Push to save 14-acre Pinellas preserve faces fast-approaching deadline

The push to save a 14-acre plot of preserve land in Pinellas County is coming down to the wire, with organizers having until Sept. 15 to come up with the remaining $450,000 needed for the purchase.

For years now, a group of neighbors have been working to raise millions of dollars to buy West Klosterman Preserve off Klosterman Road in Tarpon Springs. The area is home to a number of species of plants and animals “of special concern.”

“This is their ecosystem and that's why we want to save it,” Tex Carter, president of WK Preservation Group, says. Carter’s nonprofit has been raising money and pushing back against potential developments on the plot of land currently owned by Pinellas County Schools.

“The trees, the animals, all that lives here, benefits the people that live around it in ways that we don't even know, but we can feel it when we walk by here,” Carter added.

At one point the school district had plans to build a school on the land, but changes to demographics changed those plans as well.

“It laid essentially unoccupied for 30-plus years until the state legislature said, 'Sell your properties.' They put it up for sale. It went to a public sales site, and developers bid on it to put bulldozers on the property, level it and put condos on it,” Carter explained.

[Ohnotux]

There’s got to be someone with that kind of money. People pay that amount for art or cars. Come one. Someone be a hero.

[boster]

It will be taken from the people no doubt

[worldwidestuff]

Wow - those woods were my childhood playground. Figured they'd be long gone by now, it's been 40+ years. I bet our hidden forts are still back there. Also do they know a guy hung himself back there in the 1980's?

[ManChan-wp]

Northern Pinellas County is too uppity. Trying to preserve their upper middle class lifestyles.

[mmeyerr]

Gosh if only municipalities had ummm commissions and agencies.

[weldinggirl]

No wonder why this earth is so hot, take away trees add blacktop and buildings save the preserves