CORTEZ – Raymond Guthrie Jr. has 60 days to convince the Florida Legislature to save the net camp he built in Sarasota Bay off the commercial fishing village before a court order to demolish it takes effect.
Manatee County 12th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Ed Nicholas ruled today that if the Legislature decides before it adjourns 60 days from the session’s start on March 2 that the structure should be protected, “that would certainly be a factor that the court would take into consideration.”
There is no harm in seeing “if the Legislature wants to consider the potential to grandfather this camp, as it appears they have done to others at some point throughout the state,” Nicholas said in his ruling on Guthrie’s motion to stay the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)’s Oct. 8, 2020 order to demolish the structure by Jan. 24, 2021.
The order resulted from DEP prevailing in its claim that the state owns the submerged land under Guthrie’s structure and that its construction was illegal.
Guthrie built the stilt structure in 2017 on what he says is the site of his family’s three former net camps, built over 70 years in Sarasota Bay.
A.P. Bell Fish Co. manager Karen Bell recently asked local legislators to request that DEP stay its demolition order, giving them time to draft legislation to protect the camp during the session. Legislators advised her to seek a stay in court.
“I’m happy,” she said. “Now it’s time to talk to the Legislature and see if they can help.”
Bell previously appealed in vain to Gov. Ron DeSantis to overturn the demolition, writing, “These camps are iconic to this community. Artists come from all over the world and have memorialized these structures in their work. I do not understand how my state is not supportive of our history.”
“I think there’s a failure to appreciate the historical nature of this,” Guthrie’s Bradenton attorney, Robert Schermer, told the court. “This is, in our view, no different than the historic school in Cortez, the historic museum; this is a part of the history of the village.”
Cortez is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Net camps, which once dotted the Cortez waterfront in Sarasota Bay, were used to clean, dry and store cotton nets. They declined in use when net makers began using more durable fibers and were made virtually obsolete by the 1994 Florida gill net ban.
Today, only Guthrie’s structure and a historic net camp remain off Cortez, the latter restored by the not-for-profit group, the Florida Institute for Saltwater Heritage (FISH).
Bell also previously intervened unsuccessfully in the lawsuit, claiming the structure has existed on the spot since at least the early 1900s and was protected by the 1921 Butler Act. DEP said the Butler Act did not protect the most recent structure because it had been allowed to deteriorate beyond use.
