New College of Florida tears up nature preserve, claims it’s an improvement

Where the southern half of the Upland Bayfront Preserve stood, there's now fill dirt, soon to become a soccer field and beach volleyball courts. (Photo courtesy Karen Stack)

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Sarasota used to be home base for the Ringling Brothers Circus. Maybe that’s what’s led to so much clowning around with the fate of its institution of higher learning, New College of Florida.

Gov. Ron “ I Went to Two Ivy League Schools To Become An Educated Fool” DeSantis has done his best to tear down our whole public school system. His culture-war claptrap clamped down on what teachers can say while removing innocuous books about penguins from school libraries. He’s okayed an expansion of vouchers so even millionaires can use taxpayer dollars to pay for their kids to go to private schools. Meanwhile, Florida’s average teacher pay ranks 50th among the states .

Is it any wonder thousands of teachers have fled the profession while test scores are going down the tubes ?

But some of the worst damage he’s done has been to New College.

Once the state’s honors college with about 700 Not-So-Little Einsteins as students, it was one of the nation’s top-ranked liberal arts colleges. DeSantis has in effect put the place under the control of the clueless jocks from “Revenge of the Nerds.” Five of his six appointees to the college’s trustee board have no expertise in public education .

The new board fired the well-respected president. As her replacement, they picked former Florida House Speaker Richrd Corcoran .

Corcoran is no higher ed expert. He earned a bachelor’s degree at St. Leo University , a private Catholic liberal arts school, and a law degree from Regent University , founded by televangelist Pat Robertson . That’s it — no doctorates, not even a master’s.

You can see why he was rejected in his bid to become president of Florida State University.

He did serve as Florida’s appointed education commissioner from 2018 to 2022. His major achievements were to ban K-12 schools from teaching “critical race theory” (which wasn’t being taught below college level) and a massive scandal in which his department tried to steer a multimillion-dollar contract to run the Jefferson County school system to a company whose CEO had ties to Corcoran. (We’re still waiting to see what a federal grand jury investigation of this turns up .)

Now that he’s president of the NEW New College, he’s raking in the big bucks — more than double that of his more qualified predecessor . His major innovation: Let in lots of athletes, even though they have lousy academic scores . The school has added baseball, softball, soccer, and basketball, with plans to expand to 23 sports total .

As a result, he’s now done something that’s outraged the neighbors and a lot of alumni: Destroying a chunk of the Upland Bayfront Preserve on Sarasota Bay.

But hey, it’s OK!. By destroying the preserve, he says he’s actually made it better!

Eden no more

Despite its name, New College isn’t all that new. It was founded in 1960, which means it’s old enough to have an AARP card.

The first trustees bought the former Charles Ringling estate on Sarasota Bay and 12 acres of Sarasota-Manatee Airport land facing U.S. 41. That became the campus.

From 1975 to 2001, New College was a branch of the University of South Florida, finally becoming independent. When the two institutions split, they signed an agreement that said they would never use the Upland Bayfront Preserve for anything but passive recreation.

New College’s most recent master plan for development of the campus, dated 2016, spells it out: “In general, the Uplands shoreline is intended to remain in a natural state, reflecting its natural beauty, value as an environmental study area, and the need to respect the potential for storm surge activity.”

The preserve was a strip of bayfront land full of century-old pines, massive oaks, and thick cabbage palms, plus plenty of mangroves along the shoreline. Birds nested in the trees, foxes and other small mammals scurried among the brush. The college’s neighbors loved its quiet natural splendor.

“It feels like we’ve been living in Eden here,” one of the neighbors, Karen Stack, told me.

Then, at the end of May — right after the students left campus for the summer — machines rumbled into the preserve and began knocking trees down like so many bowling pins. The neighbors were shocked.

“We got no alert, no warning, no update to the master plan,” Stack told me.

I guess Corcoran was following Elmer Fudd’s patented approach to problems: “Be vewwwy vewwwy quiet.”

Where the trees used to be, construction crews are building a soccer field and six beach volleyball courts — still recreation, but not “passive” by any means.

“All of these projects have included consultations with environmental and biological experts to ensure the environmental footprint of New College is enhanced,” said a New College press release sent to the Sarasota Herald Tribune after its reporter started asking questions.

I’ve encountered a few environmental consultants with shaky ethics, but I can’t think of any that would claim killing that many trees would “enhance” the landscape.

Ants in his way

Stack contacted Sarasota officials about what was happening. Sure enough, New College had failed to apply for any tree removal permits.

City officials posted a stop-work order on the property. When the destruction continued, Stack told me, “I called the cops.”

They made the crews shut down their work — but soon they were back at it.

The city’s attorney had received a call from New College’s attorney, who turns out to be former Senate President Bill “I Love Unnecessary, Sprawl-Spreading Toll Roads” Galvano.  He convinced the city attorney that New College, as a state entity, could do whatever it wanted with state property. That includes un-preserving a longtime preserve.

“I called every department I could think of,” Stack told me. “There doesn’t seem to be any way to slow them down.”

Corcoran sent an email to some of the neighbors who’d bombarded his office with angry calls. It’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read.

“Dear Neighbors,” it begins. “On behalf of New College, and as dedicated stewards of its natural environment, I am writing to ease any community concerns and set the tone for collaboration.”

Dedicated stewards of the environment, huh? That’s like saying Putin blew up a Ukrainian children’s hospital because he’s so concerned about pediatric care.

Wait, though — here comes the best part:

“Not only are we deeply committed to this, we are currently planting a diverse range of native species that will enrich the local ecosystem and beautify both our campus and the expanding neighborhood. This includes the replacement of the aging slash pines with young pines to ensure their legacy continues.”

See? Knocking down those ugly OLD trees is so much better for the environment, don’t you think? Killing them will “ensure their legacy continues.”

Needless to say, nobody’s planting new trees in the middle of those new sports fields.

“He uses words that don’t match his actions,” Stack said. “I don’t think he’s taking us seriously. He’s on a mission, and we’re just ants in his way.”

Keeping the jocks occupied

I drove to Sarasota this week to see the damage for myself. It’s pretty bad.

Where there used to be ancient trees and scurrying wildlife, there’s now lots of fill dirt and a bunch of irrigation lines laid out for a sprinkler system.

My tour guide was Jono Miller , a New College graduate who went on to lead its environmental studies program. He retired, but now is president of a group called “ NCF Freedom” whose goal is to protect the original vision of New College.

He recently wrote a book on cabbage palms: “ The Palmetto Book,” which is a delight. It’s the only nature book I’ve ever read that includes a long section about an Elvis movie.

When Miller heard about what was being done to the preserve, “I couldn’t go watch,” he told me. “I didn’t think I could handle it.”

He called up Corcoran and spoke to the man with the unknown plan. He convinced Corcoran that transplanting those cabbage palms to another part of the campus was a good idea.

“There were 88 cabbage palms,” Miller told me. “They moved 21 of them.” The rest were bulldozed, he said, He estimated the workers also removed around 150 pines and oaks.

There may have been other casualties, because there are signs some of the mangroves were cut, but it’s impossible to say exactly what was lost. The last tree survey of the property was in 2008, he said.

As we walked the perimeter of the sports fields, we could see three places where recent rains have swept fill dirt off the property, through silt “barriers,” and down into the bay. Now picture the same thing happening with the fertilizer and pesticides to be sprayed on the fields when they’re in operation, which is supposed to start this fall.

That would violate Sarasota County rules to protect the bay, Miller said, but county officials have yet to take any action on the problem. Miller said he tried contacting USF officials about New College breaking their agreement but they appear to be ignoring it too.

Some opponents of New College’s destruction did try to bring it up during a recent meeting in Orlando of the state board that oversees higher education. They were kicked out of the meeting.

Last week, five people filed official complaints with the inspector general for the state university system. The complaints, filed by four former New College students and an environmental activist, accuse Corcoran of violating the campus’ master plan and possibly local and federal laws, including disturbing bald eagles.

But Miller said it’s too late to save those trees and wildlife. They’re gone like congressional bipartisanship.

New College didn’t respond to my requests for comment, so I asked Miller if Corcoran had told him why he decided to rip apart the preserve. He believes it’s the result of New College’s embrace of sports.

“In order to succeed, he needs to increase enrollment,” Miller said. “To increase enrollment, he has to recruit more athletes. That means he has to keep adding sports fields.’

Because the preserve was just sitting there, it seemed like the perfect spot for more fields to keep the jocks occupied. Breaking longstanding agreements and upsetting the neighbors are just the price of being “innovative.”

Fortunately, the work crews didn’t wipe out the entire preserve. The northern section is still intact — for now.

But Miller worries that could be the next target of Corcoran’s campus conversion.

In the grove

Last year, the New College board voted to ask the Legislature for $2 million to start a “Freedom Institute.” Corcoran said it was aimed at combating “cancel culture” in higher education.

The institute would promote “tolerance of opposing views” and “engage such views in civil discourse,” according to the News Service of Florida . You know, the opposite of what happened when those Upland Preserve fans were tossed out of the Orlando meeting.

Both Slack and Miller told me they’ve seen plans that indicate Corcoran wants to build this 100,000-square-foot institute on what’s left of the preserve. Miller told me on our hike that he’s heard it could straddle a small creek that flows through the property and empties into the bay. It’s hard to say where it could go with no new master plan in place.

When he and I crossed the creek, we walked on a rickety board spanning the waterway. I couldn’t picture a building there. It seemed like a ridiculous idea. But so did clearing out a nature preserves and calling yourself an “environmental steward.”

Listen, I’m no higher ed expert either. The Alabama college I attended makes the one in “Animal House” look sophisticated. I can tell you the Legislature turned down the $2 million this year, although it seems likely this will come up again.

The ancient Greeks like Plato taught outdoors, in the “groves of academy.”  Maybe Corcoran could keep what’s left of the preserve and just let his teachers free their minds among the pines, oaks, and palms.

Incidentally, if you treasure irony as I do, consider this last item: One of Corcoran’s first acts as president was to change the school’s official mascot. It used to be “null set,” a nerdy math joke that equates to nothing. Now it’s the Mighty Banyan .

Yes, that’s right — a tree.

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