STOP hopes to capitalize on citywide growth concerns

On Sept. 22, 2016, the citizen activist group STOP made its public debut, hosting a town hall focused on development approval procedures, traffic calculations and engineering standards.

The group knew it was delving into some arcane topics. But, driven by firsthand interactions with their neighbors, members of STOP’s 10-person steering committee believed Sarasota residents wanted to have a conversation about development and were eager to discuss solutions for perceived problems associated with a spike in growth.

The town hall at Selby Public Library was their first opportunity to see if they were right. The audience filled every seat in the auditorium. For STOP’s leaders — veterans of civic engagement campaigns — it was a clear sign they had struck on something significant.

“We thought we were talking about something important,” steering committee member Kate Lowman said. “It turned out a lot of people felt the same way.”

A year after STOP’s launch, the group has established itself as an influential player in city affairs. Seventeen neighborhood associations have endorsed the group’s mission. One of its founding members, Jen Ahearn-Koch, won a seat on the City Commission in May. Another, Eileen Normile, joined the city’s Planning Board in December.

The group’s goals have not wavered. It opposes the administrative review process for significant new developments, which allows city staff to OK a project without public hearings. It wants the city to change how it analyzes the effects new developments will have on traffic. And it wants the city to create wider sidewalks and a more robust tree canopy.

STOP’s proposals have drawn criticism, particularly from the planning and development community. On Tuesday, STOP representatives appeared at an SRQ Magazine-hosted debate regarding administrative approval. Their opponents were a representative sampling of STOP’s critics: Chris Gallagher, an urban designer with Hoyt Architects, Kevin Cooper, president and CEO of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, and Javi Suarez, an architect and president of the Gulf Coast chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Those critics don’t deny that STOP has targeted serious issues the city needs to address. They object to the solutions STOP is advancing, such as the elimination of administrative review in favor of public hearings.

“Everyone wants great sidewalks,” Gallagher said. “Everyone wants street trees. Their strategies for getting there — if I really thought it was effective, I’d be championing them. It’s just not the right strategy.”

Pushing forward

STOP members have heard the objections to their ideas, and they’re not deterred.

They frame their campaign against administrative review as a reasonable request to return to the development system in place before 2003, when the city adopted urban planner Andres Duany’s downtown master plan. Requiring public hearings is an opportunity for people to comment on a significant project, for residents who know their neighborhood best to speak up before plans are finalized.

“What we think public hearings are going to give us are more compatible new buildings — buildings that can fit in better, live better with the existing neighbors,” Lowman said.

Planners, officials and builders have criticized the mandatory public hearing process as time-consuming and potentially chilling for new development. Gallagher said public hearings wouldn’t prevent bad projects from going forward if they still meet the zoning code standards — so the focus should be on fixing the code.

“If they think public hearings are going to lead to higher-quality streets, where is the proof?” Gallagher said. “For all of the years before the Duany plan went into effect, were we getting better streets?”

“If they think public hearings are going to lead to higher-quality streets, where is the proof?” — Chris Gallagher

Gallagher contends that, since 2003, the downtown core has become more walkable, more urbanized, better planned. Lowman said good projects have been produced via administrative review, but even if the zoning code is better tailored to the needs of residents, it won’t be perfect.

Without a meeting between developers and residents, those imperfections won’t be discovered until a project is completed, STOP argues.

“There has to be a mechanism for that communication to take place, or it won’t happen,” Lowman said.

Mounting opposition

Although individuals haven’t hesitated to offer critiques of STOP’s proposals, there hasn’t been a concerted effort to oppose the group.

There are signs of more formal resistance. On Monday, Gallagher and Cooper spoke at the first workshop in a six-week series regarding transportation planning, which the Sarasota Chamber is hosting (see box, left). Gallagher said it was a concerted effort to “elevate the conversation” about traffic in the city, calling STOP’s proposed traffic solutions ineffective.

“Automobile congestion’s not fun for anyone,” Gallagher said. “We all agree on that. Let’s get to some things that are actually going to help mitigate, change, solve the problem of traffic.”

Gallagher and Cooper agreed that a more unified front of opposition likely would coalesce if STOP’s proposals made more tangible progress.

Cooper argued that STOP wasn’t necessarily a successful new organization, but a rebranded set of experienced neighborhood activists.

“They’re not any more or less effective than they’ve been in the past,” Cooper said. “Really, it’s just a new name for a group of campaign managers and political financiers.”

Gallagher, too, questioned the significance of STOP’s gains during the past year.

“The community continues to chug along, doing what it’s been doing for 13 years under the master plan,” he said. “If they’d actually go out and poll the populace, ‘Do you like downtown better before or after the master plan?’, my dollar would be on more people liking it now.”

Lowman said making more concrete policy gains is STOP’s current priority.

The group sees signs of success: The Florida Department of Transportation approved a $500,000 grant for studying traffic patterns in areas including Sarasota. STOP said this study will address concerns the group raised about inaccurate seasonal traffic analysis.

“We thought we were talking about something important. It turned out a lot of people felt the same way.” — Kate Lowman

Later this year, the city will begin its review of a new form-based zoning code, an opportunity for the group to make its arguments for new planning regulations. (People like Gallagher argue the form-based code is the proper venue for public input on development, rather than on a project-by-project basis.)

STOP’s opponents may be skeptical, but the group’s leaders believe this campaign is something special, generating a level of support they haven’t seen before. One unscientific gauge of the public’s pulse: At Tuesday’s debate, 72% of the audience went in supporting the proposal to require public hearings for large projects.

It’s unclear whether STOP can translate this momentum into policy gains, but the group believes it’s effectively shone a light on its core issues, sparking a citywide debate.

“One of the best things we did was to start the conversation,” Normile said. “Now, everyone is involved in that conversation.”

Update: This article has been edited to reflect the status of STOP’s neighborhood endorsements.