Good Sports

Even in tight economic times, sports are still big business—and we’re not talking about professional sports, either.

While Major League baseball supporters continued to spin their wheels last spring in an attempt to lure the Baltimore Orioles to Ed Smith Stadium, several new regional boutique sports initiatives were already taking off, creating construction jobs, full-time administration positions, and even giving a shot in the arm to surrounding retailers—thanks to the thousands of athletes and supporters they attracted. The U.S. Soccer Development Academy spring showcase, for example, brought 70 teams of teenage soccer players and their families from 29 states to the Polo Club at Lakewood Ranch in late May. Talk about a kick in the economy.

Here’s a roundup of new athletic happenings. 

Nathan Benderson Park 

An enormous borrow pit created 30 years ago by the construction of I-75 has potential to become one of the finest rowing courses in the country. Now a 400-acre freshwater lake off Cattlemen Road near I-75 and University Parkway, owned by Sarasota County, the newly opened Nathan Benderson Park hosted 37 teams at the High School State Championship Rowing Regatta in April. The regatta drew 1,550 athletes, their families and spectators, and generated 1,312 room nights in Sarasota and Manatee county hotels.

Sarasota Convention & Visitors Bureau sports manager Jason Puckett says the three-day event produced an estimated $1,760,085 of economic impact to the county with an estimated overall attendance of 14,178 people.

“We own the Holiday Inn [Lakewood Ranch] right now,” says Ralph Egues, a parent from Miami Belen Jesuit, a small Miami school that brought 200 people to the regatta. “We have 60 rooms, and every night we have been renting out the main ball room and having it catered because our group is too big to go to a restaurant together.”

Participants say restaurants were as packed as the hotels, and the Super Target at University Town Center completely sold out of any kind of folding chair by 10 a.m. Saturday, the first day of the regatta.

“The best thing is these people aren’t just staying overnight, they are here for four or five days,” says Daniel Beery, a gold medal rower in the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics who was at the event as a consultant. “And these are typically people with some serious disposable income, too.”

The lake and rowing center have the potential to breathe life back into Benderson’s University Town Center project by creating more of a demand for the project’s retail, restaurant and hotel uses.

Future plans for the park include walking, biking and running trails around the lake (a 5K course), construction of one or more boathouses and extending the course to an international length of 2,000 meters in 18 months.

Thousands of people could fly into the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport annually for these events, predict Beery and Olympic teammate Jason Read, who have seen the blueprint for this kind of international success at regattas throughout Europe.

“You have no idea how huge these international regattas are, they can take over a town, especially in a nice city like this,” Read says. “A lot of times they are in the middle of nowhere, so people will love to come here where there is so much to do.”

Benderson Park is already drawing interest from several colleges and Olympic teams that want to train here, as well as Masters (adult) rowing events, which means this lake could be booked almost year-round.

“Besides being one of the only freshwater lakes in the country with ideal environmental conditions for this sport, Benderson Park is a natural park and a recreational park that serves the entire community all at the same time,” says Sarasota County Commissioner Joe Barbetta. “When you factor in the hotels, restaurants and retail venues available to residents and visitors, I believe we are sitting on a gold mine.”