Group Given Year To Come Up With Funds To Save W Klosterman Site

TARPON SPRINGS, FL — Wildlife lovers are asking Pinellas County residents to dig deep in their pockets to save a wooded property that's home to threatened owls, bald eagles and woodpeckers.

On June 8, the nonprofit West Klosterman Preservation Group Inc. signed a sales agreement with the Pinellas County School Board to purchase a 14-acre property in Tarpon Springs, known as the West Klosterman Road property.

The property is adjacent to the 76-acre Mariner Point Management Area acquired by the Pinellas County Commission in 1990, and supports diverse natural habitats including tidal swamps, flatwoods, sandhills and upland forest.

The same year the county commission purchased the Mariner Point Management Area, the Pinellas County School District used tax funds to purchase the West Klosterman site for $651,500. Last year the school board declared the land surplus property and put it up for sale, receiving offers from developers willing to pay up to $3.2 million.

When residents learned of the potential sale, they went before the school board, which agreed the land should be preserved — but only if the community can come up with the $3.2 million to purchase it. The school board gave the West Klosterman Preservation Group until July 1, 2022, to obtain the necessary funds.

The preservation group is now working with the Pinellas Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization that offers grants, scholarships and partnership funds for worthy projects in the county, to raise the funds.

The foundation assisted Dunedin residents in their effort to raise $4.5 million to purchase the 44-acre Gladys Douglas Hackworth Preserve on Keene Road in February, and Pinellas Community Foundation CEO Duggan Cooley hopes to do the same for the West Klosterman property.

In June, the effort received a major boost when the central Indiana-based Efroymson Family Fund pledged $250,000 if the conservation group comes up with the rest of the funds. The group also received a $2,500 grant from the Clearwater Audubon Society and $7,500 from the Frank E. Duckwall Foundation.

Once the conservation group has the deed of sale in hand, it plans to donate the property to the county's Department of Environmental Management, which oversees the abutting Mariner Point Management Area.

The West Klosterman property isn't the only environmentally sensitive piece of property the community hopes to save. Tarpon Springs residents are currently fighting to preserve a 74-acre property along the Anclote River.

Since adopting its environmental lands management program in 2000, the county has acquired and preserved 19 properties totaling 13,817 acres.

Residents wishing to make a donation toward the purchase of the West Klosterman property can click here.

See related stories:

• Residents Fight To Save Conservation Parcel From Becoming Condos
• The Gladys Douglas Preserve Signed And Celebrated
• Conservation Land Saved From Condos; City Hopes To Purchase
• Pinellas County To Negotiate Purchase Of Douglas-Hackworth Land
• Residents Rally To Fight Apartment Complex Along Anclote River