Nathan Benderson Park: From Borrow Pit to Money Pit?

The non-profit that operates the rowing facility at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota County claimed this week to have essentially broken even on the cost of running the recent World Rowing Championships. The briefing to the Sarasota County Commission came on the heels of the Speaker of the Florida House’s demands for an investigation into the park’s financials, and stewardship of more than $40 million in public funding the facility has received to date, including a seven-figure investment by Manatee County.

Randy Benderson is a powerful, politically-connected commercial developer who wields sway in Sarasota County that’s on par with other top developers our readers may be more familiar with, such as Carlos Beruff and Pat Neal. In one of those sweet deals known as a "public private partnership," Benderson convinced Sarasota County to turn a former borrow pit behind his University at Town Center mall project to Sarasota County into a body of water worthy of world class rowing events–awarding him a multi-million-dollar, no-bid contract to construct the park, while giving a non-profit he controls an $843,000 annual contract to operate it.

Benderson also got to keep the fill-dirt he excavated, while upward of a hundred million dollars more in public money was spent on expediting a new interchange for I-75 and an extension of North Cattlemen Road, both of which would primarily benefit Benderson’s large portfolio of interests in the area surrounding the park. In the beginning, the rowing facility was supposed to be a small, $2 million project. Benderson donated a million dollars and the park would be named after his since-departed father, who started the 60 year-old commercial retail empire that holds over 40 million square feet in 38 states, before passing away in 2012, at the age of 94.

As with many public-private partnerships, however, the costs grew dramatically, while funding ended up being primarily on the public side, and the private part of the equation got the juicy contracts and ancillary benefits. Think about this setup in simple terms for a moment. You build a bunch of commercial retail (Benderson also operates most of the other parcels surrounding the mall, including the enormous Cooper Creek Plaza across the street), and rather than have a borrow pit behind it afterward, you convince the local governmentto pay you to build something that will make your surrounding operations more valuable and profitable.

By 2011, Benderson had convinced Sarasota County to increase its one million dollar initial investment by more than $19 million, while Manatee County agreed to kick in half a million of its own under the notion that hotels and restaurants on the Manatee side of the county line at University Parkway could likewise benefit from the facility’s success. The non-profit set up to manage the facility, Suncoast Aquatic Nature Center Associates, said it would raise $20 million privately to complete the project through another non-profit called the Nathan Benderson Community Park Foundation. The pitch portrayed a magnificent venue that would include a $5 million finish tower with media and SANCA office space, a state-of-the-art $10 million boathouse, along with large grandstands, an amphitheater and other facilities that would qualify it to host world-class events.

After hitting up the counties, Benderson and company went to the legislature, which gave $10 million more in initial funding by 2014, again on the promise of significant private fundraising to finish the job. Rep. Greg Steube requested and additional $11 million for the park in 2015, but was rebuffed, though the legislature coughed up $5 million more over the next two budgets, as the facility continued to lag behind its private fundraising benchmarks. Despite winning the bid to host the 2017 World Rowing Championships with the same glossy sales pitch it gave local governments, SANCA and the Benderson Foundation came through only on the finish tower.

With well over $40 million in public funding already invested, former Florida Senator and current Manatee Supervisor of Elections Mike Bennett–who sits on the foundation’s board–still had to go see his old friends in Tallahassee this January, hat in hand, claiming to desperately need $5 million more to build the boathouse and ready the park for the rowing championships. Community activists had made multiple requests to both SANCA and Sarasota County for an accounting of the private funds that had been raised but had been stonewalled. Bennett, however, told the legislature that the foundation had raised "around $15 million." The claim shocked those activists, who quickly pointed out that SANCA would have plenty of money to finish the boat house, were that the case. The state didn’t give Bennett the money, but Sarasota and Manatee County went on the hook for millions more before the event would take place.

The world championships came and went with only the finish tower and seating for a little over 3,000 spectators in place, no boathouse and a decidedly mediocre look for what was billed as an elite-level affair. So, for all of the fanfare, we are told that it was pretty much a wash. Not that the public would have seen any sort of direct repayment, had the event been a boon. Despite Sarasota County fronting the lion’s share of the risk, their deal with SANCA allows the non-profit to keep all of the revenues generated.

The community is supposedly paid back with that ever-elastic monetary denomination known as economic impact. How many local businesses did more business that week, and how much of it was spread throughout our local economy via the multiplier effect, and then how much of that came back to government coffers through increased tax receipts? Some, to be sure. Enough to justify even some of the $40 million plus in public investment or excuse the absence of the promised private funding? We’ll never know, though it seems improbable to say the least. The only accounting of such things comes from the reports commissioned by the very people at the trough and from consultants that are paid handsomely (and find work consistently) when they return the answer that is implicitly being sought when they're hired. This time, we’re told that the Sarasota-Manatee area received a whopping $18.6 million in economic impact from the event. A full audit of the event's costs and revenues won't be finished until February.

The noise surrounding the enormous public investment and absence of promised private funds, however, caught the attention of Richard Corcoran (R-Land O'Lakes), Speaker of the Florida House. Corcoran, a staunch opponent of government funding for such endeavors was reportedly stirred by an ABC 28 Action News report in which Bennett got heated with a reporter who wanted him to provide proof of the $15 million he’d told the legislature the foundation had raised when he asked for more money (Bennett flatly refused). The report’s imagery showed the stark difference in what was promised and what had been built, along with outraged taxpayers demanding to know how so much could yield so little.

Corcoran sent a letter to Sarasota County Administrator Tom Harmer and SANCA, demanding all financial records for the park and the rowing championships so that it can be reviewed by the House Public Integrity and Ethics Community. The Speaker also asked for an accounting of all expenditures of "matching funds" that were represented to the legislature. "The House will not tolerate attempts to shield from public scrutiny financial information relating to the expenditure of public dollars," wrote Corcoran. State representative Chris Sprowls (R-Clearwater), who’s slated for a future Speaker slot if Republicans keep the majority, has echoed Corcoran and is calling for similar answers.

Supposed economic impact aside, there’s also a certain irony in our local politicians routinely speaking with disdain of government picking winners and losers in the marketplace, when boondoggles like this one serve to do just that. A rowing park may well be a good economic vehicle for this region, however, if that is the case, there should be no problem finding private investment in a community that has no shortage of deep pockets. But if it’s simply subsidizing a venture that cannot stand on its own for the sake of aiding the investments of politically-connected developers, that’s another thing entirely.

By contrast, Schroeder Manatee Ranch put more than $5 million into its Premier Sports Campus in Lakewood Ranch–without help from taxpayers. For a small fraction of the cost of the rowing park, the soccer-based facility has brought much more economic impact to the local economy, which obviously benefits SMR’s significant residential and commercial real estate holdings in the surrounding area.

This month, Manatee County will purchase the facility from SMR for only the $5.2 million in improvements the company has made on the land and operate the facility as a revenue generating asset. Compare that return on investment to the Benderson Park money pit, in which there is an enormous investment of many times more dollars, no direct revenue, and only the promise of economic impact eventually trickling down.

The reason the latter instances continue to happen, despite such proof that they are a bad deal for taxpayers and work better as private endeavors with government coming in only when the promise has been realized, is simple: it’s cheaper and more lucrative. Benderson, along with Beruff and Neal–residential developers with interests surrounding the park who’ve championed public investment in it–can much more easily lavish the governor, local legislators, and county commissioners with a fraction of the money needed for such investments via campaign and PAC donations, then count on their bought and paid for pols to stick taxpayers with the much larger bill for things like this.

Let’s hope Corcoran and company follow through and hold all parties accountable. If ever there were ever a chance to make an example of the follies of public-private partnerships this would seem to be it.