"The contractor is very aware of the requirements of when they have to be completed and off of the beach," Charlotte County engineer Joanne Vernon wrote to The Daily Sun after commissioners approved the Manasota Key renourishment contract on Oct. 27. The requirements she means come from sea turtles. The project was planned to start after one nesting season ends, and that season ended Oct. 31.
For anyone who walks Englewood Beach in the morning or paddles out of Stump Pass, the south end of the Key is about to go through its biggest physical change since the last nourishment in 2020. The schedule depends on how much of the winter window the dredge can use.
A Schedule Built Around the Nests
Sea turtle nesting season on this coast runs from March 1 through Oct. 31. According to The Daily Sun's report on the approval, the project was designed to start after nesting ends and finish before nesting begins on March 1, 2027. The county's posted forecast runs later than that.
Here is the calendar as it stands this week:
- Oct. 27, 2026: The Board of County Commissioners approves the contract with Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company, the lowest of four bidders, at $29,348,880. The commission's agenda preview in YourSun reported the figure.
- Nov. 23, 2026: The estimated start. Vernon said work can't begin until county staff and Great Lakes hold a pre-construction meeting to set real start and end dates. Part of that depends on how long it takes to bring the large dredging equipment in and assemble it.
- Jan. 1 to April 30, 2027: The estimated construction window on Charlotte County's project page. The county says it will release a tentative schedule once the pre-construction meeting is held.
- March 1, 2027: Nesting season begins. The Daily Sun reported that the project was designed to be finished by this date.
The pre-construction meeting will set the dates that count.
Where the Sand Goes, and Where It Comes From
The Daily Sun reported that the contract will pump sand from the Gulf floor off Manasota Key onto several miles of beach, from the Charlotte-Sarasota county line south to Don Pedro Island. Englewood Beach and Stump Pass Beach State Park are the public beaches inside the project. The county describes it as the second full-scale nourishment of the Key's shoreline. It uses the same design template as the 2019/20 project and adds restoration of the dune system at Chadwick Cove Beach Park, 1857 Gulf Blvd.
For scale, Charlotte County's July 22, 2026 budget presentation says the bid documents allowed for 590,000 cubic yards to restore the full design template on the Charlotte side. The last regional project covered both counties and finished in May 2020. It placed 880,280 cubic yards between the north end of the Sarasota County segment and the south end of Charlotte's, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's 2026 Strategic Beach Management Plan. This winter's Charlotte contract alone is sized at about two-thirds of what that two-county effort placed.
The reason for the size is a list of storms. The county project page names Hurricanes Ian, Nicole, Idalia, Debby, Helene and Milton. Together they moved hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of sand and damaged the dune system and seawalls along the Key.
The bill is split four ways, per The Daily Sun:
- $8.2 million expected from a Florida Department of Environmental Protection grant
- $7.6 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency
- $1.1 million from the Florida Department of Emergency Management
- $13.8 million from county tourist development taxes and the taxing districts set up for Manasota Key and Don Pedro-Knight beach renourishment
What the Last Round Looked Like From the Sand
Great Lakes is a familiar name here. The Houston company did Charlotte County's last major renourishment in 2020, and that project linked up with Sarasota County's.
That winter, YourSun reported that the county set up staging and delivery areas at the north end of Englewood Beach, 2100 North Beach Road, and at the south part of Chadwick Park, 1857 Gulf Blvd. The county's notice said the beach would stay open and asked people to use caution near those sites. WINK News described the 2020 borrow area as three to seven miles offshore. Residents it interviewed welcomed the project and hoped to get back a beach they could use.
Chadwick Cove at 1857 Gulf Blvd. matters twice over. It was a 2020 staging site, and it is the address the county gives for this project's new dune work. If you use Chadwick Park, that is the stretch to watch once a schedule comes out.
The Pass That Closed Before Anyone Decided
Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key on Oct. 9, 2024. The next morning, a new cut had opened through Stump Pass Beach State Park, about half a mile south of the park entrance. The Daily Sun's account says local boaters and beachgoers named it Milton's Pass. Kayakers and paddleboarders routinely used it to cross between the Gulf and Lemon Bay, and many credited it with flushing out the murky water of Ski Alley and Lemon Bay.
By January 2025 the breach was about 400 feet wide, according to FDEP. By May 2026 it had closed through natural infilling and accretion. In a photo caption from that spring, The Daily Sun showed kayakers walking their boats over a shoal under about a foot of water where the pass used to be. By May 9, about 25 feet of dry sand separated the Gulf from Lemon Bay at the old mouth. The paper said the cut stayed mostly closed through the summer and fall of 2026.
"As part of that planning effort, the breach commonly referred to as 'Milton Pass' is being evaluated to understand long-term conditions in the area and its potential role in future restoration or shoreline stabilization efforts."
Chip Turner, public information officer for FDEP's South District Office, gave that statement to The Daily Sun in May. The Gulf filled in the cut while the evaluation was still going. The shoreline shifts every season without help, and the nourishment is a deliberate version of the same process, planned to start after nesting season ends.
What Has Already Changed at the Gates
Two smaller changes are already in place on the Charlotte end of the Key.
At Stump Pass Beach State Park, 900 Gulf Blvd., the Florida State Parks page says that starting Oct. 5, 2026, visitors pay the $3 per-vehicle entrance fee by card at a new remote off-grid kiosk and leave the printed receipt on the dashboard. The park is open 8 a.m. to sunset every day of the year, and kayaks can still launch there.
At Englewood Beach and Chadwick Park, the county's disaster recovery page breaks the post-storm repairs into three stages:
| Status | Items |
|---|---|
| Complete | Signage, parking lot and pavement repairs, fencing, amenities, playground, buildings |
| Pending FEMA | Lighting |
| In design and permitting | Pavilions, estimated Aug. 11, 2030; sidewalks, boardwalks, piers and dock, estimated Aug. 1, 2030 |
The same page lists erosion work at Englewood Beach in planning from Sept. 1, 2026 to May 1, 2027. Parking and the playground are back this winter. The covered pavilions and boardwalks run on a timeline several years longer than the sand.
Just across the water, the Ainger Fishing Pier at the Tom Adams Bridge has been closed since a boat struck it during Hurricane Helene on Sept. 27, 2024, and Milton damaged it further a week later. A design and permitting contract to rebuild it, capped at $269,700, was on the same Oct. 27 commission agenda as the sand.
North of the County Line
The Sarasota County end of Manasota Key, home to Manasota Beach and Blind Pass Beach, has its own erosion concerns. FDEP's 2026 plan notes erosion hotspots in Sarasota County in 2025 after the storms, near the northern limit of the 2020 fill. It tentatively schedules the next full nourishment of the regional Manasota Key project for 2026/2027, depending on weather, permitting and contractor schedules. For now, Sarasota County lists Manasota Beach Park with beach access, motorized and non-motorized boat ramps, and hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Free Beach Yoga with Katja continues on Manasota Beach on scheduled dates through April 6, 2027, per the county's events calendar.
Charlotte County's next update will be the tentative schedule that follows the pre-construction meeting. It will show when the dredge arrives and when the work is expected to wrap up.
I follow projects like this along the whole coast, from the Manasota Key shoreline to Englewood, because a changing beach is part of what owners here live with. If you'd like to talk through what the renourishment schedule means for a property you own or are considering near Englewood Beach or Chadwick Cove, Anthony LaPorta is glad to help. Let's Connect.
