- July 18, 2025
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In the 18 months since his return to planning, engineering and design consulting firm Kimley-Horn following a six-year “sabbatical” with the Bay Park Conservancy, Bill Waddill has carved a new niche.
Career 2.0, he calls it, is not so much a reinvention as it is a refocus.
In his first 31 years with the firm, the 61-year-old Waddill worked individual projects, rising in the ranks through the nationwide firm while cultivating expertise as a senior planner, senior landscape architect and “frustrated civil engineer and frustrated architect,” as he describes it.
“That's just kind of what happens,” he said of his professional osmosis, “but over the last 15 years, what I was really interested in is collaborating on and leading talented multi-disciplinary teams to implement important public or private projects.”
Those 15 years were in Sarasota, transferring within the firm across the state in 2002 — along with his wife, Kathy, and two young daughters — from Vero Beach at the behest of company principal and former Sarasota County Commissioner Al Maio.
Here, the San Antonio native and Texas A&M graduate found his ideal match of lifestyle and career opportunity in a city poised for explosive growth, armed with a new vision for its downtown thanks to its Downtown Master Plan 2020 crafted by famed land planner and new urbanism guru Andres Duany.
Now Waddill focuses on the larger picture, a self-described facilitator who, while representing the interests of the client, works to resolve points of friction between developers and the community to find the balance to better, if not best, serve the interests of all parties involved.
Most recently, Waddill was chief facilitator in ushering two downtown mixed-use projects that were opposed by neighbors and nearby residents, via crucial preliminary approvals. They were the rezoning of a combined two acres of parcels between Fourth Street and Fruitville Road and, most recently, the partial vacation of an alley for Saravela, a multifamily development on the next block to the north between Fourth and Fifth streets along North Tamiami Trail.
During Career 1.0, Waddill lent his expertise to site-specific projects up and down the Gulf Coast of Florida, including an emphasis on developing nearly three dozen public parks and all that it implies when working with local governments and community stakeholders. That experience served him well in his stint with the Bay Park Conservancy in its work to collaborate, secure master plan approval, build Phase 1 and secure Phase 2 funding for The Bay park.
“Career 1.0 with Kimley-Horn was fantastic, but I was looking for something where I could have meaningful impact on our community, really focus on one thing and use some of the skills I had learned over the years and also to keep learning,” Waddill said.
While no stranger to community collaboration, that education included a master class in bringing parties together — via hundreds of community outreach sessions — to develop concepts that while not everyone will get all they want, they will get enough to move the forward and eventually achieve consensus.
Waddill’s last day at Kimley-Horn, where he had risen the ranks to the top local executive, was Jan. 2, 2018. His first day at the Bay Park Conservancy was Jan. 3.
“So I had about eight hours of retirement,” Waddill said. “I was too young to retire, and I still am, but I went there and had an amazing six years.”
At that point, The Bay was about two years into planning.
“It’s not that the work I was doing wasn't meaningful,” Waddill said. “There were certainly a lot of amazing projects and clients over the years, but I really wanted to focus not on 10 things, but one thing that could really have an impact in the community.”
He found that opportunity in The Bay, and as managing director of the Bay Park Conservancy he was deeply immersed in the community collaboration the public-private venture process prescribes.
“You've really got to understand what the community wants and what the business owners want to create a project that fosters success for whatever the objective is,” he said.
What residents on the edge and within the Rosemary District want, Waddill found, is a pleasant, shaded, cohesive and walkable pedestrian experience beginning in the three-block area between Fruitville Road and Fifth Street bounded by North Tamiami Trail and North Cocoanut Avenue.
With multiple projects in the works in a variety of stages within those blocks, none of which addressed the streetscape to their liking, that piece of their community was poised to change from what it had been for a century to what it will be for next 100 years.
While running through the city approval gauntlet to secure rezoning for its project off Fruitville Road, Palsar Developments encountered stiff opposition in its quest to rezone the property from Downtown Edge to Downtown Core, the property downzoned in 2018 by a prior owner for a failed redevelopment plan.
In February 2024, the Planning Board recommended against rezoning approval by the City Commission for the project by a 4-1 vote, at the time opposed by the neighboring The Encore condominiums and other neighborhood advocates.
Enter Waddill, who joined project lead and Kimley-Horn colleague Phillip DiMaria to guide a dialogue between the developer and the community. By the time the project reached the commission, Palsar proposed numerous proffers that resulted in the support of The Encore and Rosemary District neighborhood leaders.
Sent back to the Planning Board for reconsideration given the changes, the rezoning received its unanimous endorsement and, in November 2024, a 5-0 approval of the City Commission.
Waddill’s approach was to forge a coalition of community leaders, city staff and developers of other planned projects on the block to devise a cohesive streetscape plan of wider sidewalks and planting strips, deeper setbacks and mature shade trees to enhance the safety and ambience of the pedestrian experience.
“The opposition became support,’ said Waddill. “You meet and you talk and you humanize each other. You talk about what's important to you and what are the commonalities. You find a way to agree and the elected officials say, ‘How can I not support this?’’
About the same time, developer GSP Sarasota was crafting plans to convert the western half of the block, across the street from the Palsar project between Fourth and Fifth Streets along Tamiami Trail. The entire 282-unit plan hinged on the partial alley vacation of Fourth Way, which also met opposition at the Planning Board level, resulting in its recommendation of denial in April 2025.
By May 19, after weeks of collaboration with the community led by Waddill, multiple proffers resulted in the unanimous approval of the alley vacation, capped by the congratulations by city commissioners for demonstrating how developers, residents and staff can come together for a successful conclusion.
“Bill often steps in when there’s no formal process for community input,” said David Lough, president of the Downtown Sarasota Condominium Association. “My read is what makes him effective is that he’s a good listener and a strong communicator when it comes to getting community needs across to the developer. He helps developers understand what it’s going to take to earn neighborhood support. He also brings technical knowledge, experience, and long-standing relationships into the mix.”
Career 2.0 finds Waddill viewing downtown at the macro level, especially the area within the tax increment financing district for The Bay, which includes much of the Rosemary District. Twenty-five years into Duany’s plan — he is also a member of the city’s recently appointed Downtown Master Plan Update Committee — Waddill regards the city’s core and economic engine as something of a jigsaw puzzle.
The pieces with straight edges have fully formed the perimeter of the plan, and what remains are the irregularly shaped fragments that comprise the picture within.
His work at The Bay, and now in Career 2.0, is part of putting that puzzle together.
“We're filling in the middle. In a way, you could argue that creating the edge was the John Nolen plan over 100 years ago that laid out the grid network and created the idea of being next to the water,” Waddill said.
“Jump ahead to when I moved here almost 25 years ago, Main Street had good bones and had been up and down in its evolution," he continued. "Then Andres Duany came in and did a master plan and codes were updated. Of course, we're in 2025 now so we're a little past due to be updated, but that served us incredibly well.”
For now, much of Waddill’s focus is on the southwestern edge of the Rosemary District and helping to facilitate the connectivity within and on its perimeter. Critical pieces include creating bicycle and pedestrian access across Tamiami Trail into The Bay and encouraging new developments to include wider sidewalks, trees, decorative street lights, townhomes at the street level — part of the Saravela Plan — and retail frontage.
Piece by piece, over time, the full picture comes into view.
“If you take the long view, and you recognize that so many of these projects are going to be there for 100 years, it's worth it,” Waddill said. “Most of these puzzle pieces are done by the private sector, and then at some point the city can come in and fill in the gaps and you end up with a finished street.”
