World class venue once was the pits

Before Nathan Benderson Park became a world-class rowing venue, it was a water-filled pit left over from the construction of Interstate 75.

Local rowing coaches knew better.

“We had our eyes on it. It was an interesting venue,” said Randy Higel, a co-founder of the Sarasota Crew and a former coach of the Sarasota Scullers.

In 2002, he flew over it in a small airplane just to get a better view of a potential course. Later that year, he made some of his youth rowing teams practice there before national competitions.

Fellow rowing coach Dragos Alexandru, a longtime head coach for the Sarasota Scullers, set up a regatta of about 150 participants at the site in December 2003, just to see if it could be done.

“We were all thinking, if we could have 2,000 meters, we could have an official-length race course,” Higel said, noting the existing course was about 1,800 meters. “If you went crooked from the southeastern corner to the northwestern corner (of the lake), you could almost get 2,000 meters.

“At that time, nobody was using that park,” he said.

In 2007 when Benderson Development Co. applied to build a mall near the site, at the southwest corner of Interstate 75 and University Parkway, rowers saw their opportunity. As part of the development approvals, Benderson would have to extend Cattlemen Road and design a master plan for the park.

If Benderson reconfigured the road plan, the lake could be extended. They pleaded their case and Benderson agreed, even though it would cost the company at least an extra $1 million to build it that way.

With approvals in hand, Benderson set its plans into motion — until December 2008, when the economy crashed suddenly. But what was bad for the mall ended up being good for the future Nathan Benderson Park.

“One day we’re building a caisson for the mall. The next day they are pulled of the site because the anchors pulled out of the deal,” said Paul Blackketter, then the project manager for Benderson Development. “It was complete devastation. I had such a sense of sadness. We were so excited about building the project because we put three to five years and hundred of thousands of hours into research and design.”

That same December, though, Blackketter asked his boss, Randy Benderson, if he could go to an Urban Land Institute conference on public-private partnerships in California. While there, he told contacts from Sarasota County that the mall project had died.

“It was a three-day conference, and it hit me,” Blackketter said. “The mall was no longer, but what if we switched efforts to the park and made the park an economic opportunity? We already new what that park would do for economic development. It was exasperation as a project manager.”

The death of one dream led to another.

When he returned to Benderson Development, he pitched the idea to Randy Benderson. He told him it could become one of the best rowing venues in the country, if not the world.

“He always said, ‘Come on Paul, you’re exaggerating. Be conservative.' He would always say, 'Don’t tell me, show me.’”

Ironically, a statewide drought in 2008 became the perfect opportunity. The Florida Scholastic Rowing Association Championships were to be held in Tampa on the Tampa Bypass Canal, but the course there had dried out too much and organizers needed another venue.

Alexandru knew the perfect place — a rectangular lake in Sarasota County near Interstate 75. He had hosted a regatta there before.

“If it wasn’t for the (economy) bubble popping and the mall dying, to this day, that park would just be a park."

It was overgrown and had a singular dirt road off Honore Avenue as access. But from a rower’s standpoint, the lake was beautiful with a perfectly rectangular shape.

“I knew what I had from the 2003 race,” Alexandru said. “When the drought happened, I felt the need to use what we have in town and approached them to move the race. I showed them a map of the lake so they saw what we have here.”

On Alexandru’s behalf, Blackketter pitched the idea to Benderson Development and to Sarasota County, but to no avail. He returned to Alexandru with the news.

“Coach said, ‘Too late. The train has left the station. I’ve already committed,’” Blackketter said. “That’s when the saying, ‘Failure is not an option’ came into play.”

Benderson’s team scrambled to action. Blackketter had never organized a regatta — in fact, very few people in his office had even been to one — but he’d overseen plenty of projects. Benderson’s team treated the event as if it were a development, creating a project plan, organizing a Regatta Organization Committee comprised of coaches and other rowing aficionados, a site plan and other check-list tasks.

“We looked at it differently,” said Derek Watts, Benderson’s director of design. “How could we hold an event and have amenities they weren’t use to? When we commit to something, we’re all in. How can we do something in such a way as to make an impression. You only have one chance to make a great impression.”

Local rowing teams, community members and Benderson employees worked to get the site ready, mowing overgrown grass, clearing trees and building docks and other infrastructure required.

“That’s when all the clubs came together to work in harmony,” Blackketter said. “It was so awesome. This has been a complete community effort.”

Higel added: “It was everybody pitching in to get it done. We had the kids out pulling weeds from both teams. Alex and I were trying to put lane lines in. We were building platforms with the masters programs and we built the floating docks.

“That was the beginning of the thing that set the wheels in motion and everybody understood what the potential could be,” he said.

A smaller collegiate regatta served as a test-run for the ultimate event. Benderson Development fronted money and people to give regatta-goers amenities not typically at events, including air-conditioned port-o-lets. They had a hospitality tent with LED-televisions, and, at any given time, there were 30 Benderson employees working on site to help park vehicles, direct guests and volunteers and handle other logistics. Benderson Development even trucked in temporary landscaping to give the venue a “first-class” look.

“We had Randy (Benderson) and his wife and family were out there cleaning tables, picking on trash,” Higel said. “That was pretty neat. Everybody was willing to invest sweat.

After the park hosted the state rowing championships in 2009, Blackketter spent nearly every weekend the next year visiting regattas and rowing venues throughout the United States, at the urging and expense of his employer.

Before his first trip, he bought a blue North Face backpack that carried his camera, a notebook and other supplies.

At each venue, he talked with volunteers, coaches, athletes, event organizers and facilities managers. What’s bad? What’s good? What would it take to have the best in the world?

Every time he returned, he told Randy Benderson that Sarasota County could have the best rowing venue in the world.

“He told me not to exaggerate — say the best in the Southeast, but don’t say best in the U.S. Don’t say best in the world. Nobody’s going to believe you,” Blackketter recalled.

But Blackketter stood firm in his beliefs.

“You made me travel for a year. I’m telling you, it could be one of the best in the world,” Blackketter had told him. “Randy said, ‘If you’re going to stand by that, then go see them throughout the world. He sent me.”

In 2010, Blackketter took his first international trip to Lake Karapiro in New Zealand, and after that he went all over the world, including to Henley Royal Regatta in England. He took pictures and gathered data, just as he did stateside. This time, however, he met with World Rowing Federation (FISA) officials and showed them his dream for Nathan Benderson Park. Everywhere he went internationally, they saw him there, taking notes and working to make the facility better than any of the others he’d visited.

By 2012, FISA said they were interested in the site to host the World Rowing Championships in 2017. Completion of a finish tower and other improvements would be needed to host the event — a bid the park won about a year later.

Since then, the nonprofit Suncoast Aquatic Nature Center Associates (SANCA), which Blackketter lead from 2014 to 2016, assumed operations of the park, beginning community programming and hosting events.

The nonprofit Nathan Benderson Community Park Foundation has raised money for a children’s playground and bathrooms and other park amenities. The Benderson family fully funded the $6.5 million required for the glassy finish tower required to host the world rowing championships.

And the foundation is continuing to fundraise for a future two-level boathouse that will house rowing vessels from various teams, have restrooms and workout facilities and an upstairs lake-view banquet hall. So far, there’s only a conceptual design for the project and no construction timeline has been announced.

Randy Benderson says development of the park itself is satisfying, but seeing it become a community centerpiece full of walkers, bike riders, fishermen and picnickers is the most rewarding.

“It reminds me that my father, Nathan Benderson, was the person who envisioned everything that the University/Cooper Creek area has now become,” Randy Benderson said. “ As an avid bide rider, he rode through the former sleepy Cooper Creek Park and said that he saw it one day becoming the crown jewel of parks on the west coast of Florida. To see it becoming exactly that, and bearing his name, is a wonderful feeling for me and all those in my family.”