- September 25, 2024
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As a capacity crowd gathered in the Grand Foyer of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall to witness the reveal of a conceptual plan for the Sarasota Performing Arts Center, an approaching storm marched across Sarasota Bay.
By the time the architecture firms selected to design the proposed facility had completed their presentation, the rain had cleared, the sky turned blue and sunlight filled the room.
It was a fitting metaphor for the Sept. 18 community workshop organized by the architects of Renzo Piano Building Workshop of Genoa, Italy and Sarasota’s Sweet Sparkman Architecture and Interiors as they introduced the initial concept to the public. Some of the few who had previewed the design were initially reticent over how it would be received were basking in the glow of a generally receptive audience some 90 minutes later.
The concept was, after all, unexpected.
Rather than what was generally expected as a refinement of the big box at the northeast corner of the Van Wezel parking lot that had been shown on site plans for The Bay park for years, attendees were introduced to an out-of-the-box concept of a four-building, raised and partially over-water complex along Tamiami Trail. That allows nearly all of the parking lot to be converted to park space during the latter stages of The Bay park's transformation.
True to Renzo Piano’s philosophy of designing structures that complement rather than overwhelm their environment, the architectural team displayed a complex that includes a 2,500-seat to 2,700-seat main theater, an 800-seat medium theater, a small theater/multipurpose space, and a lobby — all separated into four buildings connected by overhead walkways.
“When I saw the concept for the proposed performing arts center, my reaction was that it was genius,” said Sarasota Mayor Liz Alpert. “It just made so much sense. I loved the idea of the smaller scale, away from the water with view corridors between the buildings.”
To maximize views of the park and Sarasota Bay — and to provide storm surge resilience —the buildings are elevated with public space beneath, the lobby and reception building suspended above the 10th Street Canal.
“When we first arrived here in Sarasota a year and three months ago, it was easily understood that this is a potentially a great project, a cultural project to support bringing people together and bringing them together for many, many years,” said Mark Carroll, Renzo Piano’s partner-in-charge for the SPAC. “We look forward to building a project that will last 300 to 500 years. That's the way we build in Europe.”
The concept reveal and community workshop is a critical step toward the completion of an implementation agreement between the city and the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation, which would codify the public-private venture. It would be funded 50-50 between philanthropy and public dollars, the latter derived mostly via a tax increment financing (TIF) district on downtown properties surrounding the 53-acre The Bay park. The TIF revenue is identified as property taxes collected from the improved value of the land benchmarked against fiscal year 2019 assessments.
Both the city and the county collect the TIF funds and, via interlocal agreement, reinvest those funds into and around The Bay park, including a new performing arts facility. Specifically how those funds are spent in the TIF district, however, is subject to discretion of both government entities.
The Sarasota City Commission has scheduled a workshop on Sept. 30 to discuss the design and the implementation agreement. The deadline to enact the agreement is Monday, Oct. 21. That’s when the discussion, which will include a construction cost estimate, will be placed on the commission’s agenda.
For the past two years, the working number associated with the project has been estimated at $375 million. How breaking the buiiding into four structures affects the cost remains to be determined, but conventional wisdom is that it costs more to build four buildings than one.
“Of course, how we fund it is a concern, but with this new plan it can be built in phases if necessary to spread out the cost,” Alpert said. “Before we do anything, the funding and business plan will be worked out to ensure it is feasible. I have no doubt, there will be a way to make it work.”
The agenda for last week’s noon workshop session included breakout tables following the formal presentation and ahead closing remarks. So few remained after the breakouts that the closing segment was canceled for both the noon and the evening session, which was held Robert L. Taylor Community Complex.
Bill Waddill of land planning consultant Kimley-Horn —and one of the primary drivers of The Bay — who emceed both sessions took that as a sign of positive reception.
“When you go to these things there's always going to be a certain percentage of folks who just aren’t going to be in favor of things, but it was amazing,” Waddill told the Observer. “I’d say it was in the high-90s percent of people who were inspired and excited. Certainly people had questions. Some of the big ones were about parking and so we spent a fair amount of time on that, and certainly they had questions about cost.”
Separating the design into four distinct structures does provide some flexibility relative to the cost. As Alpert suggested, the SPAC could be developed in phases rather than all at once, similar to the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando. There, the 2,731-seat Walt Disney Theater opened in 2014 followed by the 1,770-seat Steinmetz Hall in 2022.
Steinmetz Hall cost $240 million as part of the $613 million Dr. Phillips complex, which includes four theaters, a grand lobby, a multipurpose room and an outdoor arts plaza. Similar to Dr. Phillips, The Renzo Piano plan for the SPAC includes an outdoor auditorium to accommodate as many as 4,000.
“The people who were present and who were able to listen to the entire presentation, I think they all embraced it,” Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation CEO Tania Castroverde Moskalenko told the Observer. ”There was a fear that this building was going to be smack in the middle of the park, it was going to be a concrete building, it was going to take up all of this park space. What's brilliant about these architects is that they have brought a complete new set of eyes to the project and have made a much better design than any of us could have imagined.”
Beyond the four buildings, the design concept went a step further to include a feature to bring synergy and connectivity to the entire frontage of The Bay along Tamiami Trail. The architects proposed a baffled, covered walkway stretching along the highway from the main theater north of 10th Street to the Blue Pagoda at Boulevard of the Arts.
That stretch has been identified by the Bay Park Conservancy as the "Cultural District" as part of Phase 2 park development.
In addition to providing shade during the day and lighted security by night, the articulated overhead panels could be topped with photovoltaic cells to supply power to the SPAC, all inspired by the filtered light beneath grand trees.
“What we're starting to study here is how to re-create that sense of filtered light and how to control light, how to filter it, how to create a pleasant environment for people to walk underneath,” said Renzo Piano architect Kerry Joyce. “One of the main goals of this project is to capture the sun's energy by integrating photovoltaic panels. We’re talking with our engineers in this early stage, and while these performing arts centers use an incredible amount of energy, we believe that with this scheme we could provide about 90% of the power to this whole complex.”
Rather than a monolith, separating and lifting the structure into four buildings also provides opportunities to maintain vistas, allow light and air to move between the buildings and provide public space beneath, offering shade and opportunities to interact with the SPAC without having to purchase a ticket.
“This site here is a treasure. If you look at it today, it's a parking lot, but with a little bit of imagination, you can see it as the park,” Carroll said. “The Bay park dream is to make it a park — a real park and not another parking lot — to make it green, and that's what we believe is a proper thing to do.”
If what is now the parking lot for the Van Wezel is to become a natural green space as planned by the Bay Park Conservancy, what becomes of the 800-space vehicle capacity currently on the site?
Some parking will be underneath the raised SPAC buildings. Otherwise, Renzo Piano architect Ronan Dunphy said much of the parking will be available at a shorter distance from the new SPAC location than many of the current spaces are from the Van Wezel.
"We did some studies of the average walking speed of various age groups, and we decided to calculate an average walking speed of 3 to 3.5 feet per second,” Dunphy said. “This means that if you're at the far end of the parking lot, it takes you about 5 minutes and 40 seconds to get from your car to the front door of the theater. So we said we need to stay within the same range for the new parking areas of the new performing arts center.”
In addition to existing parking already available within that 5:40 radius, the plan assumes some additional parking created on the north end of Centennial Park combined with new nearby parking facilities currently under exploration by the city.
“We need to think differently about parking,” Dunphy said. “We don't want to concentrate all of the parking in one place because we see the problems with trying to exit after an event and with all the people leaving at the same time. By decentralizing the various locations of parking, spreading them out around the site, it creates a better flow.”
