City should embrace public development review process

The Sarasota City Commission at its Nov. 21 meeting voted to send a trimmed down transportation plan to the state to meet a state deadline for review. This trimming responded to much public input, especially from a new organization called STOP! — the exclamation point being part of the name — a group of citizen activists challenging how poorly the current city planning code is working.

If you don’t live in downtown Sarasota or haven’t driven through recently, you may be wondering what in the world has triggered so much community concern. But as someone who does live downtown, I can tell you I not only sympathize with STOP!, I felt compelled to join them. 

The commission’s recent action becomes the first step in what will be the city’s 2017 efforts to upgrade the planning process governing future development in the city.

Our city streets are becoming alleyways where walkers are intimidated by height and mass crowding in on them, lucky if they can walk two abreast on the sidewalks. Indeed, Sarasota is becoming the Florence of Florida ... but that’s not a good thing. 

The streets of historic Florence are narrow, and you get no idea of human habitat unless the doors into buildings happen to be open. There are gardens in there, but quality of life is limited to internal courtyards.

Maybe walling in gave a sense of security to the ancient Florentians, but is that the way we want our new buildings to be developed? 

With most recent construction in the city, outside, the buildings communicate that you and your quality of life are unimportant. One can only hope that somewhere inside, the residents see green space.

The VUE, as a case in point, is constructed up to its nearly two-and-a-half-acre plot line and, in some instances, over the public sidewalk. It exists by city administrative approval in a process that had no place for Planning Board approval or public hearing. Their courtyard will have green space, but how will that mitigate a lowered quality of life for everyone else in the city?

If you notice, all the other buildings in the quadrant along Gulfstream from the bay to U.S. 41 are built to setbacks with green space and openness for all to enjoy. 

The VUE received approval with no attention to that context, how it fits in with what’s around it and its impact on hundreds of immediate neighbors?

And traffic: Although The VUE sits directly on U.S. 41, its several hundred residents and hotel guests will have no exit from that property to go north except to go west up Ritz Carlton Drive, squeeze by the fountain at the Ritz-Carlton,Sarasota, go south down Watergate Drive and out Sunset Drive; from there, they must go east onto Gulfstream Avenue to finally go north at the light at Gulfstream and 41.

Or, they can go east out First Street and, if they can get across the right turn lane to Gulfstream, go south on 41 to head east again on Main Street, there to finally turn north via Cocoanut (assuming the construction blocking Cocoanut is completed by then). Maybe two years from now, a roundabout will shorten their distance, allowing a U-turn at U.S. 41 and Gulfstream, again assuming no problem crossing a right turn lane going to Gulfstream.

See why STOP! wants a change in process and a return to public input?

Here’s another example. Sarasota Housing Authority property on Boulevard of the Arts and Cocoanut Avenue contains McCown Towers and The Annex. Seniors and disabled persons have been living there for 40-plus years. Open green space surrounds the buildings. On Florida Avenue at Fifth Street, the property has a side entrance into the courtyard between the two buildings. 

The entrance was used by garbage trucks and was a necessary entrance for fire engines.

There is, however, a new administratively approved development on the south side of Fifth up to the Towers and Annex property line. Again, without any attention to context, there is — said to be directed by the city — an overhang over the public sidewalk along Fifth. 

Without any attention to the side entrance to the SHA property, the protrusion into the right of way makes it impossible for any large truck to enter the gateway, whether for service or emergency.

It’s perhaps the most painful example of city staff paying no attention to context. There was nothing illegal about the Towers’ entrance, but because of city inattention to secondary effects, the senior citizens in half the complex have no entrance for fire engines. 

Adequate notice and a public hearing would have solved this travesty before it got started.

To add insult to injury, the developer on Fifth has contacted the Housing Authority seeking major adjustments to the SHA property — including tree removal — because it can’t adequately reach that side of the new building that’s going up, to paint it and maintain it in the future. Again, we need a return to an open public process.

And now you know why, as confusing as putting the two words together might sound, Sarasota residents are shouting “Go STOP!”

Arthur Levin

President, One Watergate Condo Association