Winter Festival redux request tabled by commission

Depending on whom is speaking, the first holiday season Winter Spectacular at St. Armands Circle was either a rousing success or a colossal nuisance. 

Both sentiments were on clear display Monday as organizers of the six-week festival were back before the Sarasota City Commission seeking to not make the first Winter Spectacular the last.

Twenty-three St. Armands-area residents, business owners and others spoke in roughly even numbers of support and opposition during Monday’s commission meeting, ranging in claims from taking an hour to get out of a driveway to traffic actually being lighter than usual. On the agenda was a request by Tom Leonard, owner of Shore restaurant and Jeff Koffman of Ride Entertainment to consider issuing a use permit for to operate the event again in 2023.

Leonard is also chairman of the St. Armands Business Improvement District board of directors. His involvement in the festival, though, is a personal endeavor not affiliated with the BID.

In addition to generating more customers for Circle merchants, Leonard said the festival boosted revenue for the city parking deck just off the Circle. He said data from the city’s parking department reported 47% more fees collected in December compared to the year prior — not from more cars, but rather cars parked there longer.

Koffman told commissioners the festival attracted approximately 20,000 visitors, but because they were dispersed over time during festival hours, the additional traffic generated was negligible.

“We can continue to control crowds through the disbursements of tickets through time slots, diminishing any concerns about traffic, and the issue is traffic,” Koffman said. “At our peak, we had 400 people in a two-hour period. If you assume three people per car, that's about a car a minute.”

Those speaking in opposition ranged from traffic complaints to questioning the legality of permitting an event that charges admission to be held in a public space. City Attorney Robert Fournier reminded commissioners the circle park at St. Armands, as public right of way on a state highway, belongs to the Florida Department of Transportation, which has long-since ceded authority over use of the space, if not ownership, to the city. In addition, he said, FDOT had no objection to the festival.

Leonard and Koffman pitched the Winter Festival to commissioners last October as a fitting celebration of the city’s $286,000 grant to replace St. Armands’ 20-year-old holiday tree. Pulling off the event in only 28 days, they brought their request early this year to facilitate more planning. 

Citing most of the information provided by the two was anecdotal, commissioners unanimously voted to continue the matter to a future board meeting. They’re looking for traffic data, incident reports from the Sarasota Police Department, parking statistics and other numbers to take into consideration. 

Commissioner Debbie Trice suggested continuing to an April meeting. Vice Mayor Liz Alpert asked if the research could be completed sooner. Deputy City Manager Pat Robinson responded that staff is already working under his direction to collect the data. 

“We have been working on that since about mid-week last week, and as there are four or five different departments that are feeding into that I'm getting streams of information,” he said. “Instead of trying to piecemeal them out, I'd rather put something together and report back holistically on it, especially considering there's been additional comment and questions that have come out of some of the citizens' input some of the businesses’ input.”

Among festival opponents’ claims were charges that commissioners favor business interests over residents. That didn’t set well with Commissioner Erik Arroyo.

“Everything we do is for our residents. Now however, the question that we have to ask ourselves is which residents?” he said. “Some people believe that St. Armands belongs to the residents that live on St. Armands, whereas there's another whole group of residents that believe that St. Armands, as a commercial district, is for everyone. It's for all the residents of the entire city and even beyond. 

“So that's the rub. Does it belong to all residents or does it belong to a few residents?”

Added Mayor Kyle Battie: “We look out for the residents. You may not agree with all the decisions that we make, but make no mistake about it, we do have to take in consideration the residents of the city no matter where they are.”

Merchants who support the return of the festival told commissioners they noted no traffic impact in the Circle throughout the event. Residents who live off the Circle painted a different picture. Trice said the forthcoming traffic report may clear up that inconsistency, positing that drivers traveling to and from Lido and Longboat keys might have avoided the Circle and instead traveled neighborhood streets.

“”We have to take into consideration that the impact on the residents and what is being seen by the merchants on the Circle could be two different things,” Trice said. “I want to get the information on the staffing, on the cost and the impacts, and I want a better understanding of the impact on the actual stakeholders — the merchants, the business owners, the residents and the barrier island residents who have to go back and forth.”