From fantasy not so many years ago to fact today and well into the future, the Florida Conservation and Technology Center (FCTC) is growing in Apollo Beach – and excitement is budding with it.
The Suncoast Youth Conservation Center is the first Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) facility to open to the public at FCTC. The two-story, 6,000-square-foot building will welcome students and educators from throughout the community to learn, for free, about Florida’s diverse local habitats and ecosystems. During the school year and summer, programs will take place indoors and outdoors and will include saltwater fishing, kayaking through the mangrove-shrouded restored Newman Branch Creek, education about natural resource protection and much more.
It’s part of an ongoing investment by community partners that, in addition to the FWC and TECO, includes the Florida Aquarium – which last year opened an aquaculture lab at FCTC to study a variety of animal and plant life. Among them: the long-spine black urchin, which plays a critical role in controlling algae in coral reefs.
“I’m an unabashed TECO fan; they’re doing a great job in this community … This whole facility, going from the Manatee Viewing Center over to here and everything in between is spectacular,” said FWC Chairman Brian Yablonski at the Suncoast Youth Conservation Center ribbon-cutting ceremony in April. “The Suncoast center is a great win for Florida’s youth and for its fish and wildlife resources, and it’s made possible by this strong partnership, whose mission is helping to create the next generation that cares.”
FCTC is just to the south of Tampa Electric’s Manatee Viewing Center, site of award-winning environmental education and a place where hundreds of Florida manatees find lifesaving protection from cold water during the winter. That clean, warm water comes from Tampa Electric’s Big Bend Power Station, where Unit 3 can now use 100 percent natural gas to generate reliable electricity for the community. And across Dickman Road from the power station and the Manatee Viewing Center, Tampa Electric will build its largest solar array – 23 megawatts and about 200,000 thin-film solar panels – on 125 acres of company-owned land.
For Tom Hernandez, vice president of Energy Supply with Tampa Electric, FCTC is part of an era- and area-defining commitment to the environment, sustainability, education and more by the project partners, working in concert.
Of the Tampa Electric Manatee Viewing Center, he said, “We’ve actually had a million visitors over the last three and a half seasons and a total of more than 5 million over the last 30 years since we opened the facility – this thing is escalating. Some of the estimates we’ve had are that [with FCTC] we’ll more than double that. So we could easily see 750,000 to a million visitors a year – researchers, students at all levels, including the university level, just learning about the technology, the research; it’s going to be fantastic.”
He added, “This is just the cusp, this is a turn in the road, with much more to come over the next few years.”
Visit our YouTube channel (in the Tampa Electric category) for videos from the dedication ceremony.
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