‘Villainous.’ Protesters at Oleta River join statewide backlash against state park plan

Backlash against a state plan to build pickleball courts, golf courses and hotels in Florida state parks spilled from social media to the grass of Oleta River State Park on Tuesday, where more than 50 protesters gathered to speak out against the proposal.

“This is a real movement. A real, statewide movement,” said Susan DeGregory, an event coordinator from North Miami. “This is something that once it happens, you can’t undo it.”

She said it was her first time inside Oleta River State Park, but she’s already planning to return to paddle among the mangroves. When she comes back, DeGregory said she hopes the state will have listened to the growing chorus of Floridians, including top elected Republicans, who say they’re against the DeSantis administration plan.

The “Great Outdoors Initiative” calls for adding recreational opportunities to nine state parks, including two 350-room hotels, multiple golf courses and pickleball courts. The proposal to add several golf courses to Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County has been met with some of the fiercest push back, and on Sunday a group that claimed to be behind the concept said it was withdrawing its plans to build in the park .

Golf courses in state parks isn’t a new idea for Florida. In 2011, a bill was introduced that would have created the “Jack Nicklaus Golf Trail,” named after the famous golf pro, but it was shot down under intense public opposition. The new plan to put golf courses in the same state park, Jonathan Dickinson, raised questions about Nicklaus’ involvement once more.

While the golf pro has not made a public statement about the issue, the companies that bears his name insisted it wasn’t involved in the “Ill-conceived” plans. Nicklaus resigned from the companies in 2022.

“In 2011, the community spoke. We listened. We cannot comment on what other parties may be doing, but Nicklaus Companies and Nicklaus Design oppose the development of golf courses in Jonathan Dickinson Park or any other Florida state park. If asked to participate in such a project, we would decline,” the company said in a statement.

The Department of Environmental Protection, which announced the plans last week, has yet to formally respond to the withdrawal comment, and the agency has yet to reschedule the canceled public comment meetings that were initially scheduled for Tuesday.

DEP has yet to respond to questions from the Herald about what the withdrawal means, which organizations have expressed interest in developing in state parks and what processes the state would follow to ensure anything it builds meets state environmental standards.

READ MORE: How to tell Florida what you think about adding disc golf, pickleball to state parks

At the Tuesday morning protest, mothers and their children sprawled on blankets in the grass, coloring protest signs that read “Don’t pave paradise” and “save our state parks”.

Catalina Lemaitre, the organizer of the protest, told the crowd that city and county parks have a different mission than state parks. In state parks, the main goal is conserving wild land, and the only recreational opportunities are usually camping, hiking, kayaking and mountain biking. City and county parks, she said, are where sports like tennis, disc golf and pickleball belong.

“They want to build a 350-room hotel in a 1,500-acre park,” she said. “It’s untenable.”

Federico Acevedo, communications manager for the Florida Wildlife Federation, said more than 200,000 people have signed his group’s petition against the parks plan, so far.

“It has been an outpouring of outrage and support for state parks,” said Acevedo, 31.

He described the proposal as “villainous, almost out of a movie” and said the hastily announced and then hastily canceled plans for public comment were shady.

“Everything about this just screams ‘We don’t want your opinion and we don’t care about you’,” he said.

However, not everyone at the park was against the idea of paving state parks. Orlando Chils, a 68-year-old owner of a bus rental company, was hired to ferry a school bus full of mother and child protesters to Oleta. As the crowd beat drums and chanted, he stood to the side.

“There’s plenty of parks in Miami. The whole beach is a park,” he said. “They don’t make any money.”

Chils said he likes the idea of turning state parks into sports courts and hotels and sees it as a boost to jobs in the area. He pointed out the handful of employees manning the kayak rental booth and gift shop at Oleta and said a hotel would employ far more people in the same square footage.

“Investment, money, jobs, taxes,” he said. “What’s wrong with that?”