownership, he told the commissioners. That was property that the county received from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) when the county traded North River Road to the state agency in return for the county’s taking over the roads on Siesta Key. (The goal of that trade was to speed up completion of improvements on that part of River Road in South County, commissioners emphasized at the time.)
The area denoted “C” that is adjacent to Stickney Point Road could be used for canoe and kayak launches, Yeager continued. On the south side of the site, the area labeled “C” could have docks and boardwalks, he said, with the 30 to 40 boat slips. The section of that “C” area fronting on Little Sarasota Bay could be the access for people who would like to fish, he added.
In that area, he noted, when staff was working on an evaluation of the site, “We saw someone pull a nice snook out of this area. Fishing is pretty good in this area.”
The section labeled “D,” Yeager said, could accommodate shade structures and picnic facilities, as well as “open lawn [and] two-pole shelters … It would be public access. People could just come in and have a picnic and look over the water,” he noted. They also could wait for tours there, Yeager said, or wait there for family members to return from tours.
He further noted the vegetative buffers that were labeled “E.”
Emphasizing the need for public access to the water
As the discussion proceeded, Commissioner Mark Smith explained that the members of the Commercial Water-Based Charter Boat Tour Operators Task Force that the board established prior to the November 2024 elections of Commissioners Mast and Knight had learned through approximately two months of work and interviews with “basically charter boat captains and tour operators” that two major groups exist. One comprises companies with larger boats and larger operations, he said, while the other is made up of “what they call ‘the 6-pack.’ ”
The latter tour operators, Smith continued, can operate out of their own docks “and have a maximum of six passengers.”
The task force, he said, recommended to the commission “that the 6-pack folks were going to be the focus [of a county permit program for fishing charter and tour boats using county water-access parks]. … The folks that have the larger boats “actually have the opportunity to rent slips,” Smith pointed out.
(As the task force’s Sept. 11, 2024 report explained, its work “was [authorized] in response to an increase in unauthorized commercial watercraft using [county] parks and amenities as the pick-up and drop-off location for guests of private charters. In the Board Assignment, staff reported several considerations and possible challenges associated with starting a permit program for fishing charter and/or tour boats within the County water access parks.)
The smaller operators, Smith further noted on May 5, do not generate the level of income — in the $100,000 range, annually — that the larger ones do.
Out of the 60 commercial vessel operators who responded to a county survey in conjunction with the work of the task force, he added, 65% voted in favor of a potential permit program for the 6-pack operations.
“In my opinion,” Smith told his colleagues, “this [Boatyard property] is the perfect location” for the 6-pack operators, “especially since a good deal of our parks were damaged [by the 2024 hurricanes].”
“With that in mind,” Smith continued, “I don’t see any reason to continue talking to Siesta Key Watersports, because they’re not the target industry that we’re looking for …”
Commissioner Neunder told his colleagues that he believes all of the commissioners try to focus on what they feel will be in the “best interests of our community. And we’re a coastal community; we know tourism, especially in that area, plays a significant role in the quality of life,” especially for families and children.
He pointed out that the county does not have sufficient public access to the water.
“Destination places such as something like this [Boatyard site], the public will use,” he added, agreeing with Smith, as well, that the purchase of the property will assist charter boat captains.
Chair Cutsinger talked of his appreciation of the fact that the board members agreed to pause their authorization of the bonds for a couple of weeks — action they took on April 21 — to delve more into the relevant issues. Then he noted, “I’ve been one of the ones pounding the table” on the issue of the county’s providing more water access. “Water’s our golden ticket here in Sarasota County,” he stressed, but he added that the price is high.
Cutsinger said he also had given much thought to the potential of “displacing a thriving business.” Nonetheless, he continued, he found it difficult to proceed with the acquisition with a business remaining on the site, given government procurement laws.
“The price is challenging for me,” Cutsinger continued. However, he said, believes that people need to look out five to 10 or 15 years into the future. On many occasions, he said, he had bought property and worried that he had paid too much for it only to learn after several years that he had been “a genius,” getting such a good deal on it because of its rise in value.
He also noted his belief in the “generational impact” of the county’ purchase of the site.
Commissioner Mast also expressed support for the purchase option with no businesses present, even for a short term.
Commissioner Smith ended up making the motion that called for the purchase to proceed, as presented, without offering any short-term lease to Siesta Key Watersports, and Commissioner Neunder seconded it.
After that motion passed 4-1, Chair Cutsinger made the motion to approve the bond resolution as staff had presented it. With Smith seconding it, that motion also passed 4-1, with Knight in the minority.