North Port Commission to negotiate deal to develop land surrounding Warm Mineral Springs

NORTH PORT – The city will officially open negotiations with Warm Mineral Springs Development Inc. to develop a portion of the 83-acre Warm Mineral Springs site following a 4-1 vote Tuesday.

The vote came roughly two-weeks after the commissioners discussed alternatives for the springs' future at a July 10 workshop.

The question was added to the agenda after Jon Thaxton, senior vice president for community investment at the Gulf Coast Community Foundation, sent a July 19 email to City Manager Jerome Fletcher saying that the foundation felt a proposed series of public meetings in August and September would not be beneficial.

“After careful evaluation of Gulf Coast Community Foundation’s offer to assist the city in a public outreach program, we feel that moving forward with this effort would not be in our mutual or the communities’ best interest,” Thaxton wrote. “Our hope was that a neutral third party could help bring clarity and resolve differences on how the Warm Mineral Springs property could be developed.

“After listening to the varied perceptions from a multitude of interests, we concluded our efforts were not needed and could exacerbate differences, resulting in the opposite outcome of what we had hoped for,” he added, and concluded by writing, “We look forward to partnering in other ways.”

City Commissioner Debbie McDowell – as she has been at all recent meetings – was the dissenting vote.

The developer’s vision

WMS Development Group, which includes one local partner, Ashley Bloom, wants to build a 150-room resort hotel and spa, 50 rental eco cabins and 270 condominiums on 61.4 acres of parkland that surround the 21.6-acre historic Warm Mineral Springs site.

Both the springs and three buildings believed to have been designed by Jack West of the Sarasota School of Architecture are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Those are the only buildings of historical note in the 104-square-mile city.

At that July 10 meeting Bloom noted that the developer would guarantee a $19 million performance bond to restore those buildings as well as complete other work highlighted in a 2019 development plan for the park.

He pledged that the work would come before construction of the condominiums of the commercial facilities, which would also include an amphitheater and event center, 36-hole putting course similar to PopStroke at University Town Center, a restaurant and an indigenous village and museum.

Negotiations on Warm Mineral Springs development to begin

Fletcher told the commission that the next steps for the city include Neighborhood Development Services staff working on land development code modifications to enable the developer’s vision, as well as negotiating terms of a deal.

To help with those negotiations the city will work with local representatives of Dallas, Texas-based CBRE, Inc. CBRE stands for Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis.

Meanwhile, Ardaman & Associates, Inc., an Orlando-based geotechnical and environmental consultant, has proposed to conduct the ground survey of the springs site and surrounding park for nearly $265,000.

The City Commission must approve a partnership deal with WMS Development at a future public meeting.

What commissioners said about Warm Mineral Springs

The commissioners continued to downplay the results of a public opinion survey on what people wanted done with the springs site. An overwhelming 92% of respondents to that survey did not want a private partnership and favored keeping the entire 83 acres as a park. The survey company said it was 95% confident that the results were within a plus or minus swing of 3.1% accuracy in representing the opinion of city residents.

But Commissioner Phil Stokes, citing the independent survey conducted by ETC Institute, an Olathe, Kansas-based firm that specializes in governmental market research, claimed that 90% of the citizens “either took no interest or chose to not speak out on this.”

The city does not have the money to restore the three historical structures and get the park up and running as envisioned in the 2019 plan, he argued.

“I do not think it's a project that the city should do on its own,” Stokes said. “This is not a parks and recreation operation … This is a development project that needs to be done right, with enormous resources.”

Commissioner Alice White discounted the survey's relevance even more, saying it was meant to go to 6,000 households.

“Less than 1,000 completed it and sent it in,” White said, then added, “As Commissioner Stokes said, the silent majority of people cannot be ignored.”

Mayor Barbara Langdon and City Commissioner Pete Emrich echoed Stokes’ sentiments, though Langdon punctuated her thought on partnering with WMS Development by adding, “I truly don’t see any alternative and leaving it the way it is is an abomination.”

But McDowell stressed that the survey represented overwhelming disdain for a public-private partnership to develop the park.

Citing damage to the sales building, spa and cyclorama listed on the National Register of Historic Places, McDowell doubled down on the thought that if those structures were damaged beyond repair by Hurricane Ian, then the city didn’t need a partner to build replacement structures on the site – the $9.4 million previously set aside by the city would be plenty.

The city only started searching for a partner to develop the park surrounding the springs and restore the building when bids to restore the structures came in at double the amount the city commission had allocated.

“If we decide to start over anew with that small footprint we don’t need" a public-private partnership she said, using the shorthand P3 designation, "We’ve got $9 million – we can do it ourselves.

“The residents want low impact. – this P3 is a polar opposite.”

Residents critical of deal idea

Most of the residents' comments came via email and strongly opposed the possibility of the acreage surrounding the 21.6-acre springs being developed as anything other than a park, and frustration that the majority of the board dismissed their viewpoint.

“The recent Warm Mineral Springs survey demonstrates this yet again,” resident Jasmine Bowman said, referencing the desire to keep the area a park. “But still four out of five on this commission ignore us.”

Warm Mineral Springs resident David Spisak was the closest any speakers came to supporting the project, when he said the city needs to clean it up but keep the history – drawing on an analogy to how his family got rid of shag carpeting in their 1973 home but kept the mid-century modern furniture.

Robin San Vicente, who served in a variety of capacities at Warm Mineral Springs through 2009, when it was privately owned, urged the commission to defer a decision and schedule a referendum to ask city voters to approve a bond to develop the springs site as a park.

“If you really want to hear the people speak,” San Vicente said, “go that route, explore the bond. Then you’ll hear from us.”

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: North Port board OK's talks for development at Warm Mineral Springs