Some say the mystical font that conquistador Ponce de Leon sought can be found at the end of a weed-lined boulevard. It's on the right, a few blocks past the boarded-up restaurant.
Warm Mineral Springs is the largest spring of its kind in Florida, a burbling oasis that shoots out more than 2,000 gallons of water every minute of every day.
The water is laden with salt and more than 50 other minerals. For decades, it has attracted visitors from as far as Ukraine, Estonia and Bulgaria to soak in its 87-degree depths.
They swear by it as a sort of preventative maintenance for the body and a remedy for arthritis, muscle ailments and all kinds of skin problems.
Yet for most people in Sarasota County, the springs have never been more than another Old Florida roadside attraction. The spa business on the property failed in 2009, despite continued patronage by visitors from afar.
Sarasota County and city of North Port bought the springs for $5.5 million just over a year ago, promising to fix it up and add it to Sarasota County's tableau of white sand beaches, first-class performing arts and world-class rowing. The few changes that were made â€" $500,000 for a robust marketing campaign and a few upgrades such as new tile in the locker rooms â€" have more than doubled the number of annual visits to the springs to 100,000, says general manager Gene Vaccaro.
More activity is on the way, with planning meetings scheduled next month between county commissioners and North Port officials as they shape the springs' future.
Vaccaro and others are urging them to think much, much bigger.
"They've dusted it off, they shined it up and just by doing that, visitations have doubled," says Robert Rosenberg, a member of North Port's economic development board with 35 years of experience running convention and visitors bureaus in Florida and Rhode Island.
Before he moved to North Port two years ago, Rosenberg had never heard of Warm Mineral Springs, despite working for 12 years in Florida tourism â€" including an appointment to a governor's tourism board.
"What I see there is a jewel in the rough," Rosenberg says. "I think it's the greatest natural resource in the state of Florida, I really do. And it's right here in our own backyard."
On the other hand, longtime devotees of the springs â€" many of them Eastern European emigrants who moved to Sarasota County for the sole reason of bathing there â€" are already chafing.
They say the staff is rude, and the lending company that runs the place on an interim basis is squeezing money out of it at the expense of service.
Some have visited the spring almost daily since the 1990s, when they could buy an annual pass for $600. They loved it a long time before most people even knew it was there, and they are talking of canceling their annual passes, which now cost $975.
It turns out that the hotly debated no-picnicking rule was a sign of more changes to come.
The exercise area and massage rooms exude eucalyptus oil. New-Age string music reverberates throughout. The snack bar is stocked with wheat grass juice shots, veggie wraps and $8 Angus burgers.
On a weekday, most visitors are Europeans who speak Slavic languages while they bob in the shallows, making their way in slow, clockwise circles around the spring.
The water smells like the inside of a vitamin jar and flows at a rate of 3 to 9 million gallons a day, which means the entire 1.4-acre spring refills as often as eight times a day.
But most of the amenities have not had that kind of renewal in a half-century.
The concrete-and-stucco buildings designed by Sarasota School architect Jack West might have lived up to the Alpine expectations invoked by the word "spa" in 1959.
But a pre-purchase inspection report found leaky roofs, outdated plumbing, rotted wood, broken windows and water damage.The locker rooms are so cramped that a person in the shower is about an arm's length from people getting dressed at their lockers.
People track in sand, so staff is incessantly mopping the floor, which adds to the locker room traffic and claustrophobic feel.
The property was repossessed by Naples-based Cypress Lending in 2009.
When Cypress Lending sold it to the county in late 2010, part of the agreement was for the company to continue to run the facility, keeping all the revenue, until June 2013.
That gave the government time to figure out what to do with it. A series of public workshops, including a January tour of the grounds that drew 360 people, ended Feb. 2.
Some say the $20 entrance fee is too steep. Residents with Sarasota County drivers' licenses get 25 percent off under terms of Cypress Lending's contract, but it is still $15 for what often amounts to a half-hour soak.
The annual pass for nonresidents is $1,300.
The prices are virtually the same as when Cypress Lending took it over. Vaccaro dismisses concerns that it is overpriced, saying he visited a spa in California that costs three times as much to sit in a tub of piped-in mineral water for 20 minutes.
"They want to get in for $10 or $5 or $2," Vaccaro says. "I understand the folks that live nearby. They want to be able to come every day."
But, he asks, if they lived right next to Disney World, would they expect to do that every day, too?
Besides being a tourism destination, the spring is one of the most significant archaeological sites in Florida.
It is an hourglass-shaped cenote, extending more than 200 feet down. Scientists and amateur archaeologists have found human remains as old as 10,500 years in its depths.
No archaeological work has been done there for 25 years, but the county and city plan to open it to researchers.
The last talk about redeveloping the springs came in 2003, when its owners pitched a mix of retail and residential development centered on a health and wellness theme.
The developer wanted to quadruple the size of the spa, add a 30,000-square-foot Institute of Natural Healing and build 270 homes for full-time residents and vacation rentals.
That project never got off the ground.
The county and city have pledged to protect the water and archaeological resources in the spring in addition to capitalizing on it as a tourism destination.
Yet many questions remain.
Should some of the mineral water be bottled and sold, instead letting it all flow flow into the Myakka River? Should a hotel or research facility be built on the 81-acre Warm Mineral Springs campus? What kind of management decisions will be left to a private company contracted to run the facility? North Port and Sarasota County commissioners will tackle those and other questions in upcoming months as they try to balance the springs' historical and environmental significance with its potential as a tourism destination.
"You've just got to find that sweet spot," says John McCarthy, the county's lead staff member on the project. "You can't build a Warm Mineral Springs. This is like Siesta Beach. This is a natural asset, and our job is both to protect it and share it with the world."
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