- June 1, 2026
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Bob Haskin, president of the Lakewood Ranch Pickleball Club, has been asking for pickleball courts in East County since he moved to Lakewood Ranch and started the club in 2018.
Ira Klein, head coach of the Sarasota Tsunami Swim Team, spoke to former Commissioner Vanessa Baugh about the need for a public pool in East County 13 years ago. And Sue Ann Miller, former president of the Friends of the Lakewood Ranch Library, said residents were asking for an East County library 25 years before the Lakewood Ranch Library was built.
Although the library opened in January 2024, 25,000 square feet remained unfinished.
Before the year is out, Manatee County will have made good on all three requests in one place — Premier Sports Campus North.
The second floor buildout of the library is complete, except for furnishings. The pickleball courts only need paint, and the two pools will be filled with 832,704 gallons of water this month.
While plans for Premier started out with a multitude of neighborhood amenities, such as a dog park, skate park, BMX track and event lawn, Director of Sports and Leisure Molly White said the general development plan has been finalized, and the overall vision for Premier is to be a sports complex.
Commissioners approved a development agreement for a possible ice rink in February. However, until a conceptual site plan and land lease are agreed upon, the deal is not binding.
A cloverleaf of four ballfields is also within the GDP, but is not currently funded. White said the fields would be multipurpose for softball, baseball and even soccer if needed. The goal is to serve serve youths through adults and become a regional destination that attracts tournaments.
If both the ice rink and ball fields come to fruition, Premier will be built out to capacity.
When the library opened, the second floor was a shell by design.
Willis Smith, the construction firm that built the library, approached Manatee County in 2020 and suggested the second floor. Chairman David Sessions said it’s far less expensive to add a second floor for future use than to construct a second building.
The library budget was $10 million and rose to $14.9 million when the decision to add a second floor was made.
The overall cost ended up at $17.6 million with another $6.9 million added to a future budget to finish the second floor. However, the second floor buildout, including the furnishings, is nearly 95% paid for and about $3 million under budget.
Uses for the additional 25,000 square feet vacillated between flex space and library space until Manatee County purchased a second administration building at 9000 Town Center Parkway in September.
White said the purchase alleviated the county’s need for office and meeting space, so the entirety of the second floor was converted into community space.
The added space will allow the adult library collection to move upstairs and give the young adult and children's collections more space to spread out downstairs. The children’s area will be revamped with a focus on STEAM activities.
“It’s a huge win,” Commissioner Amanda Ballard said. “One of the things that our former library director (Tammy Parrott) was always pushing was how far behind (Manatee County) is in square footage of library space for the number of residents that we have, so having this extra space makes a big difference.”
The upstairs will also provide event space in the front half of the floor that will be filled with high- and low-top tables, couches, chairs and movable shelves. Everything is movable to accommodate different events.
Permanent book shelves, tables, computers and study pods will be set up in the back half of the floor.
Study pods are the county’s response to the one complaint patrons regularly expressed about the state-of-the-art library — no study rooms.
The study pods come in two sizes — medium and large. The five medium pods will seat up to four people; two will include TVs. The three large pods will seat up to eight people.
The Friends of the Lakewood Ranch Library will have a space made of modular walls to keep and clean donated books that will be sold in the Book Nook downstairs.
The upstairs also includes a county office for the complex’s maintenance crew and a kitchen and dining area for events.
The hope is to have the second floor furnished and open to the public by the end of the summer or early fall.
White said only "final touches" remain on the to-do list at the Athletics and Aquatic Center.
The structures are built, and the flooring and drywall are in place. Final touches include furniture, landscaping, painting the pickleball courts, and filling the pools with water.
Although White wouldn’t pinpoint an exact date for the opening, she said it will be sometime this fall, and the hiring process has begun.
While the second floor of the library won’t require any additional staff, the county will need to hire nine positions and 17 lifeguards to man the athletics center. Out of those positions, 10 lifeguards and two general staff members will be part-time.
The center will feature 24 pickleball courts, 14 of which will be covered, a walking trail, locker rooms, restrooms and two pools — a competition pool and a therapy pool.
Chet Brown, division chief of Public Safety, said there’s already been a great deal of interest in the competition pool.
The fee schedule needs to be presented to the county commission for approval before the pool can be rented, but Brown has been meeting with local swim teams.
Steve Lubrino, head coach for the Lakewood Ranch Swim Association Lightning, can’t wait to get into Premier.
On Mondays, especially, he’s got swimmers so packed into the three lanes he’s allotted at the John H. Marble Aquatic Center that 6-year-olds are swimming with 16-year-olds, which he said isn’t a safe environment.
“When I moved to Florida (from New York), I thought there’d be a pool every 12 feet,” Lubrino said. “There are community pools, but nobody wants to rent us because the residents will complain. I can’t get pool space anywhere. I’m trying to make Premier the Lakewood Ranch Lightning’s home pool.”
Klein’s team uses the pools at John Marble and Arlington Park in Sarasota. He said the Premier location is as far east as GT Bray is west, so while the facilities at Premier will be better, John Marble is more centrally located for his purposes.
But in general and as his team grows, the pool will advance the sport in Manatee County.
“We have a lot of history. Quite a few swimmers from Manatee County have been on national teams that have gone to college on scholarships all over the United States,” Klein said. “(Premier) is going to be such a boon to what we could do.”
