- December 21, 2024
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What was scheduled as an update on its progress for the second phase of The Bay park during its final meeting of 2024, the Sarasota County Commission received an object lesson on how nature outperforms the built environment.
Before getting into the status of work on The Bay Phase 2 at the Dec. 17 meeting, Bay Park Conservancy Founding CEO AG Lafley addressed commissioners on how the park performed during the wind and storm surge onslaught of Hurricane Milton. The park never closed, Lafley said, was cleaned quickly and sustained an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 damage to its thus far $35 million investment.
“We were resilient, and one of the biggest things we learned was native, natural Florida outperforms the built environment almost every time,” Lafley said. "If you compared what happened at Bayfront Park, what happened at The Bay park, what happened at the Van Wezel, you would have seen what I mean.”
Just south of The Bay, the city’s Bayfront Park remained closed through the end of the year and the bayfront area between the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall and along the parking lot remains a tangled mess of destroyed pier materials, broken sidewalk and displaced boulders along the waterfront.
That portion of The Bay is currently being redesigned as a resilient shoreline, for which Lafley said the BPC is "doubling down" after the worst-case scenario presented by Milton.
Phase 1 of The Bay, meanwhile, never closed to the public and programming resumed within 24 hours. As for Phase 2, Lafley said the Canal District, the Cultural District and the resilient shoreline remain on schedule.
"At the end of (December), we'll have a 60% design for the resilient shoreline. The design is done for the Canal District, and in January, we'll have 100% design done for the Cultural District,” Lafley said. “We've made some scope adjustments, and we've realigned budget priorities, but everything will end up being on plan, on schedule and on or under budget.”
In the Canal District, the BPC has already completed dredging the 10th Street canal in preparation for expansion of the current boat launch on the north side and construction of day docks on the south side, removing 3,000 cubic yards of toxic material. In the Cultural District, construction is underway to convert the Chidsey Building into the permanent offices and visitor center for The Bay. Renovation is also nearly complete on the Sarasota Garden Club building.
The highlight of the Cultural District, Lafley said, will be a mini-park near Municipal Auditorium.
“This is probably the most important piece of this project,” Lafley said. “We’re going to invest about $8 million in converting the current hardscape plaza into a mini-park that will be like a town square. It will be shaded, it will be our largest gathering space outdoors in the park to date, and it will be multi-use.”
After some 40 months, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is still considering whether to allow the Bay Park Conservancy to build the Sunset Pier, which was originally part of the Phase 1 concept.
The design of the pier had already been modified from a circular configuration to a semicircle because of the reemergence of seagrass there, but now nature — not regrettably — has posed new environmental obstacles.
“Seagrass has actually come back over the last several years, and we designed this pier so we would drop it in just west of the seagrass,” Lafley said. “Also in that area, there is hard bottom coral that needs to be protected, and we ended up moving from a circle to a semicircle, because marine life has returned to the bayou, which is exactly what we wanted it to do after we cleaned up the bayou and the mangrove.”
It is also standing in the way of the Sunset Pier, a signature project of The Bay Park. And that’s OK, Lafley said, even if it means sacrificing the pier to the greater environmental good. Cleaning up the environment as it continues to convert the concrete and asphalt jungle, after all, is a primary tenet of the project to build out the 53-acre park moves into future phases.
“The appropriate authorities are thinking through whether they're going to allow us to go ahead with (the pier) or not,” Lafley said. “If they do, we will do it assuming that it's still a good value. If it's not a good value, we'll come back to the Bay Park Improvement Board, the city and the county and recommend that we reallocate this money for something that would be of more utility to park guests.”
As part of its consent agenda approval, the County Commission authorized a change order of $400,000 to the underway construction of a new Emergency Services Administration building at 6062 Porter Way. The location is west of the city limit between Cattlemen Road and I-75.
Slated for substantial completion in May 2025, the additional cost is for resurfacing an existing parking lot adjacent to the project area at 1301 Cattlemen Road. This will allow for overflow parking for both the Emergency Services Administration and the county's Emergency Operations Center buildings during emergency activations.
The appropriation will increase the construction cost from $14,136,511 to $14,536,511.
The design contract cost for the facility with Schenkel & Shultz Architecture was $1,246,006, bringing the total cost to $15,682,517. The construction contractor is Ajax Building Co.
The project included demolition of the History Center building that was previously on site. The new two-story facility of approximately 28,418 square feet will house multiple departments including Emergency Services Administration, Fire Marshal and Emergency Services Radio Systems Maintenance. Spaces include offices and support for the director, fire chief, managers, administration specialists, fire code and plans examiners, conference spaces, break room and fitness areas.
The 12,000-square-foot partial second floor of the storm-hardened building will be initially built as a shell for future needs and expansion. In the public lobby, emergency services memorabilia and educational material will be on display, including a historical artifact from 9-11; an antique fire truck; salvaged brick from a fire department structure; and images of fire service tools, events and operation.
