Enhancing Rothenbach Park: A neighborhood initiative

Many of us have enjoyed the lovely oak hammocks of Rothenbach Park at the east end of Bee Ridge Road:

Rothenbach has developed a reputation as one of the most beautiful shaded walks and bicycle paths in Sarasota County. Now there's an initiative to make it even more beautiful and user friendly.

Here's the beginning of a letter that went out to Lake Sarasotans and to other East Bee Ridge neighborhoods recently:

What makes every community special is not that it is “perfect” from the very start, but that there is a consistent effort on the part of its citizenry to identify areas that need attention and to bring them up to the standards of the rest of our fine community.

We are fortunate to have a wonderful Sarasota County Parks Department that has re-developed a “less than attractive” portion of our neighborhood (the landfill) and created a park and wildlife sanctuary that offers walking and biking trails as well as playground and picnic facilities with clean restrooms. While this as been a noteworthy success, certain areas are still in need of attention. This is especially true for the northern section of the trail leading past the Bee Ridge Water Reclamation and Solid Waste Management facilities. Continue reading.

The area we hope to add shade trees and plantings to is the northern section of trail that is bare of foliage and lies exposed to some county buildings and storage areas (area lower left in this map):

The effort is to develop neighborhood support to get a grant and other contributions to pay for plants, trees, landscaping designs to help make the big Rothenbach Loop one continuous path with shady birding and butterfly habitats, an educational area, and a colorful selection of native plantings.

Another part of the letter:

After months of negotiations, we have now received verbal approval from the County to go ahead with this project, and we ask for your support. 

To finance this we need the support of our neighborhoods. We will seek pledges from our HOAs, residents, nonprofit organizations and for profit enterprises. We also will apply for a County Neighborhood Grant. This is a Dollar-for-Dollar matching fund. The County will match every dollar we raise, provided we can proof to the County that our communities support the project.

 Read the rest here, and do what you can to support this effort. Thanks.