Residents have grand plans for Fruitville Road Park

Nearly a year after the city backed out of plans to sell the land for development, a park at Beneva and Fruitville roads remains relatively unchanged.

For the residents who pushed hardest to preserve Fruitville Road Park, it’s a bittersweet sight. They’re glad the 3.5-acre park isn’t being turned into a shopping center, but they also want it to be more than it is today.

If you’re driving by Fruitville Road Park, located in a sprawling section of the city, it’s easy to miss that it’s there. If you know it exists, it can be difficult to access. And once you’re there, there’s not much to do beyond walking along the Circus Trail at the northeast corner of Beneva and Fruitville roads.

A group of five residents, hailing from four nearby residential complexes, has been working with city staff to enact changes for more than a year. Together, they’ve developed a list of potential short-term improvements: erecting signage, installing seating, adding native plants.

As they worked on locating funding, they had a radical idea: What if this determined group wasn’t being ambitious enough?

At a November meeting of the city’s Parks, Recreation and Environmental Protection Board, new board member John Tuccillo posed that question. The park was part of an 11-acre parcel the city was planning to sell to Benderson Development. What if, over time, most of that land was dedicated toward the park instead?

After receiving $2.1 million in a settlement following the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the city dedicated $450,000 toward park improvements in December. Suddenly, an opening for a bigger plan began to present itself.

“With that influx of money, our thinking has all of a sudden become a little larger,” said Norm Dumaine, president of the Glen Oaks Estates Homeowners Association. “This central-east area of Sarasota in many ways has been underserved, especially in terms of parks and recreation.”

The city has recently shown an increased interest in improving its park offerings, creating a new parks and recreation director position in the 2016 budget.

City officials will discuss funding options for improving the park during the next budget cycle, according to Public Works General Manager Todd Kucharski. Beyond the short-term improvements, he suggested the city could consider bringing in a consultant to undertake a master planning effort for the park.

Over time, a combination of grant, private and city funds could help pay for improvements piece-by-piece. It would be a long-term effort including other interests: Right now, the Sarasota County Fire Department leases a property on the city-owned land, and a canal cutting through the park could be part of a county stormwater improvement project.

“We’d want to get all the stakeholders involved, partnering with the existing groups on that site to see how we can work together, and then phase accordingly,” Kucharski said.

Already, residents are envisioning it as a potential opportunity for broader improvements. With the park serving as an anchor for the community, Dumaine imagined a chain effect in the surrounding areas.

“We’ve got a Town and Country shopping center on the northwest side of that intersection,” Dumaine said. “It needs redevelopment. If you had a really nice park, maybe even with a community center — wouldn’t that be a great spur for maybe a mixed-use development across the street?”

With progress largely theoretical to date, residents are determined to make tangible upgrades in 2016. It might start with a name change, but they’re not likely to be content with just that.

For Kucharski and other city staff, the challenge of improving Fruitville Road Park is less of a burden thanks to the level of investment they’re seeing from citizens.

“It’s really awesome to have community members interactive in their park, because there’s a sense of ownership then and a sense of pride,” Kucharski said. “The park starts to grow together with the community.”