Budget conference: Nathan Benderson Park gets $10M for expansion

Nathan Benderson Park is set to land $10 million in the state budget.

The House and Senate are supporting the project, which emerged from the influential Transportation and Economic Development budget conference.

Sen. Joe Gruters and Rep. James Buchanan, both Sarasota Republicans, sought the funding for the park to build a 100,000-square-foot indoor sports complex for basketball, pickleball, tennis, volleyball and wrestling. It can also hold a museum and event space, according to Gruters’ funding request.

But the Sarasota County-owned building would also be used in emergencies as a “regional evacuation, shelter, recovery facility, staging lineman and food services, mobile hospital setup,” the funding request said.

“Nathan Benderson Park is strategically located central to the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton Metro Area to provide continuity of the operation of essential school, local government services, and intergovernmental coordination during and after major storm events,” Gruters said in his request.

Some local residents have questioned using taxpayer money to keep expanding the park.

“I care about the park, which is why I’m speaking out against a senseless plan to add a massive building with 100,000-plus square feet of indoor basketball, pickleball and volleyball courts to the park’s limited land area,” one resident wrote in a 2025 letter to the editor in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “It would use much of the park’s desperately needed space for activities unrelated to its original purpose.”

Buchanan argued the building was needed for emergency planning after the 2024 hurricane season.

“Sarasota and Manatee Counties had a number of impacts from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton and reports indicated that there were only two distribution centers open after these storms in the region,” Buchanan said in his funding request.

The public-private project also entails $20 million in local funding, as well as $15 million in funds that were labeled as “other.” 

Benderson Park is a 600-acre park and has been celebrated as a rowing venue that has hosted triathlons, Olympic trials and other athletic events.

“Nathan Benderson Park is one of only a handful of sites in North America identified as having all of the natural attributes that make up a premiere rowing facility. The park began hosting organized regatta competitions in 2009,” the park’s website said.

The chambers ended their budget talks late Sunday as the Legislature worked to pass a budget in Special Session after failing to do so during the 60-day Regular Session. Gov. Ron DeSantis holds line-item veto power, meaning no project is official until he signs the budget.