Sarasota's downtown Mira Mar faces an important compromise

Coming soon to a downtown Sarasota Saturday: a kids' bubble gum blowing contest.

What: The First (and maybe only) Bubblepaste
Where: In front of the old Mira Mar Hotel at 49 S. Palm Ave.
Host: Seaward Development
Supplies: Provided bubble gum.
Entry fee: Nothing.

This is a terrific idea, a first of its kind for Florida. 

There are contests like this in corn-rich Iowa and Nebraska state fairs, but not here.

Kids of all ages — adults, too — can line up and make as many attempts to blow the largest bubble they can to win the grand prize. 

There are two rules to abide by. 

Contestants must use a new piece of gum for each bubble attempt.

Second, contestants must discard the chewed piece of gum, not in a trash receptacle, but in one of the hundreds of cracks located in the walls of the Mira Mar.

Bubble gum may be the best thing to hold the Mira Mar together. There's not much else that is keeping it in one, well, no, several pieces.

Now, Seaward's Patrick DiPinto and Matthew Leake haven't resorted to holding such a contest, but the building has more crumbles than what you find at the bottom of a bag of chips. 

Two years ago, when Seaward bought the ramshackle, the simple part was there. Just tear it down. What's the point of keeping it? 

Truthfully, because the building was '80sfied, which is a term I'm creating when you take a structure built in 1922 and put in bits and pieces from the architectural decade of disaster known as the 1980s, it loses its historic designation.

"Nothing's historical," DiPinto says. "It's all renovated. So the state denied them (the designation.) So it's not historical."

The division of what is and what isn't historic with the Mira Mar is as much of a dichotomy of public opinion as far apart as the decades of the era of its building to the "downgrades of design" the poor thing suffered through nearly 40 years ago.

The Mira Mar is a mess, a flimsy structure that took only 60 days to build.

Wait, huh? What? Are you serious? 60 days?

The plot thickens ... unlike Mira Mar's walls.

Two years ago, DiPinto and Leake had the intention of tearing it down, but the more they found out about the old ruin, the nicer it became.

"We realized that this building is beloved by so many and now we love this neat, old building," DiPinto said.

History — genuine history, not the 1980s version — can have a lasting effect on people. 

In time, DiPinto has acquired a collection of Mira Mar Hotel skeleton keys, postcards from the 1920s and a brick. 

Photo by Michael Harris

The brick has a story. It was once holding up a camper in North Florida and imprinted on it says "Spend a Summer This Winter at The Mira-Mar, Sarasota, Fla."

The picture of the hotel on the brick can wisp you in a dream sequence back to a golden era of people from New York or Pennsylvania who came to Sarasota on the Henry Plant rail line to spend the winters dressed in white non-frill flapper dresses and blue suits, white pants and straw hats.

The building isn't historic, but the building has a history.

For that purpose, DiPinto and Leake are all on board with saving it. Building it the proper way and keep its original overall feel and look.

They want, no need, to build a new foundation. The old foundation is mere sticks in the ground. It has a wood frame under the thin facade of what many would "think" to call concrete. 

Poles inside the building along the outer edges hold the ceiling up while the cracked plexiglass tube probably borrowed from the windows of a Rax Roast Beef fast food restaurant, circa 1988, tries to hold the two buildings together.

The halls on the second floor are so uneven it's akin to standing and trying to keep a balance in the back of a moving van that stops and goes with every traffic light.

Somehow, some way, the old structure withstood ... Milton. So you have to give credit to its resilience.

It's not coming down without a fight. There's the rub.

First, in three years, DiPinto and Leake have gone from get rid of it, to save the building as the No. 1 priority. But honestly, to save it, without bubble gum, will cost $30 million and they aren't going to save it out of the goodness of their hearts — despite the fact both growing up in Sarasota.

So yes, they are planning to put two high-rises of 18 stories behind it and yes, from the third floor up Seaward can make it look like one of the antiseptic white buildings we've come to terms with on downtown Sarasota's west side.

But, at the very least, the designs of two-tiered high rises will take inspiration from the old hotel to give it some character. 

Now, I do agree 18 stories is a bit much, but hey, the condos right next door are — get this — 18 stories. However, quirky zoning allowed for the height of that building. Right next door is the Mira Mar, and only 3 feet away, but zoning only allows for 10 stories. 

Ahh, the wonderful world of zoning. What did we do before it? Back in the 1920s, the demand was to build a hotel in 60 days or fewer. That is what we had.

There will be 70 units in the new towers and include offices, retail and restaurants in the old, well now new, building, with "a look" of the old mainstay. 

This is a compromise. We get something that's new but looks crafted. 

Maybe, just maybe, when complete, it may inspire future west side downtown developments to follow suit and retain the integrity of older, nicer looking buildings, whether they're one story or 18. 

Or, we don't save the Mira Mar, Seaward turns around, sells it for what it can get out of it — which may be a few packs of gum — and we'll get a brand new 10-story looks-like-all-the-other-condos building.