North Port commissioners question results of Warm Mineral Springs survey

NORTH PORT – Once upon a time, the North Port City Commission contemplated teaming up with a private company as means to restore three historic buildings at Warm Mineral Springs – the only structures of historic note in the 104-square-mile city.

At a Monday workshop, while discussing damage done by Hurricane Ian last fall, at least two board members were willing to bulldoze the three structures believed to be designed by Sarasota School of Architecture member Jack West as a means to speed along the proposed partnership for developing land around the springs.

A third was willing to demolish those buildings if it meant keeping the entire 83-acre park site in public hands.

Ironically, only Ashley Bloom, one of the main partners in the private WMS Development Group, expressed the firmest conviction for preservation when he 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.

That obligation, also known as Phase One of a development plan crafted for the city by a consultant, would come before the developer could start work on other amenities – such as a 150-room resort hotel and spa, 50 rental eco cabins and 270 condominiums – where it would ostensibly make its money back.

Other amenities in the scaled back site plan Bloom unveiled Monday include an amphitheater and event center, 36-hole putting course, a restaurant and an indigenous village and museum.

“In our plan, we do want to restore those buildings,” Bloom said, shortly after making his $19 million performance bond guarantee. “The cyclorama – there’re only three left in the entire country – we think it’s important to have that history.”

North Port commissioners discount survey results

Bloom’s presentation was one of three topic areas related to the park development dealt with by the City Commission. The first was discussion of results of an independent survey conducted by ETC Institute, an Olathe, Kansas-based firm that specializes in governmental market research on how city residents wanted the 61.4 acres of park land surrounding the 21.6-acre Warm Mineral Springs historic site should be developed.

The majority of the commission essentially discounted the results of that survey.

Ryan Murray, assistant director of community research for ETC, said about 10% of the surveys it sends out are returned, but in this case, of the 2,500 mailers sent, 959 people responded, while another 666 responded online.

Those numbers gave the national company a better than 95% confidence in the veracity of the results, in which the overwhelming majority favored low-intensity development that did not include a hotel or condominiums, and most were interested in funding development in phases, based on park revenues.

Commissioners chose to poke holes into those findings.

Mayor Barabara Langdon expressed surprise that 60% of the respondents claimed to have visited the springs, even though documented attendance figures showed that 85% of the paid attendance was attributed to people who live outside of Sarasota County.

Related: Warm Mineral Springs Survey: 92% favor low-intensity park development

That 60% represented roughly 518 people.

She also noted that 80% of the respondents visited park areas outside of the springs and contrasted that with her own visit, during which “we had to reroute ourselves because of homeless encampments.”

Commissioner Phil Stokes later brought up the old Mark Twain quote referring to “lies, damn lies and statistics.”

The push to discount the survey results – which mirrored the findings of several workshops in 2018 – did not sit well with the public in attendance.

“You aren’t representatives at all; you’re an embarrassment, that’s what you are,” said David Iannoti, who was elected to the commission in November 2020 but resigned within a month for health reasons.

Historic buildings imperiled

In 2017 North Port created its historical register specifically for Warm Mineral Springs' sales building, spa building and cyclorama.

Built for the Florida Quadricentennial Celebration – from December 1959 to March 1960 – the three buildings were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.

Langdon broached the idea that the historic buildings may not be worth saving, though she also suggested that the round cyclorama exterior may be preserved but with the interior gutted and replaced by some type of holographic presentation on the story of Ponce de Leon searching for the Fountain of Youth developed by students at Ringling College of Art & Design.

After Bloom’s presentation, Stokes asked if the historic buildings could be sacrificed and the portion of the $9.4 million the city set aside to restore the structures could be used to buy additional land for Bloom to develop – with the thought that neither the hotel nor the condos would then be built on the 61.4-acre parkland.

Bloom explained that the developer’s intent was to create a wellness resort on the property.

It wasn’t until the third presentation – when staff wanted guidance from the commission on the possible future – that Commissioner Debbie McDowell asked about the structural integrity of the buildings and whether they could be saved.

If not, she suggested, the $9.4 million was plenty of money to build a concession site for the park and extend water and sewer – and thus maintain the site as a park.

North Port Parks and Recreation Director Sandy Pfundheller said that while an initial structural assessment noted that the three buildings should not be open to the public, she added that the city has not hired a structural engineer to determine what it would cost to restore them.

“As far as the buildings, they can still be restored,” Pfundheller said. “It will just cost more money.”

Next steps

Though the board took no formal votes, it did attempt to achieve consensus on what to do.

An easy one was to urge city staff to work with  Charles Hines, the Gulf Coast Trail program director for the Trust For Public Land on how to best connect the Gulf Coast Trail – which recently was realigned to travel down River Road – to the proposed Legacy Trail trailhead at Warm Mineral Springs.

The commission also gave its blessing for city staff to organize public meetings along with the Gulf Coast Community Foundation on future springs development.

Jon Thaxton, senior vice president for community investment at Gulf Coast Community Foundation, told the commission that the foundation would host and fund those meetings, moderated by New College professor David Brain.

Thaxton said the purpose of the public outreach forums would be to provide further definition to subjective aspects of the survey, like density and intensity.

The commission set those parameters by suggesting that the city define medium intensity for Warm Mineral Springs as proposed by the latest iteration of the WMS Development Group project, which called for less commercial development than in city codes but more residential.

For example, by staff definition, medium intensity would allow for 238 residential units and 440,000 square feet of commercial on the site, while WMS Development wants 270 condominiums and only 132,000 square feet of commercial – including the hotel, spa and event center.

The commission also agreed that staff should move on from the discounted admission fees of $8 per day for Sarasota County residents and $11 for non-residents to $15 for county residents and $20 for non residents, with multi-visit discount books available.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Survey that opposes Warm Mineral Springs development questioned