- January 4, 2025
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With turnover at the top of the city management and the local international airport, news about what may be the future of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall assuming it gets replaced as the city's primary performance venue by a new facility, significant developments in the downtown area and more, it appears 2025 will be a busy year to come.
Sarasota will not only get a new city manager in the wake of Marlon Brown's retirement, but a new city attorney as well, albeit one not unfamiliar with the operations of the local government. Meanwhile, Rick Piccolo will be leaving his position of 30 years as president and CEO of Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport after leading it through a period of unprecedented operational and physical growth.
Also, residents can expect a flurry of development in downtown with new condo towers approved or in the planning stages; and some hard decisions to be made about the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall and proposed Sarasota Performing Arts Center.
All told, 2025 looks like to be an eventful 365 days. Here are some of the top stories to watch:
With the completion of Concourse A at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport will come additional capacity for the growing passenger count, which was estimated to approach 4.3 million in 2023.
Allegiant Airways is leasing all five of the ground boarding gates — where passengers board planes via outside stairs rather than jet bridges — relocating from its three gates in Concourse B, and by mid-February will have finished adding eight new routes to and from SRQ. That move will allow other airlines serving the airport to grow into Allegiant’s former gates.
The opening of Concourse A in mid-January will bring the airport to 18 gates with a long-range master plan build out of 39 gates.
Rick Piccolo, the president and CEO of the airport, told the Observer he anticipates the new gates adding a capacity of 2.2 million passengers per year. Long-range plans show an additional nine gates for Concourse A, including five more ground boarding gates plus four elevated gates on a corridor that will connect the two concourses.
“The FAA forecast says that we will hit just under 3 million enplanements in 2050, so I can make a cogent argument right now that when we finish the Terminal A extension, we will have enough gate capacity to go another 25 years before we would even need to build Phase 2 of this terminal,” Piccolo said. “Theoretically, this will be enough without adding Concourse C until 2050.”
An enplanement means a passenger boarding a flight at SRQ. The 3 million emplanements is doubled to account for arrivals, assuming most are round trips.
Allegiant’s new routes, most starting in mid-February, include Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina, Moline, Illinois via Quad Cities International Airport, Albany, New York via Albany International Airport, Elmira/Corning, New York via Elmira Corning Regional Airport, Omaha, Nebraska via Eppley Airfield, Roanoke, Virginia via Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport, Great Smoky Mountains National Park/Knoxville, Tennessee via McGhee Tyson Airport, and Lexington, Kentucky via Blue Grass Airport.
Speaking of Rick Piccolo, 2025 will be his last year of running the airport and as the top executive of the Sarasota Manatee Airport Authority. Piccolo has announced he will step down as president and CEO on June 30. He will remain at the airport until Dec. 31, when he will retire after three decades at the helm.
Piccolo arrived at SRQ 30 years ago when its oft-contentious board of directors was comprised of publicly elected members, four each from Sarasota and Manatee counties, with a debt of $115 million. The airport’s upward trajectory changed in 2001 when the board composition was reconstituted via public referendum approval by both counties, with six business leaders, rather than eight elected politicians, appointed by the governor’s office.
Now one of the fastest-growing airports in the country in passenger count, SRQ has also diversified its revenue base beyond commercial airlines with a growing aviation industry ecosystem from magnet school classroom to manufacturing.
Expect to see development in the “north quad” of the airfield where construction is already underway for fixed-based operator Sheltair and, next door, site work begins for Switzerland-based aircraft manufacturer Pilatus. Meanwhile, along 15th Street on the east side of the airfield, French aircraft maker Elixer and Manatee Technical College’s airframe and power plant program will be building out their spaces.
A national search firm has been selected to guide the selection of the next president and CEO, the successful candidate inheriting a far better airport than Piccolo found three decades ago.
The city of Sarasota will join the airport with new leadership as a new city manager will be named to replace Marlon Brown, who retired on Oct. 21, and when City Attorney Robert Fournier and Deputy City Attorney Michael Connolly retire in spring 2025.
While a national search is underway for Brown’s replacement, Public Works Director Doug Jeffcoat is filling in as the interim city manager. Meanwhile, the City Attorney’s Office is being filled by the remaining partners in Fournier’s and Connolly’s firm — Joseph Polzak, John Shamsey and Joseph Mladinich.
Polzak will assume the role of city attorney and Shamsey and Mladinich co-deputy city attorneys. Still to be determined by the City Commission is whether the City Attorney’s Office will be brought in-house or remain outsourced. The three attorneys have stated they are amenable to either option.
The turnover comes at a busy time for the city as the commission faces a number of significant decisions in the coming year, including:
It will be up to the new city manager and legal counsel to guide the commissioners through those issues and others.
For nearly two years red shirt-wearing residents of Bay Plaza and some allies have attended City Commission meetings warning the elected officials that, sooner or later, they were going to have to deal with their objection to the 342-foot tall Obsidian condominium project proposed for 1260 N. Palm Ave.
At nearly 100 feet taller than any other downtown building, they have argued the 18-story, 14-unit tower, is not only out of scale but out of character for the neighborhood, and poses a danger both during and after construction to Bay Plaza residents.
Developer Matt Kihnke has pressed onward, and in November won three administrative adjustments — all related to street-level matters — meaning the project was approved. Height was not a factor in the approval in that, at the time of its application, the zoning code had no restrictions placed on the interstitial space between floors as it does now.
The project opponents have appealed the adjustments approval to the Planning Board, which can decide whether the project may go forward. This is where the City Commission will get involved.
Whoever is on the short end of the Planning Board's decision will probably appeal it to the commission, and whatever it decides, Obsidian's fate will probably rest in an appeal to the 12th Judicial Circuit Court.
Another downtown residential proposal — one that has not generated any opposition — is the plan by Seaward Development to spend $25 million to preserve the Mira Mar building and capitalize on the opportunity by building twin, 18-story condominium towers behind the historic structure containing 70 residential units.
It’s a mixed-use development proposal that would preserve in entirety the 1926-built Mira Mar, save for non-historic additions to the original structure during the 1980s. To make that happen, though, Seaward needs to have the site rezoned from Downtown Core to Downtown Bayfront, which will allow for the additional height.
The Downtown Core zone limits buildings to 10 stories. As for scale, the Mira Mar site is immediately adjacent to the 18-story DeMarcay.
Step one in the process is to stabilize and restore the Mira Mar, which attorney Brenda Patten told members of the city’s Development Review Committee in a November pre-development conference. That meeting came weeks after a community workshop before a generally receptive audience.
“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.”
Seaward has engaged architectural expertise in the preservation of historic buildings and in designing companion developments that make such preservation feasible. It will require an amendment to the city’s Comprehensive Plan and then, if approved, the rezoning process before serious planning can get underway.
Seagate proposes to preserve the entire depth of the Mira Mar — which in 1926 was built atop a wood foundation lying on sand — and offers it as a commercial space for retail, restaurants and office.
Look for applications for amending the Comprehensive Plan and rezoning to work through the city in 2025.
Now that site plans for all the blocks within The Quay have been approved, look for more cranes, perhaps upward of three of them, swinging around in the sky above the 14-acre master planned development.
In 2024, site plans for the final four blocks of the 10-block project received approval by the Sarasota Planning Board. Construction has begun on Kolter Urban’s Ritz-Carlton Residences II on Blocks 7 and 8 along the marina, and foundation work has been completed on Block 1 for one of two One Park towers to be built by Miami-based Property Markets Group in association with local partner MoneyShow principal Kim Githler. That’s at the corner of Boulevard of the Arts and U.S. 41. That construction may be joined this year across Quay Commons by One Park West, also by PMG and MoneyShow, on Block 9.
When all three projects are finished, it will complete the luxury condo mixed-use enclave that began in 2016 when Jacksonville-based GreenPointe Developments acquired the site and entered into an general development agreement with the city. Standing in the center of the development is the historic Belle Haven building, which remains under the ownership of GreenPointe.
Meanwhile, adjacent to Blocks 8 and 9, but not within the metes and bounds of The Quay, is the Hyatt Regency hotel, which at some point — perhaps not this year — will be razed to make way for Kolter Urban’s plans for a mixed-use luxury condominium and hotel project.
The developer is currently working its way through the city’s Development Review Committee for administrative approval, and may eventually come before the Planning Board for an adjustment or two.
The plan is for two towers that will include a 166-room luxury hotel and 224 condominiums, both using a common motor court entrance, plus 4,700 square feet of street level retail.
The condominiums are planned as an extension of Kolter Urban’s Ritz-Carlton Residences project. The hotel, which will also have a 7,000-square-foot ballroom, some 3,000 square feet smaller than the Hyatt’s event space, will be a Hyatt-branded Thompson Hotel.
With Kolter Urban ready to get underway with final planning and minor conflicts with city code remaining, look for an approval in 2025 and, shortly thereafter, yet another crane in the skyline.
In the summer of 2025, the city’s Purple Ribbon Committee is due to release its report on recommendations for repurposing of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. The committee has been in the information gathering mode with discussions regarding repurposing about to get underway.
It’s too soon to tell in what direction the committee may lean — one re-use suggestion or a ranked list — but members have heard presentations ranging from an extreme sports venue to a multi-use facility with a flippable floor to convert from performance hall to dance hall.
And, of course, cost will be a factor, especially if the City Commission decides to move forward with an implementation agreement with the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation to build the proposed Sarasota Performing Arts Hall. That decision is scheduled to come no later than March 31, 2025 thanks to an extension secured by the SPAF for the next step in development of the SPAC.
At that time, the SPAF will have benefitted from at least one more appearance at a City Commission workshop and further refinement of architect Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s concept plan and the cost, which will provide further enlightenment of the financial feasibility for both capital costs and the operational balance sheet.
“An extension will allow us to strengthen the implementation agreement by answering additional questions from the commission,” said SPAF CEO Tonia Castroverde Moskalenko during a Nov. 18 commission meeting. “We request a workshop with the commission so that we can take a deeper dive in the questions that you have and update the commission on changes to the design concept based on the feedback that we have received from the community since our town hall meetings.”
The new deadline for the implementation agreement is flexible. Commissioners agreed if it takes longer for the SPAF to develop a solid plan, it should request another extension.
