Mote Marine off the hook – for now
ANNA MARIA – Mote Marine Laboratory now has until March 1, 2023, to complete its installation of the Anna Maria City Pier Marine Education Outreach Center.
While the project will be a year late, it will include live marine exhibits withdrawn from the original plan.
During a special meeting on April 22, the Anna Maria City Commission voted 4-1 in favor of granting Mote Marine an extension of the original 180-day interior buildout and exhibit installation timeframe. Mote and the city agreed to the six-month deadline in late September when the two parties entered into a rent-free, five-year lease agreement for Mote’s use of the larger of the two city-owned buildings at the T-end of the City Pier. The smaller pier building is occupied by the City Pier Grill & Bait Shop.
Commissioner Mark Short opposed the 11-month extension, which must still be formalized by an amended lease agreement to be approved by Mote and the commission at a future meeting. Because he was recently exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19, Short participated in Friday’s meeting remotely as a precautionary measure.
When the original lease agreement was signed in September, Mote Marine representative Kevin Cooper said he anticipated the outreach center opening in March. That March deadline passed without Mote submitting any detailed engineering plans for the interior buildout and exhibit installations.
When requesting the extension on Friday, Cooper said Mote’s architect, Barron Schimberg, committed to starting the formal design and engineering process on Aug. 18. Schimberg previously engineered the City Pier for the city of Anna Maria.
Mayor Dan Murphy and the commission stipulated that once the design and engineering work begins on Aug. 18, Schimberg and Mote will have eight weeks to submit the finished plans for commission approval. If either design and engineering deadline is missed, the commission will consider terminating the project. Murphy noted the “drop-dead deadlines” will be formalized in the amended lease agreement.
Conceptual plans
During Friday’s meeting, the commission also reached majority consensus in support of the latest conceptual plans presented by Cooper. The conceptual plans consist of five colored renderings of Mote’s latest proposed exhibits, including four live exhibits that will collectively use approximately 1,000 gallons of circulating seawater.
“The centerpiece is the invertebrate touch exhibit,” Cooper said. “What we’ve found in our experience is the best way to educate individuals about the importance of marine science, conservation and preservation is to bring them closer to it – and you simply can’t get closer than having your hands in the water touching the species. It’s fully interactive. The rest of the exhibits are visual.”
The conceptual rendering of the touch exhibit includes a horseshoe crab and starfish.
Cooper said the mangrove exhibit will feature a mangrove tree and live marine species inhabiting the mangrove’s submerged root system. The grass flats exhibit will feature marine species found near the City Pier, including Gulf killifish, mojarra, stone crab and more.
The fourth live exhibit will use live cameras and a hydrophone that provide real-time sights and sounds of the actual marine life and environment under the City Pier.
The interactive and educational exhibits will also include microscopes, a puzzle-like fish identification exhibit that allows youngsters to hone their motor skills; a “Draw Alive” virtual exhibit that allows visitors to create digital marine life images projected on a display screen and an exhibit that allows visitors to create textured rubbings of fish and other marine life, which they can take home free of charge.
“Our goal is informal marine science education. We don’t want this to be something where someone comes in and looks around for two minutes. The mix of the live and interactive exhibits turns into a timely experience where they can come in and spend an hour or two learning,” Cooper said.
Cooper said the outreach center would accommodate 24 people at a time according to the state fire code. He said the outreach center would have up to three employees and/or volunteer docents present during school field trips and one or two staff members and/or volunteer docents present during normal operations.
Comments and feedback
Cooper said Mote Marine President and CEO Dr. Michael Crosby could not attend Friday’s meeting because he was visiting a Mote facility in the Florida Keys.
Cooper said he listened to a recording of the April 14 city commission discussion during which the mayor and commission expressed frustration with Mote’s ongoing delays. During that meeting, Commissioner Deanie Sebring expressed her concerns about the revised exhibit plans Mote submitted in January.
The revised plans proposed all virtual exhibits and none of the live exhibits Crosby originally presented in February and March of 2021 when the commission voted 4-1 to pursue the Mote outreach center.
The virtual exhibits were proposed in part due to concerns about the new pier being able to support the weight of the water-filled exhibit tanks. Those weight-bearing concerns have since been alleviated by third-party structural engineers.
On April 14, Sebring also questioned whether the proposed virtual exhibits were meant to simply serve as advertisements for the new aquarium Mote plans to build in Sarasota.
When addressing that concern, Cooper said, “I heard a concern that Mote was transitioning this partnership into a way to promote our aquarium. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are committed to operating and educating on this site free of charge. It’s much more likely that the Mote aquarium will support this project rather than the other way around.”
Cooper also addressed the delay-related frustrations expressed during the April 14 meeting.
“We share in that frustration. This process isn’t limited by Mote’s desires, determination or imagination. We’ve been limited largely by physics and third-party opinions, time frames and commitments. We’ve worked with four engineers and two architects. We’ve only been able to get one of those six committed to work on the project,” Cooper said.
During Friday’s meeting, Sebring was among those questioning Mote’s lack of progress.
“We’ve been sitting here for a year and no design has been done. I wonder what the heck has been going on?” she said.
She also noted many citizens have expressed similar anger and frustration on social media.
During public input, Anna Maria resident and retired marine biology Scott McGregor said the Mote outreach center may be a good idea, but not in the city-owned building that he and others would rather see leased to a restaurant operator.
Anna Maria resident Dan Devine said, “It’s been a year and this is what we have so far? We basically have rough drafts here. Why do we think it will only take eight weeks?”
Before voting against the extension, Short said, “I am very frustrated with how this has played out. The lease was signed at the end of September. This is the design we got, which doesn’t look too dissimilar from the concept that was provided to us a year ago. I understand certain things had to be done, but I’m really surprised the progress isn’t significantly further than where it is.”
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