Corps project manager tells city engineer ‘sand placed to north will work its way down there’
In December 2025, the website of the City of Sarasota featured a map that showed the limits of the Lido Key Beach Renourishment Project planned to begin in late January of this year.
That map made it clear that the sand dredged from New Pass would be distributed just south of the Sarasota Sands Resort, whose address is 2150 Benjamin Franklin Drive. The plans did not call for the sand to reach the Gulf shoreline of Sarasota County’s Ted Sperling Park, as The Sarasota News Leader has reported.
Moreover, an engineering documents provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which was posted on the city’s website, showed the line of construction continuing to Monument 43.5 on the beach. The federal agency uses the monument system — which does not include physical structures — to denote specific locations on shorelines.
That engineering drawing also makes it clear that Monument 43.5 is south of Sarasota Sands.
Yet, on April 15, the vice president of the condominium complex’s owners association, Nancy A. Loerch-Archer, emailed a letter to Sarasota Mayor Debbie Trice…