Bradenton's Robinson Preserve offers kayak parking near Tampa Bay

(See also a photo gallery of the incredible Robinson Preserve.)

Charlie Hunsicker remembers getting the idea. How he got it isn’t quite so clear.

“I guess I was driving down the road and I saw a construction project with these big plastic culverts,” he says. “Then I started to think about a honeycomb of those tubes.”

What the park manager imagined — and what he had built at the Robinson Preserve in Bradenton — was a double-decker row of culverts used for kayak storage.

Park parking. Kayak cubicles. You get the concept.

The storage facility caught on right away. Instead of having to haul boats back and forth, people could pay $30 a month to store their kayaks at the waterfront preserve.

Now there’s a waiting list.

“People are all over us,” says Hunsicker, deputy director of natural resources for Manatee County. “They want us to build more.”

Paddling for Christ
Mike Chaplinski, executive director of Youth For Christ in Manatee County, just might be the biggest fan of Robinson Preserve kayak storage.

“If they let me,” he jokes, “I might sleep in there.”

When Chaplinski decided to start a youth kayaking program, he thought about buying a small boat trailer. Then he changed his mind. He went to the west Bradenton park and rented two storage tubes with enough space for four tandem kayaks, along with paddles, life preservers and other gear.

“It works so well with the paddling we do,” he says. “It’s so convenient and it’s one of the most beautiful places in the county. Even on a windy day, it’s sheltered.”

$75,000 project
The Robinson storage tubes are 36 inches in diameter and 20 feet long. Each one can hold two kayaks and lots of gear. Heavy duty fences, chains and locks keep everything secure.

The project wasn’t cheap. Fabricating the whole thing cost $75,000. That might be why no one else has built a facility quite like it.

Even with a waiting list, Hunsicker resists adding more kayak spaces. The storage facility is near the entrance to the park, so he doesn’t want it to dominate the scene.

“This isn’t a kayak livery or a boat ramp,” he says. “It’s a preserve.”

Then again, Hunsicker adds, there are expansion plans for Robinson and they might need more spaces after all.