Do residents want a larger park in Indian Beach?

In November, Maynard Hiss went before the city’s Parks, Recreation and Environmental Protection Board to advocate for a pet cause: the expansion of Indian Beach Park to the north and the south.

Hiss had nominated two parcels near the park for inclusion in the county’s Neighborhood Parkland Acquisition Program. He hoped that, with board approval, those parcels could be added to the city’s “A list” — the properties it most wanted the county to acquire for conversion into parkland.

The board was intrigued, but needed more feedback from residents. Hiss lives near, but not in, the Indian Beach/Sapphire Shores neighborhood west of Tamiami Trail in north Sarasota. The board postponed a decision until that feedback was gathered. On March 19, Hiss came back to the board. Sarah Hernandez and Natalie Firnhaber, two Indian Beach/Sapphire Shores residents, joined him — and presented a petition of about 70 residents in favor of the parkland acquisition.

If the board had questions about the neighborhood support before, it didn’t anymore. In a unanimous decision, the parks board recommended that the city place the two parcels on the “A list.”

It was only after this decision that a large portion of the Indian Beach/Sapphire Shores neighborhood became aware of the pace at which the potential expansion was advancing.

The same type of support for the parkland acquisition did not exist in this group, and some were aghast at the prospect. At Monday’s City Commission meeting, five speakers either opposed the proposal or wanted more information, claiming  others in the area held the same opinion.

“It’s a beautiful community. We all love it, and I’m horrified to hear the city is thinking about making a park there.” 

Both groups urged the city to ignore the parks board’s recommendation — for now, at least.

“It’s a beautiful community,” said resident Julie Trigg. “We all love it, and I’m horrified to hear the city is thinking about making a park there.” 

Unanswered Questions

According to David Morriss, president of the Indian Beach/Sapphire Shores Neighborhood Association, Hiss came before the residents group in November to explain his proposal to them. The neighborhood association said it needed time to get feedback from residents, but it also needed answers to three key questions.

The group’s first concern was parking, something the park was already lacking and a problem that figured only to get worse upon expansion. The second was funding, a major unknown considering the financial constraints of both the city and county. The last was safety — another major, established issue within the current boundaries of the park.

Morriss said the group never received the answers to those questions, which is why news of the parks board’s decision caught them by surprise. On Monday, the commission decided to take no action in favor of gathering more neighborhood feedback, a step Morriss agreed was necessary before a decision was made. 

“It’s a big issue,” Morris said. “There needs to be a lot more people involved than a neighborhood board or a few people who want to see a park or a few people who don’t want to see a park.”

At the commission meeting, residents spoke of illicit activities such as drug dealing and prostitution taking place in the park, a stretch of right of way with beach access along Bay Shore Road. Morriss said some people play up the severity of the problem, but others don’t acknowledge a crime problem exists at all.

Unlike Sapphire Shores Park, which has a substantial residential population nearby, he said Indian Beach Park lacks natural monitoring that might help combat that type of behavior. 

In advocating for the expansion, Hiss said obtaining additional parkland was important for a neighborhood sorely lacking it. Morriss agreed, as the neighborhood has just two small pocket parks for 1,200 households.

Hiss said he never returned to the neighborhood association because he was never invited back, and he pushed forward because he wanted to take action while the land was on the market.

“These lots are for sale,” Hiss said. “They’re not going to be for sale for a long time.”

If the county were to acquire the land to use as a park, it would be under county control going forward. According to Todd Kucharski, the city’s public works general manager, the county has done nothing more than mow the grass at the parkland within the city it has acquired via this program — which causes some concern.

“It’s always difficult to say no when you have the opportunity for parkland, but this is one of the ones that even I struggled through,” Kucharski said. “There’s the economic benefit of having buildings there that would help our taxes, but there’s also the thought of, ‘Boy, more park space.’”

On Monday, the City Commission agreed to hold a noticed public hearing to allow residents of the neighborhood to offer their input on the parkland acquisition. Morriss is hopeful that, now that the issue is on everybody’s radar, a productive dialogue can begin about whether expansion is in the neighborhood’s best interest.

“The city’s better equipped to do a full scale workshop and to provide the clean, accurate answers, much more so than the neighborhood association,” Morriss said. “That’s where I think the real exposure can happen.”