The sinkhole that developed at Lake Park in October hasn’t done anyone any favors, especially the GFWC Lutz-Land O’ Lakes Woman’s Club.
The nearly 6-foot-wide, 100-foot-deep sinkhole forced the closure of the park in early December, forcing the cancellation of what would have been the 36th Annual Lutz Arts & Crafts Festival.
The event, which has attracted nearly 30,000 people in recent years, typically provides the club with several thousand dollars to give back to the community in the form of donations to nonprofits and college scholarships for local students.
“We’re really hard-pressed for funds as a result of the event being cancelled,” said Pat Serio, head of public relations for the woman’s club. “It is our largest fundraiser of the year and, as a result, our budget and our treasury is going to seriously suffer.
“Our scholarships in particular (will be affected) because we usually give upwards of $20,000 a year in scholarships, as well as the rest of the money we donate to the library, the Old Lutz School, Boys Scouts, Girl Scouts, Relay for Life, veterans’ charities and all that across the board,” Serio said.
The club is currently scrambling to put together some smaller fundraisers while seeking help from local community members to raise funds.
Upcoming events include a Valentine’s Day celebration on Feb. 12 and the club’s annual Flea Market at Old Lutz School on March 7 and March 8. In June, they will partner with Burger 21 for a one-day project, in which a percentage of the restaurant’s sales for that day will go to the club.
“We’re just working on lots of different little things, because it’s really hard to do a huge thing like the (arts & crafts festival) as a startup, so we’re going to be doing a lot of little things for this year,” said Cathy Mathes, president of the woman’s club.
Mathes, who took over as president in December from Kay Taylor, said it was frustrating to have the festival cancelled on such short notice, preventing the organization from having enough time to find a temporary location.
“At some point, we thought they could maybe just put some dirt in it,” Mathes said about the sinkhole. “But, they didn’t know the extent of it, until they did more investigating.”
Mathes added the club plans to find a new permanent location for the arts & crafts festival this December, saying they’ve encountered “other issues at Lake Park,” such as flooding on park roads that vendors and attendees would have to constantly maneuver around.
“It’s time to just find a new location,” Mathes stated. I think we can still have a really good show.”
While nothing has been finalized, the plan is to host the festival at one of the “big schools” in the area.
“I heard someone recently say how they looked forward to going to the festival, and they were disappointed. We’ve had lots of that,” the club president explained. “And, lots of people have asked me, ‘Are you going to do it again?’ and I say, ‘Yes. Yes we are.’”
The closure of Lake Park also has affected Hillsborough County as well. According to Forest Turbiville, the county’s director of conservation and land management, the park generated $119,000 in 2015 through a combination of entry fees, canoe rentals, shelter rentals and other special events.
“Keeping the park closed is going to have an impact,” Turbiville said. “What that impact is right now I’m not sure, but we can probably extrapolate those numbers based on previous years and business that we’ve done from November to December to January.”
Turbiville said the county is still looking into solutions for the sinkhole, with the assistance of Ardaman & Associates, an environmental consulting firm.
“We’ve discussed different ideas as far as filling it, keeping it fenced off,” Turbiville said about the lone sinkhole amidst the park’s nearly 600 acres of land. “I’ve asked our consultant to give me a proposal to take a look at the entire park and give out some kind of assessment…as far as any sinkhole activities, risks and things like that, because we need to make sure the public is safe before we start putting people back in there.
“This whole area has had a history of being quite abundant with sinkholes,” he said.
Being that the park’s land is actually owned by the city of St. Petersburg, Turbiville said he would need to get its approval as well before there’s a remedy for the sinkhole. But, he added: “If we were to do anything out there, I’m sure they would approve it.
“We just need to come to some consensus as far as what the plan is moving forward,” he said. “We’ll lay out a plan looking at the entire park and sinkhole risks, and we’ll have a better timeline on the park reopening, whether that’s going to be a month from now or two months from now.
“My guess is it’s going to be awhile before the park reopens,” Turbiville said.
Published January 20, 2016
