Pelican Island Audubon Society President Richard Baker writes in with some information on their new community center in Vero Beach. Congratulations to Pelican Island Audubon Society on their acheivement, we look forward to watching the progress on this exciting project. Enjoy:

The Indian River County Commission has approved Pelican Island Audubon Society’s (PIAS) special zoning request to build a 2,596 square foot Audubon Community Center (ACC) on one acre of land off Oslo Road in Vero Beach.  The site is surrounded on three sides by the 440-acre Oslo Riverfront Conservation Area (ORCA); the fourth side is next to the University of Florida’s Medical Entomology Laboratory (FMEL).

This natural setting will allow both PIAS and the FMEL to continue and expand upon their 15 years of classes to expose adults and children to the natural world and to train volunteers to help maintain Indian River County’s 35 conservation parcels so they can be fully appreciated and utilized by the public.

The ACC will be an invaluable addition to the community while allowing PIAS to better fulfill its mission:

"To preserve and protect the animals, plants, and natural communities in Indian River County through advocacy, education, and public awareness."  

Volunteers will help with invasive plant control, trash clean up, nature interpretation, trail maintenance, mapping, sign posting, grant writing, newsletter, research, and data management.  Volunteer training courses will focus on botany, ecology, ornithology, and natural-resource management and the environmental issues of our county.

The ACC will also provide a classroom and meeting space for environmentally based community organizations, school groups, and civic organizations, and will serve as a public gateway to our county lands through educational field trips, canoeing workshops, and walks around the Great Florida Birding Trail at ORCA and other county preserves.  Our activities and opportunities will stimulate the local economy by creating an eco-tourism educational attraction focused on the natural attributes of the Indian River Lagoon for hiking, biking, paddling, bird watching, wildlife observation, fishing, and nature photography and art.

For five years PIAS has been working on building a home…fund raising, finding a location, proposing and being turned down, but through persistence, our dream will soon be realized thanks to our community working together.  Since 2007, Patrick Walther and Ben Speed of Carter Associates, Inc. (CAI) has provided thousands of dollars of pro bono services based on actual time and materials for surveying, planning, engineering design and permitting for the Center site plan.  A project such as this requires multiple professional disciplines working together as a team to achieve the shared goal. CAI was instrumental in putting the team together by obtaining pro bono services from other necessary professionals: Geotechnical Consultant Dave Alker for soil borings and testing; Robin Pelensky for landscape plans and design; Jimmy Sellers and Michael Walther from Coastal Technology Corp. assisted in project coordination; Kim Stephenson, Formica & Associates, Inc. for the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering; and Bill Stoddard, PhD, P.E. from Schulke, Bittle & Stoddard, LLC for structural engineering.

Without those additional pro bono team members, PIAS would have incurred much greater costs for the project, perhaps making it infeasible.

With our own home, we look forward to having exciting programs and exhibit space for art, science, and nature outreach education to engage the public. We’ll also have room for our 1,500-book nature library, and offices and storage space for Audubon volunteer activities in and around our community.

Though we still need to raise funds to complete the project, we are finally on our way!