Sarasota Merchants Pan Downtown Plan

Sarasota's downtown business community panned Tuesday a proposed multi-million dollar streetscape project brick by brick.

It was a full house at Tuesday morning’s meeting of Sarasota’s Downtown Improvement District (DID) where consulting engineers from Kimley-Horn and Associates laid out the plan, and offered the board a range of alternatives for beautification. It covers .

The “baseline plan” – without any additions – calls for:

• Street resurfacing where required;
• Enhanced landscaping;
• Repair or replacement of concrete sidewalks;
• New energy-efficient street lighting in two of the four stages;
• Construction of “enhanced gateways.”

But the proposed additions to the baseline plan proved controversial, including brick streets, brick sidewalks and wider sidewalks by using parallel parking instead of the existing angled parking.

“We’re hoping you can have a general discussion of the selection of alternatives,” said consultant William Waddill. “At that point we can dig down for more specific costs. To minimize disruptions [to merchants], we’d recommend you get a contractor on board early during the design process.”

DID Chairman Ernie Ritz then opened up the floor to public comment, and got a tsunami of criticism from all corners. A Bay Plaza resident said brick sidewalks were “a hazard waiting to happen for women who wear heels.”

Doris Shields, owner of the Super Valu on Main Street said, “I am totally against this parallel parking idea.” She was echoed by the owner of the Bullet Hole gun shop on Main: “Forget parallel parking.”

J.P. Knaggs owns the Bijou Café on First Street.

“Brick pavers would add a bit of ambience, but the cost of street closures are deadly,” he said. “And I don’t think taxpayers should support restaurants by widening the sidewalks. Spending the money on marketing is a better investment.”

A downtown newcomer agreed with the veterans. “We moved downtown from St. Armands,” said Christine Baer, the operator of at 1465 Main St. “We will lose our traffic if we are in a construction mess. Tearing up Main Street will be devastating.”

In all, 32 people spoke at the meeting, the great majority opposed bricks and parallel parking. They ran the gamut of operators or owners of a toy store, a coffee shop, a stationery store, an optical shop, a jewelry store – all highly opposed to parallel parking, and brick paving of street or sidewalk.

Peter Fanning, chairman of the Downtown Sarasota Condominium Association, urged the district to move forward cautiously. “I recommend you move forward on the patch chosen,” he said. “You could use the 1300 block as a pilot program.”

That block is Main Street’s “restaurant row” between Gulfstream Avenue and the Five Points roundabout. The price for the “baseline” improvements is $1 million. Brick sidewalks would add $247,000, and brick streets would boost the cost an additional $1 million.

After taking more than two hours of testimony, the district decided to send the consulting engineers back for tighter cost estimates on the baseline-only work for segments two, three and four (from Five Points to U.S. 301). For the first segment, they asked for baseline cost but with brick accents.

The engineers will come back Jan. 10, when the DID is expected to make a decision on its recommendation to the Sarasota City Commission, which has final approval.