Regatta supporters see a bright future
Posted on April 23rd, 2010
The Super Target store, adjacent to the 600-acre park and 1.12-mile rowing course, was stripped of its supply of lawn chairs, blankets, beach umbrellas and coolers. Hotels within a five-mile radius sold out. Restaurants were jammed.
In all, the roughly 15,000 athletes, relatives and spectators that descended on Sarasota County to view the park’s debut regatta sank an estimated $1.76 million into the local economy.
This weekend, when three dozen high school rowing teams once again compete for top honors and bragging rights beginning today at 8 a.m., regatta officials expect the event — and the payoff — to be even bigger.
“We didn’t understand the potential economic impact at the time,” said Paul Blackketter, a project supervisor with Benderson Development Co., the real estate development firm whose retail, hotel and office properties surround the park. “We didn’t understand rowing and what it could bring.”
Introduced to the idea by crew organizers, Benderson officials and representatives from Sarasota County have spent the past four years finding out just what rowing could bring.
By 2011, they intend to lengthen the rowing course to the international standard of 1.25 miles, or 2,000 meters, a distance that will make the venue and the park — named after the Benderson patriarch who founded the company and forged it into the nation’s largest privately held developer — one of the premier rowing sites in North America.
If some $40 million worth of amenities such as a boathouse, docks, improvements to Cattlemen Road and other upgrades are developed, as planned, experts say the park could become to rowing what London’s Wembley Stadium is to soccer.
“It has the potential to become an outstanding rowing course,” said Harry Parker, celebrating his silver anniversary as head coach of Harvard University’s heavyweight, varsity rowing team.
“I don’t see any reason why this couldn’t stack up to anyone in the world,” Parker said. “And they’re not just developing a race course, but infrastructure around it.”
Benderson officials contend the accoutrements — adequate retail and restaurants, hotels within close proximity, amenities such as museums and beaches — will make the park the best in the U.S.
By comparison, the rowing course in Gainesville, Ga., is four miles from the nearest hotel room. Cincinnati’s venue is a full 50 miles east of the city.
“Here, we’re going to have everything,” said Blackketter, a big man with a soft voice and an oversized, black wristwatch.
“When we do a project, we’re always looking for the skeleton in the closet, the thing that will stop the project,” he said. “But with this, we’ve seen nothing but opportunities.”
Funded with federal stimulus dollars, $5 million from the county and a $1 million Benderson donation, the park and the road will be fully built out by early 2012.
If that occurs, regatta supporters intend to bid for the NCAA’s 2012 championship, go after the World Cup Championship three years later, and certification by the International Federation of Rowing Associations, the governing body for the sport worldwide.
Financially, rowing could become its very own economic development engine, advocates say. Eventually, the park could host as many as 15 regattas a year, drawing some 200,000 people and pumping an estimated $40 million annually into the regional economy, company and county officials believe.
Moreover, those figures do not include the potentially thousands of athletes and visitors from the north who would travel here to train on a “liquid course” during winter months, or corporations that could come to conduct “team building” exercises on the water.
Those possibilities lead county officials to deeper reasons to back rowing.
“People come to a regatta and spend money here, but more importantly, they go away with a memory,” said County Commissioner Joe Barbetta, a rowing supporter.
“They’ll say, maybe we should spend our next vacation there, maybe we should retire there, or maybe we should relocate our business there,” Barbetta said. “There are a lot of ancillary benefits beyond the immediate dollars.”
For Randy Benderson, the company’s president, school teams that will use the rowing venue will offer kids a chance to better themselves.
“This will be a life changer,” Benderson said. “This will give some kids the chance to attend colleges they never would have.”
Not everyone is impressed, though.
Richard Modzeleski, a Morristown, N.J., resident who has been visiting the area for more than a decade, said the conversion of Cooper Creek Park has been an environmental loss.
“I am sorry to see the demise of what was once a highlight to my visits to Sarasota,” Modzeleski wrote in a letter to the Herald-Tribune. “To me, it appears money has trumped nature.”
Nor has it been lost on some observers that development of the rowing venue will likely, in turn, help spur Benderson’s development of the stalled University Town Center, a 1.7 million-square-foot mall.
Even before then, rowing is providing a boost to the 250 hotel rooms in the area that the company owns or derives income from, and the dozens of restaurants it leases space to and stores that operate within their nearby shopping complexes along University Parkway and Cooper Creek Boulevard.
As part of the Town Center project, Benderson is slated to build as many as four new hotels with 500 rooms, and scores of new retail square footage.
Benderson officials insist they are pursuing rowing to help the community, not their own portfolio. But they acknowledge the mutual benefits.
“If Sarasota is successful, then Benderson will be successful,” said Blackketter, 43. “If rowing brings in new opportunities, it does mean more opportunity for us.”
Meanwhile, Benderson is devoting time and resources.
When regatta officials decided earlier this month to get a JumboTron video screen and enhanced sound equipment, Benderson foot the $3,900 bill.
Company employees by the dozens volunteer during regatta weekends, driving spectators and athletes in golf carts and working with vendors.
Randy Benderson has paid to fly in experts, like Harvard’s Parker, to provide “comparative analysis” with other rowing sites.
The company sent Blackketter on the road to see every major rowing venue in the U.S., and bankrolled a trip to London and France, just to get a better picture of international courses.
Blackketter’s job, meanwhile, now has rowing as a focus.
Every Tuesday, he attends a 6 p.m. meeting with county officials, regatta supporters, parents of scullers and others that lasts an average of 21/2 hours.
This weekend, he will be on hand to coordinate events and watch teams from Edgewater High School, in Orlando, Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale, and others, compete.
Publix, too, is getting ready for the races, by bringing in more employees and stocking up on sandwich and other items, said spokeswoman Shannon Patten.
“The potential here is amazing,” Blackketter said. “This is too big to lose.”
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