FRUITVILLE 210
COMMUNITY ALLIANCE
Fruitville210.org
SARASOTA REGATTA FUND
SARASOTA REGATTA FUND
At Nathan Benderson Park - 2500 Honore Ave.
Rowing regatta has Sarasota starry-eyed
By Eric Ernst - Herald-Tribune Columnist
Published: Sunday, May 3, 2009 at 1:00 a.m. / Last Modified: Saturday, May 2, 2009 at 11:28 p.m.
Folks are still gushing about last weekend's rowing regatta at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota.
"It was beyond all expectations. I would describe it as pure magic," says Paul Blackketter, project manager for Benderson Development, which is putting together the nearby Town Center mall on University Parkway at Interstate 75.
For a newbie to rowing "it was one of the most exciting 'happenings' I've ever experienced," says John Krotec, one of the organizers and chairman of Fruitville 210 Community Alliance in the neighborhood near the site.
"It's pretty fabulous how we've turned a byproduct of our growth/development -- this lake whose cavity we used to build I-75 and many of our area roads -- into such a unique and incredibly valuable community asset," Sarasota City Commissioner Kelly Kirschner wrote in an e-mail to Krotec. "The energy was electric yesterday when I was there."
In an area starved for good news, economic and otherwise, this is good stuff.
And, no one really knew what to expect. It was a first shot at turning a 400-acre man-made lake into a 1,500-meter rowing course.
Organizers knew they had 37 teams and 1,600 teenage competitors coming for the Florida Scholastic Rowing Association's state championships. They figured that meant a crowd of 4,000 or so, including family and friends.
Think bigger.
From helicopters, sheriff's deputies counted cars and heads to estimate the crowd at more than 10,000 each day. Trolleys ran full from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., shuttling from the races to vehicles.
Area hotels also filled. Kirschner says he talked with a family from Jacksonville that couldn't get a room near the races. They stayed at Lido.
Let's be honest. Most of us know very little about the sport of rowing.
Maybe some of the crowd attended out of curiosity.
If so, the scene may have surprised them: Teams of eight hoisting shells, carrying them to the docks, making their way through vendors and families cooking out. This was a festival, a topnotch one with air-conditioned restrooms, professional announcers, closed-circuit TV and a hospitality tent where people could talk with Olympic rowers.
"What we've decided is it's lots more exciting than you'd think," says Sarasota County parks and rec head John McCarthy. "It's like the Daytona Speedway and you're in the pits."
McCarthy observed something else only a parks director would notice: Spectators took great pains to put their plastic bottles in the correct bins. "It was the purest recycling event we've ever seen," he says.
That's a small thing. But it says something about the character of the sport, who it attracts and why it fits well with the image Sarasota would like to project. Read article HERE
Eric Ernst's column runs Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Contact him at eric.ernst@heraldtribune.com or (941) 486-3073.
Next EVENT:
This page was last updated: February 4, 2012
North Cattlemen Road Extention & Benderson Park:
