Downtown rezoning proposals draw compatibility concerns

It’s unclear what, exactly, might end up getting built on more than 2 acres west of Cocoanut Avenue between Fourth Street and Boulevard of the Arts — which is why some neighboring residents are watching closely as property owners pursue new land use regulations from the city.

Last week, the city hosted two community workshops to discuss rezoning applications without any specific site plans for the land in question. An Aug. 31 workshop focused on 1.8 acres in the 1200 block of Boulevard of the Arts and Fifth Street surrounding the Sarasota Modern hotel. On Sept. 2, the meeting was held to discuss three parcels totaling 0.26 acres between 1274 and 1290 Fourth St.

Both property owners are seeking a reclassification from the downtown edge zoning district to downtown core. The rezoning would increase the maximum building height on the land from five stories to 10. The maximum residential density would increase from 25 units per acre to 50. For both properties, the downtown core district is the only designation consistent with the designation in the city’s future land use map, a long-term growth plan.

Representatives for both property owners said there was no specific plan for the land and characterized the move as a procedural step designed to increase the flexibility for any future development. The application for the Fourth Street property said any future development would be mixed-use and could include up to 18 residential units along with commercial, retail or office space.

“Pretty much everything is on the table,” said Nancy Cason, a real estate attorney representing the property owners. “It could be anything.”

Development on the Boulevard of the Arts and Fifth Street properties could include up to 90 residential units, 31 additional hotel rooms and 2,000 square feet of nonresidential space in buildings up to 10 stories tall, according to the workshop notice. Michael Beaumier, a member of the project team, said any project would be designed to complement both the Sarasota Modern and the existing neighborhood.

“The intent is ultimately to make whatever we put on these parcels work with the hotel and the community surrounding it,” Beaumier said. “At this point, we don’t know what it is exactly, but the opportunity is well presented.”

At both workshops, held remotely, residents expressed concern about how the height of any future development would mesh with what exists today. The properties in question sit just to the west of the Rosemary Residential Overlay District, which authorizes a maximum height of five stories by right. Provisions within the Rosemary zoning rules allow for buildings up to seven stories tall.

At the workshop about the land surrounding the Sarasota Modern, Rosemary District resident David Lough said he did not believe a 10-story building was a good fit.

“I think that is out of scale, shall we say, with the rest of the street, and that would be personally of a concern to me,” Lough said.

Residents shared similar perspectives at a meeting about the Fourth Street land. Michael Gasper, a resident of the neighboring Encore condominium complex, noted that plans for a development at Fourth Street and U.S. 41 called for the height to scale down traveling eastward from 18 stories to 10 stories to five stories. Gasper questioned whether allowing a 10-story building to the east of that development site made sense.

“Our obvious concern — and I would expect the city would share this to some degree — is just the look and feel and neighborhood compatibility as it relates to that height change,” Gasper said.

Representatives for both property owners pledged to work with their neighbors as plans for any development materialized. Jason Cincotta, the owner of the Sarasota Modern, offered some pushback to Lough’s request to voluntarily accept a lower height limitation, pointing to McCown Towers at 1300 Boulevard of the Arts as an example of a building taller than 10 stories that already exists in the area.

Cincotta said any development would be designed to fit in the context of the existing built environment, but he did not think that necessarily required a lower cap on building height. Both property owners were hesitant to discuss restrictions before actually finalizing any plans.

“Committing at this point to any specific height at any specific location is hard for us to do,” Cincotta said.

“We want to have the maximum flexibility to do what [the owners] want to do once they decide what that’s going to be,” Cason said.