Sarasota's review process is working

Despite protestations to the contrary, the STOP! organization really does mean to stop development.

Its representatives use misinformation and out-of- context remarks to make their case for reinstituting public hearings for downtown developments and to prevent administrative reviews. And they do so by using populist turns of phrase, suggesting that citizens are being deliberately cut out of input into developments.

Tosh pshaw!

Our country was founded on demands for fairness and equal treatment for everyone. That has resulted in a strong belief in the rule of law. In that spirit, the city of Sarasota created an administrative review process for downtown developments that assured developers and the public of fairness, objectivity and predictability. And the the conclusions reached in this process were to be based on a city code created after much public debate and to which each applicant knew he must adhere. The happy congruence of our commitment as a city to revitalize our downtown, the development of the new urbanism approach to city planning and the city’s hiring of Andres Duany to teach us about new urbanism has brought our downtown from a hollow and sleepy core to an exciting, vibrant, economic powerhouse generating tax revenue and providing residents with a large selection of cultural, shopping, eating and entertainment entities.

There is a sad naiveté to STOP!’s purpose. Its representatives think only of vehicular traffic when our real need is to find ways of moving people instead of cars. They don’t even talk about our miserable public transit system, which is designed to move people who don’t have cars, instead of developing routes and services that encourage people to get out of their cars.

They have even said that our highly qualified staff reviewers have stopped using compatibility as a review standard, when, in fact, they never stopped, and the requirement continues to exist in the city code.

It is misleading say that if we move back to a public hearing process the public will be able to prevent things it doesn’t like. That would be legislating project by project, which would be unfair, un- American and perhaps even unconstitutional.

If someone dislikes the proposed paint color for the exterior of a building, will that testimony prevent approval of the project? If the architectural style doesn’t suit someone, can he then persuade the Planning Board or City Commission to reject the project?

There is no standard to which developers, lenders, buyers or citizens can then be expected to adhere. Some would certainly call such a situation an uneven playing field.

What our neighborhoods desperately need is small affordable infill housing projects. The unpredictability of a public hearing process discourages potential investors, and lenders who understand risk and work to minimize risk not just for themselves, but for their buyers who will pay the price of high costs associated with a public hearing process. What’s more, public hearings can lead to political decisions rather than legal ones.

What many people do not remember is that the city’s existing administrative review process saved the city from major litigation from land owners whose properties were down-zoned under the New Urbanism code.

Would STOP! back up the city if the city is sued after reneging on its agreement that developers would have more consistency in the review and approval process?

What STOP! doesn’t understand is that our administrative review process has achieved what some considered impossible: It minimized the role lawyers play in the development processes. Developers and architects now manage the process, creating a favorable ratio of process cost to total development cost, thus saving buyers money.

If STOP! wants to require wider sidewalks, more bicycle lanes, better street connectivity, safer streets and a more walkable downtown, it can do it with zoning code amendments. STOP! merely continues the sad tradition of city neighborhood NIMBYism.

When will we be blessed with proactive problem solvers instead of those who seem to see problems around every corner? We have  problems with affordable housing, vagrancy, homelessness, STDs and drug addiction that demand attention, but this group is complaining about a process that has positively transformed our downtown core in a short time.

The solution to the problem that STOP! thinks it sees is not the process, but the standards and code used to review development proposals. If we agree, change the code, but don’t change a process that is producing results. If the VUE and the Embassy Suites Hotel being constructed on U.S. 41 went through a public hearing process rather than an administrative review, each would have been approved anyway. It is the standard and  not the process that determines which projects are approved and which are not.

Ken Shelin served as a city commissioner from 2005-2009.