The bait shop is gone, the fishing pier is closed and the park under the Ringling Bridge sits behind chain link. City Hall says it cannot spend a dollar of its own without losing federal money, and the red tape now runs from the bayfront to Tallahassee to Washington.
—Every day, thousands of people drive over what used to be one of the best free afternoons in Sarasota.
—At the eastern foot of the John Ringling Causeway, where the bridge lifts off toward Bird Key, St. Armands and Longboat Key, there was a bait shop on pilings, a fishing pier, a playground, a gazebo and a patch of bayfront grass where bands played for nothing and nobody checked your shoes. You could buy a dozen shrimp, a cold drink and a spot on the rail, and watch the pelicans work the same water you were working.
—Today there is a fence.
—It has been two years since Hurricanes Helene and Milton tore through that shoreline, and nearly eleven months since the city bulldozed what was left of Hart’s Landing. On Monday, the frustration finally walked into City Hall.
“Knew the Harts. Still Know the Harts.”
—Ed McCaffrey came to the City Commission to complain about jet skis at the boat ramp. He stayed at the podium to talk about something that plainly hurt more.
“Hart’s Landing, Tony Saprito Pier,” he said. “Lived here all my life. Knew the Harts. Still know the Harts. What’s going on?”
—He described walking past the site for more than two years. “At least they cleaned the mess up that it was. Nothing is happening down there.” He reminded commissioners there is a park at the end of it for the public to use. “Two plus years, empty. Let’s get something done about that, too, please.”
—Martin Hyde followed him, and for once the city’s most persistent critic sounded less like a heckler than a eulogist. He said a video he made at the site last week has drawn more than 50,000 views.
“We know it’s not just a bait shop but a bayfront park and a place where free live music entertained, say plainly, non-elites in our community,” Hyde said. “Genuinely a part of our history and also a highly visible reflection on this city.”
Then came the Hyde the commission knows. Nothing has happened, he said, “on the basis that you have no money,” and he rattled off the things the city has found money for, from a downtown noise study to design work on a golf clubhouse and a performing arts center. “One wonders where do the commissioners stand on Hart’s Landing,” he said, “because it’s been crickets for two years.”
Seine Net, a Bonfire and 90 Years
—To understand why this particular vacant lot stings, you have to know what stood on it.
—Hart family lore holds that Deamus Hart started the business in 1934 on the beach at Golden Gate Point with a hundred-foot shrimp net, a bonfire to draw the shrimp and a bottle of whiskey against the chill. He sold bait to fishermen by the dozen for a quarter. When a new bridge displaced the operation in the early 1960s, the city built a structure beside the causeway on the understanding that the Harts would run it. The shop moved to the foot of the Ringling Bridge in 1964, and Deamus’s son Dennis was managing it full time a decade later.
—It survived everything Sarasota threw at its waterfront for the next half century, including the condominium towers that rose behind it and a 2014 closure when engineers found the pilings rotting underneath. In 2018, new operator Sherman Baldwin reopened it after a renovation and turned the adjoining park into a free concert venue.
—Baldwin has said he met his wife there and married her in that park.
—The Park Under the Bridge
—The bait shop gets the headlines, but it was only one piece of what the storms took.
—Wrapped around it is Ernest “Doc” and Eloise Werlin Park, created by Doc Werlin in memory of his wife after she died of breast cancer. It had a playground, walking trails, shade sails and a gazebo, all in the shadow of the bridge. Extending from it into the bay is the Tony Saprito Fishing Pier, open since 1979 and for decades the place where a kid with a five-dollar rod could catch dinner without owning a boat.
—Helene’s surge arrived on Sept. 26, 2024. Milton came ashore two weeks later. The city’s parks director said afterward that the waterfront parks looked as though a grenade had gone off. Concrete slabs had been shoved around by the waves. Parts of the pier were simply gone. The city’s public works director later said more than 80 percent of the Hart’s Landing building was destroyed.
—The shop was razed on Nov. 10, 2025. In announcing the demolition, the city called it “a significant loss to the community dealt by Mother Nature” and pledged to rebuild something sturdier.
—The Rule That Freezes Everything
—So why, two years on, is there nothing to see?
—City Manager Karie Friling gave the commission and the public the answer Monday, and she gave it without hedging.
“If we move forward and we even use our own money to do some of these very expensive, involved projects, we will lose all of our FEMA money,” Friling said. “We cannot do anything to jeopardize it with all the work we put into it.”
—That is the trap. The Federal Emergency Management Agency reimburses a large share of eligible storm repairs, as much as 75 percent by the city’s account, but only if every step is done its way: damage documentation, site visits, environmental permits, completed engineering plans, competitive bidding. Jump ahead, and the federal share can vanish. The city has put the total repair bill for its storm-damaged public spaces at $17.4 million.
—Vice Mayor Kathy Kelley Ohlrich acknowledged the message has not landed. “We’ve said it not just among ourselves but to others, and people still have not heard that we can’t jeopardize funding by proceeding,” she said. Commissioners Liz Alpert and Jen Ahearn-Koch asked for the same thing: tell people why.
Mayor Debbie Trice named the wider list, including Hart’s Landing, Saprito Pier and Indian Beach Park. “These are the storm repairs that everybody said, what storm? That was two years ago,” she said. “People think, oh, you’re just never going to bring it back.”
Five Projects on One Shoreline
—The complexity is real. City officials have explained that what looks to a driver like one wrecked corner is, in FEMA’s eyes, five separate projects: the bridge approach, which the state repaired; the park; the pier; the Hart’s Landing docks and restrooms; and the Hart’s Landing building itself. Each has its own file, its own approvals and its own clock.
—Because the work sits over Sarasota Bay, state and federal environmental permits are required to protect seagrass, shoreline and manatees. Federal disaster money does not flow straight to City Hall, either. It moves through the state’s emergency management agency in Tallahassee, which reviews and passes along every reimbursement request. And the money generally arrives after the work is finished and documented, which city officials have warned could mean a wait of three to four years.
—From Tallahassee to Washington
—Then, this year, the timeline slipped again.
—In February, the city said the park and pier were designed and permitted, with reconstruction to start shortly and a goal of reopening this fall. People would walk that bayfront for the first time in two years.
—That is not what the city’s hurricane recovery tracker says now. As of this week it lists Werlin Park as “construction paused due to partial government shutdown,” with work expected to resume in late 2026 or early 2027 and finish in late 2027. Saprito Pier is listed as approved but not started, delayed for the same reason, with the same late-2027 finish.
—The shutdown in question was the 76-day lapse in Department of Homeland Security funding that began in mid-February and ended April 30, when Congress and the president finally funded FEMA’s parent agency. During the standoff, federal officials warned that reimbursements for long-term rebuilding could stall. The lapse has been over for five months. The word “paused” is still on the city’s tracker.
—The damage from two nights of wind and water is being prolonged by a budget fight that played out a thousand miles away.
“So Close,” and 2031
—Friling offered the commission a note of hope. The city has a new emergency manager working daily with FEMA, she said. “We are so close to having this money.”
—For the park and the pier, that may prove true. For the bait shop, the city’s own tracker tells a harder story. The entry for Hart’s Landing reads: permit pending, project in design. Expected construction start: 2029, and that is for the dock only. Expected finish for the dock, shop and restrooms: 2031.
—That is seven years after the storms. A child who caught a first pinfish off that dock in the summer of 2024 will be old enough to drive across the bridge by the time the bait tanks are running again.
—Hyde told commissioners that the shop’s operator had raised the possibility of paying for a new building himself and that the idea went nowhere. The city did not respond to that claim from the dais. If private money is on the table for a structure FEMA will take until the end of the decade to fund, it is a question worth a public answer.
—Longboat Knows the Feeling
—Sarasota is not alone on this stretch of coast. Just up the road, Longboat Key is owed roughly $28 million in storm reimbursements and has grown so exasperated that town leaders have taken the fight to state officials.
“We’re not the only one in this boat,” Friling said Monday. “There are so many other communities, not just in the state of Florida, but in other states that are also waiting for this money to come in.”
—She did not pretend the wait was acceptable. “We understand the frustration. Staff is frustrated. The commission is frustrated that it’s taken this long.”
What Was Promised Monday
—The commission took no formal action. What residents were promised is information: the city will recirculate its project briefing on Hart’s Landing, push links to its recovery web page, and post explanations on social media of why the rules work the way they do.
—It is something. It is also a strange place for a city to find itself, explaining to people who have fished that water all their lives that the reason they cannot is a matter of sequence and forms.
—McCaffrey put it more simply. He is retired now, he told the commission. He is down at the water twice a week. He would like to enjoy it in peace.
—The storm took two nights. The fence is going on two years. And the calendar at City Hall, in black and white, says the wait for Hart’s Landing has barely started.
