- October 19, 2022
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Although it was merely a pre-application hearing, Seaward Development and its legal counsel Brenda Patten laid out detailed plans for the restoration and preservation of the historic Mira Mar building in downtown Sarasota and the residential development that will make it possible.
During the Nov. 6 meeting of the city’s Development Review Committee, Patten led the presentation of how Seaward will not only retain a narrow facade similar to the neighboring DeMarcay condo tower on the zero block of South Palm Avenue. Instead, Seaward plans to preserve the structure and return it to its 1926 appearance by removing features added in the 1980s.
The cost to Seward and principal Patrick DiPinto: $25 million.
“Patrick and his team are going to completely rehabilitate all of those shops, including the frontage, going back to the depth that they are today,” Patten said. “The non-historic parts are going to be removed, but the rest of it will be restored back to the original 1926 structure.”
That structure was built at “warp speed,” Patten said, over the course of a several months in order to be completed in time for the 1926-27 tourist season. With a foundation of wooden beams on sand and 100 years of termite damage, settling, water intrusion and more, Seaward first sought to demolish the building and redevelop the entire property. That met with considerable opposition and a unanimous vote of the city’s Historic Preservation Board to deny that application.
“As a result of that effort, Patrick and others got together and decided they could do a better job, and they have done a much better job,” Patten said.
Seaward spent a year crunching numbers, she said, while meeting with Rick Gonzalez, one of Florida's leading historic preservation architects, a member of the Florida Historical Commission and the Florida National Register Review Board. They are also working with principal architect Igor Reyes of Nichols Architects, who has teamed up to rehabilitate and save some of the most iconic historic structures in Florida.
With Gonzalez leading the way on the historic rehabilitation, Reyes iOS drawing plans to monetize the effort.
Step one, Patten said, is the stabilization and restoration of the Mira Mar.
“The second step is the engine that's going to make the rehabilitation financially feasible,” Patten said. “Where are you going to get $25 million to rehabilitate the Mira Mar? it's going to come from building two condominium towers behind the historic structures with 70 units between the two.”
The reason for two towers is to reduce the footprint at the ground level rather than building lot to lot line.
“You wouldn't have that feeling from the ’20s,” she said. “We want to preserve the air flow and the light between the buildings and the open feeling, the spirit of what was there in 1926, so this extra height is critical to this success.”
The latter of which is the purpose of coming before the DRC at this juncture. The property is zoned Downtown Core, which limits structures to 10 stories. Seaward wants to build two 18-story towers with space in between without adding density, the height requiring rezoning to Downtown Bayfront. Properties adjacent to the north and across South Palm Avenue carry the DB zone.
“The number of units will be the same whether this is built as one massive block under the Downtown Core zoning, or whether we have the two towers under downtown Bayfront, it's still only 70 units,” Patten said.
The rezoning is not a simple process as it will first require a Comprehensive Plan amendment. Following DRC sign-off, a 4-1 supermajority of the City Commission is needed first to transmit the change to Tallahassee for comment and, if cleared, another supermajority for approval.
Seaward’s plan for the preservation of the Mira Mar met with the overall approval of attendees of a community meeting held in September. Patten told DRC members similar support was received in a meeting key city staff such as Director of Development Services Lucia Panica and Senior Planner of Historic Preservation Clifford Smith.
“We presented pretty much what we just showed to you that we propose to do, and Dr. Smith is very excited about this,” Patten said. “He said this is a great example of adaptive reuse —those are his words — and that this is a great way to demonstrate to the community that you really can save historic structures.”
The Comprehensive Plan amendment approval is the first step in the preservation of the Mira Mar. Once secured, a site plan application will be submitted to the DRC. Because Mira Mar is in one of the downtown zone districts, the project needs only administrative approval.
