Concrete pad prices prompt reconsideration of public art placement

At the end of a two-day budget workshop, the Sarasota City Commission unanimously approved setting the city’s maximum general fund property tax millage rate at 3.000 for fiscal year 2024, unchanged from the current year.

Ordinarily, no change, or even a reduction, in the property tax rate would headline the marathon budget workshop.

During Monday’s session, though, Senior Planner Mary Davis Wallace, the city’s public art coordinator, was discussing funding for the city’s public art ambitions and the forthcoming Public Art Plan 2030. That's when Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch asked for an update on the installation of sculptures selected for the roundabouts on U.S. 41 at 10th and 14th streets as part of the city's Art in the Roundabouts program.

After years of work went into selecting and procuring Poly for 10th Street and Seagrass for 14th Street, both of which the city has acquired and awaits delivery of,  the sculptures may not go into the roundabouts at all. That's because the bid to build the foundations for the sculptures is far more expensive — by a factor of almost four times the cost of the art itself — than anticipated.

“We're in discussions about how we're going to compensate for really just an expensive challenge with pouring those pads for 10th and 14th,” Wallace told commissioners. “We’ve received a couple of proposals that are just unfeasible at this time.”

The cost to commission Seagrass was $150,000 and for Poly $148,500, coming in at just under the $300,000 budgeted for the first two of four planned installations in U.S. 41 roundabouts. The city had budgeted $514,000 for construction of both roundabout pads. Only one bid was received for the work, submitted by Jon F. Swift Construction. It came in at $743,651.70 for 10th Street and $389,737.70 for 14th Street — that's a total of $1,133,380. And 40 cents.

That’s $834,889 more than the cost of both sculptures combined, plus change.

The City Commission has yet to take up the Public Art Committee’s recommendation of Sun Always Shines for the Fruitville Road roundabout, and the PAC's selection process of a sculpture for the newest circle at Gulfstream Avenue has yet to begin. Unless a solution is devised for the cost of the sculpture foundations, Poly and Seagrass could be the last.

“We want those pieces to come to our collection, but we may need to relocate them somewhere until we can find a more affordable solution for pouring those pads," Wallace said.

Prior to the budget workshop commissioners had not yet been briefed on the pad costs.

“This is something that I want to bring back to the commission so you understand what's involved in not only 10th and 14th, but Fruitville and Gulfstream because the cost of materials is really causing us to not have the budget to do any of these,” said City Manager Marlon Brown. “I want to have the conversation to share with you alternatives on what we can do inside the roundabouts, if not the public art. If the commission says, 'Mr. Brown, find the money,' we will have to see what we can do to get the public art in there.”

Ahearn-Koch asked about alternatives to locating the two sculptures already acquired, particularly since they were selected for scale and design specifications that made them suitable for installation inside roundabouts. 

“The intent is to, if not in the middle of the roundabout, to put them as close to those intersections as possible,” Brown said. “We have already purchased those pieces, so they're ours. And then the Fruitville one has to come before you and whatever discussions we have about Gulfstream still has come before you, but the intent is to keep them in that vicinity because they will see your point selected for those areas.”