Late Summer In Osprey: A New Tenant At Blackburn Point, A Poetry Exhibit Winding Down, And The Park Hours Only Locals Keep

The stretch between the July heat and the return of season is Osprey's quietest window, and its most honest one. The Tamiami Trail thins out. The parking lot at Nokomis Beach empties by seven. What's left is the version of this place that residents already know by heart, along with a handful of things that have shifted while everyone was inside with the air on.

Three of those shifts are worth knowing about before Labor Day: a familiar Blackburn Point storefront finally has a new tenant, a small exhibit at Selby Gardens' Historic Spanish Point campus is in its final weeks, and Oscar Scherer State Park quietly resets into the schedule it holds for the people who live around it.

The Blackburn Point space finally has a tenant

The Blackburn Point Plaza storefront at 1092 S. Tamiami Trail has been dark since Bay Leaf, the Indian restaurant that occupied it, closed. A Bradenton restaurant that has been operating for more than two years is expanding to Sarasota County, and the owners of Five Nine Grill & Tavern at 5718 Cortez Road W. plan to open an Osprey location in Blackburn Point Plaza, where Bay Leaf used to be, at 1092 S. Tamiami Trail.

Mike DeGirolamo, one of the owners, says he plans on making some changes to the 3,000-square-foot space; it will seat 120 when the restaurant opens, which he says will likely be in June, and most of the construction will center around redoing the bar. For anyone tracking this pocket of South Osprey, the arrival matters less because of the menu and more because of the address. Blackburn Point Plaza is the closest sit-down anchor to Casey Key Road and the Blackburn Point swing bridge. When a space here sits vacant, dinner options for the neighborhoods east of the ICW get thinner than they should be for a community this size.

Osprey is as far south as the owners plan to go, and they probably won't expand further north, though DeGirolamo mentioned Sun City might interest them and otherwise they will fill in between the two stores. That is a useful signal on its own. Operators who talk about "filling in between" tend to run neighborhood restaurants rather than destination ones, which is what a plaza like Blackburn Point actually needs.

Stevenson's poems, staged in a 5,000-year-old landscape

The current exhibit at Selby Gardens' Historic Spanish Point campus is winding down, and it is the kind of show that rewards a slow morning walk rather than a Saturday crowd. The Robert Louis Stevenson: A Child's Garden of Verses is on view through August 30th at Selby Gardens' Historic Spanish Point campus, located at 401 North Tamiami Trail, in Osprey, celebrating childhood and the imagination of youth through the words and images of A Child's Garden of Verses, the beloved book of poetry for children by the Scottish writer, and featuring photographs of pages from a vintage edition of the book combining Stevenson's poetry with illustrations by the American artist Alexander Dobkin.

The pairing of Stevenson with this particular campus is stranger and better than it sounds on paper. Historic Spanish Point is a 33-acre museum and environmental complex located in Osprey at 337 North Tamiami Trail, and the site includes an archaeological exhibit of a prehistoric Calusa shell mound known as a midden, a turn-of-the-century pioneer homestead historic house museum, a citrus packing house, a chapel, a boatyard, gardens, and nature trails. Reading a nineteenth-century poem inside a reconstructed citrus packing house, or beside Mary's Chapel, is a different act than reading it on a page. That is the actual reason to go before August 30.

If you have not been in a while, the campus is more Bertha Palmer than most first-time visitors realize. In 1910, Bertha Palmer, widow of Potter Palmer, purchased the Spanish Point homestead as well as thousands of acres for cattle ranching, citrus groves, and real estate development, and she preserved the pioneer buildings and connected them with lavish formal gardens and lawns on what she named Osprey Point. A late-summer walk along her garden edges, before the winter visitors arrive, is one of the more underused hours in the neighborhood.

Oscar Scherer belongs to residents in August

With 1,400 acres, 15 miles of trails, and close proximity to shops, Oscar Scherer is easy to leave your troubles at the park gate and get away from it all. In August, the campground rows that stay booked from November through April are largely empty, and the park settles into a different rhythm.

Two facts about the park are worth stating together, because they only matter in combination. Lake Osprey is a human-made lake that attracts thousands of people throughout the year, and it's the only freshwater swimming lake in Sarasota County. And the Legacy Trail runs directly through the heart of Oscar Scherer State Park, a 12-mile paved trail that runs from the beaches of Venice up to Sarasota with the park right in the middle. That combination — a paved commuter-grade trail cutting through 1,400 acres with a swimmable lake in the middle — is not a common suburban amenity anywhere in Florida, and it is close to unique on this stretch of the Gulf Coast.

A short list of what actually runs in August, drawn from the Friends of Oscar Scherer program schedule:

• Critter Crafts for kids, Saturdays 10 to 11 a.m. at the Nature Center, year-round.
• Kayak and canoe rentals on South Creek, now handled through Whenever Watersports.
• Glampsites, currently available — safari tents with A/C, mini-fridge, and fire pit, useful to know about when out-of-town relatives visit and hotel rooms on the Trail are the alternative.

The Junior Ranger program and the Third Thursday pancake breakfasts do not run in the summer; those come back in December. That gap is itself the point. August is when the park is not staged for anyone.

One caveat worth carrying in: effective October 13, 2025, due to drought conditions Sarasota County issued a burn ban, no open flames including campfires are permitted at Oscar Scherer State Park until further notice, and charcoal grills and propane stoves may be used for cooking only. Check the park's status before planning a fire-pit night at a glampsite.

Legacy Trail at 7 a.m.

The Legacy Trail is the most-used piece of public infrastructure most Osprey residents never quite think of as public infrastructure. The park features 10 miles of biking trails with the Legacy Trail directly through the heart, and the Legacy Trail is a 12-mile paved trail from the beaches of Venice north to Sarasota with the park located directly in the middle.

In August, the only sensible time to ride it is before the heat index climbs, which in practice means an hour after sunrise. From the Osprey Junction Trailhead, a rider can reach the Nokomis stretch and turn around inside a comfortable morning. The shaded canopy through the park itself is meaningfully cooler than the exposed stretches north of Laurel Road. Residents who complain about the trail being crowded are almost always talking about weekend afternoons in February; the same trail at 7 a.m. in August is close to empty.

Why any of this matters if you already live here

The through-line worth naming is this: Osprey in late summer is not a slower version of Osprey in season. It is a different town, and the version that matters more if you own a home here. A new neighborhood operator moving into Blackburn Point Plaza is a small signal about where the retail energy is heading. An exhibit closing at Historic Spanish Point is a nudge to visit the campus at a moment when it is not doubling as a wedding backdrop. A near-empty state park with a freshwater swim lake and a paved trail through it is the reason many people moved here in the first place, and it is genuinely underused in August.

None of this shows up on the highway view of Osprey between Sarasota and Venice. It only shows up if you actually live between them.

Let's Talk

If you already call Osprey home, you don't need a pitch, only a good neighbor to trade notes with about what's opening, what's closing, and what's quietly worth doing this month. When you or someone you know is ready to think about a move, First Light Real Estate would be glad to be part of that conversation. Reach out any time.