DUNEDIN, Fla. — Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection postponed public meetings about a plan to add golf courses, lodging and pickleball at state parks, saying there's been so much interest they need to find larger venues.
It comes as opposition in Pinellas County is growing from those who don't want any changes to Honeymoon Island State Park.
Erik Cantie has been surfing off Honeymoon Island his entire life. On Tuesday, when he heard about the state plan to build recreation amenities at state parks, including at his surf spot, he took action.
“I’ve been running with it since,” he says. “It's like a Facebook group movement.”
He’s the admin for the Facebook group “Protect Honeymoon Island State Park.” After just a week, it already has close to a thousand members.
Honeymoon Island is known for its beaches, but it's inland areas that DEP is proposing to develop. According to a document obtained by 10 Tampa Bay, it wants to put up to four pickleball courts in the southern part of the island.
“That's a disturbance to your peace and quiet when you go to a state park and you expect to be one with nature,” he says.
Today, more groups came out against the plan, including the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber.
“We are definitely opposed to the proposition of turning our state parks into pickleball, RV parks, or golf courses, or anything that would really commercialize the beautiful assets here,” its CEO, Robin Miller, said.
Federal leaders stepped in today, with Florida Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio urging in a letter to DEP to give the public more opportunity to weigh in, saying planned meetings for an hour next week without decision-makers present is "absolutely ridiculous."
“Even folks who are democrats or folks who are republican right now have joined hands and said, ‘this isn't what we want, this isn’t what state parks are for,’” Cantie says.
DEP says new meeting dates will be announced soon but will likely be during the week of Sept. 2, which is Labor Day.