MY VIEW: Redeeming North Trail

As we have been working to help revitalize blighted areas in Sarasota (the Rosemary District, Gillespie Park and North Tamiami Trail) for the last 18 years, we share your editorial writer’s frustration (“North Trail hypocrisy”) in that no seated City Commission in the last 30 years has contributed anything really significant to the revitalization of the North Trail.

With SRQ, the Ringling College of Art and Design, USF, New College, the East West College of Medicine, the Ringling Museum/Asolo/Sarasota Ballet compound, the Jungle Gardens, the Sarasota Museum of Whimsy and the Van Wezel, Westcoast Symphony  and Players Theater on the southern cusp, the North Trail boasts the most stunning concentration of assets of any other location from Naples to Pensacola.

With three or four well-placed redevelopment projects on the North Trail, along with the ensuing revitalization they would spur, the existing assets already in place and the ever expanding colleges, the North Trail could easily become an absolutely beautiful gateway to the city, and its 105 acres of N.T.-zoned property could see its tax base double, if not triple, alleviating much of Sarasota’s fiscal pain. The yacht basin would be one of areas ripe for revitalization, as would the North Trail Plaza and the old Winn Dixie site at Myrtle Street and up in the 4500 block is a 12-acre parcel on the east side of the road and a 10-acre parcel on the west side.

 Although, since 1986, enormous amounts of money and resources have been allocated to downtown, and recently in Newtown, almost nothing has been contributed to the North Trail.

A few years ago the city and the county contributed $25,000 for a study of the North Trail in which the stakeholders were never notified, and they helped us get into the enterprise zone, which is so under utilized that legislation was almost proposed to eliminate it.

I would like to see the county that presently has an incentive program for businesses that create new jobs, double the incentives to anyone locating on the North Trail. I would like the city and county commissions to contribute to an Economic Development coordinator for the North Trail, easing some of the untenable burden of the business owners, trying not only to keep our businesses economically viable, but to do the city’s revitalization as well.

And, lastly, if FDOT would allow it, I would like to see the speed limit decreased by five or 10 miles an hour, the two 12-foot traffic lanes made into two 10-foot lanes with a 4-foot bicycle lane and new landscaping with decorative street lighting installed, even if it had to be implemented incrementally.

With these initiatives the sun would shine much brighter on the North Tamiami Cultural District, creating a crown jewel northern gateway and benefiting the entire city.

In addition to being small-business owners, Jeffrey Oldenburg and Peggy Benzinger are 32-year residents of Sarasota. Although they buy properties in a variety of blighted neighborhoods, renovate them and then work with residents, neighborhood associations and the city to revitalize the areas, their primary focus for the last eight years has been on the North Tamiami Trail, where they own Indian Beach Plaza.