Salinas Park is about to grow.
The park, located on State 30E adjacent to the South Gulf County Volunteer Fire Department station, will soon expand to include another seven acres bayside and pickleball courts on the gulf side.
Yes, pickleball in Gulf County is about to have regulation courts built solely for the growing sport.
Warren Yeager, executive director of the county Economic Development Coalition, told a meeting of the Coastal Community Association last weekend that the park project stems from two dovetailing initiatives.
One, by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and county officials to identify additional public access points to the waters of the county.
The second, the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) effort stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill to provide funding for restoration of environmentally sensitive habitat.
The result, as it pertains to Salinas Park, is a NRDA grant that, combined with the FDEP’s purchase of seven acres bayside that surrounds the existing park footprint from the Patronis family out of Bay County, facilitates park expansion.
Yeager said the FDEP and NRDA dollars were purchasing the land, building a park and providing the county dollars for park maintenance over a 10-year period.
The new park expansion bayside, he added, would include bicycle stations, hiking trails and an elevated walkway.