Dear Commissioners: Send your community a belated Valentine

This Week in Sarasota has been writing on the downtown Sarasota Wal-Mart saga since the story first broke this past summer (see, among others: "Welcome to Wal-Mart: Bringing planned obsolescence to downtown Sarasota,"  "Wal-Mart appeal headed to public hearing," and "Wal-Mart and more bad math.") We hope that it’s coming to a final and abrupt end on the evening of Feb. 19---on a Tuesday because the City’s closed on Monday to honor our country’s dead presidents.

As has been detailed by Sarasota Herald-Tribune scribes, including Tom  Lyons and other SHT journalists, a funny thing happened on the way to the city commission chambers---someone forgot to read the Zoning Code before giving Wal-Mart a green light to go forward.

In a nutshell, the guy who wrote the City’s Zoning Code for the past 20 years (retiring just this past year) has written a 42-page memo, and will testify on Tuesday night that approving a Wal-Mart SuperCenter Discount Department Store at Ringling Plaza is illegal. Doing so will expose the City to yet another lawsuit where they can spend our tax dollars fighting citizens, instead of cleaning downtown’s sidewalks (among other opportunity costs).

Is this like busting Al Capone for tax evasion? Maybe---but hey, if it’s illegal and not allowed, then Wal-Mart should obey the law just like any other TWIS reader (are you escuchando, Bentonville? Oops, we almost forgot about Mexico! Laws? We don’t need no stinking laws!). It seems like the Wally folks heard that Sarasota was good with Ponzi schemes and fond of confidence games. Walmart played a good con for about six months, telling the world that they “had their zoning and all the entitlements they needed to build a SuperCenter”---in other words, telling the community, “Suck it, we’re going in, and you can be grateful if we give you some Ringling College public art on the outside of our pre-fab walls sitting at the gateway to your downtown.” (They actually did do the Ringling art bit.) It was smart until someone actually asked if this was true. Then when asked, retired Senior City Planner Mike Taylor revealed that it really wasn't.

For more, we now go to TWIS master documentarian (look out, Ken Burns) Stephen McFadden, who’s created a video overview to educate us all on the merits of the case:

In case you don't recall who that young African-American woman was on the floor of the Senate, that was Cheryl Mills back in the cold winter of ‘99---an impressive young professional of the late 20th century, who at 33 years of age went to the Senate floor to defend President Bill Clinton from impeachment. Stephen didn’t include it in his video in support of Clinton or to open some side-bar Kabuki discussion of Monica again, but rather because her quotes on the rule of law seem to be particularly pertinent for this city commission:

“The Rule of Law applies to the rich, strong, weak and the poor … If you love the rule of law, you must love it in all of its applications. You cannot only love it when it provides the verdict you seek; you must love it when the verdict goes against you as well. We cannot uphold the rule of law only when it is consistent with our beliefs. We must uphold it even when it protects behavior that we don't like.”

There are some commissioners who have said that this Wal-Mart will be good for jobs (we disagree); for increasing property taxes paid to the City (we also disagree---mixed use on that site will provide 10 times the return in property taxes); for removing a run-down shopping center from the '50s (true that). For some, these could all be laudable reasons to want to say "yes" to a Wal-Mart---but the first obligation of our elected officials is to uphold the law. We obligate them to do that on their very first day in office. In doing so, they "yes" to every investor and property owner in the city that relies on that expectation every day.

The SRiQ "Vision" Thing

Finally---after commissioners understand their obligation to uphold the law---we implore them to get back to the long-term visioning exercise, going after what Commissioner Paul Caragiulo (who paradoxically voted against a Wal-Mart appeal public hearing on Jan. 7) spoke so eloquently about just two years ago. (Forward to 0:36 - 0:52 for our favorite sound bite.)

So here’s a Valentine Vision for Paul and his Mystic Mardi Gras Krewe: This past year, Sarasota Magazine and Mr. Chatterbox, Bob Plunkett, named the Gardens of Ringling Park and Paver Park area surrounding this site as one of the fastest up-and-coming neighborhoods in all of Sarasota County, where people can buy an affordable house (low $100s), renovate it and walk to downtown. The potential for enhancing the city tax base throughout the area of 1,000+ homes as they revitalize is tremendous. Couple this with the future mixed-use project on School Ave. fronting the City’s new $12 million Payne Park and something similar instead of a big box Wal-Mart, and there is tremendous potential for this area to take off over the next five to ten years. Now we need our elected commissioners and city staff to have this long-term vision and ensure that what is eventually built here is the best project for Sarasota.

TWIS hopes to see you all there on Tuesday night in yellow.