Thoughts on Palm Avenue’s future
July 18th, 2008 by Jonathan Maziarz in Current Affairs, Editor's Desk, News, Politics, SarasotaScott Proffitt, one of the owners of downtown’s Main Bookshop, attended the City Commission meeting on Thursday afternoon and had some thoughts about what went down, namely the latest proposal for the redevelopment of Palm Avenue:
CITY CANS FOURTH PLAN IN TEN YEARS FOR PALM AVENUE PROJECT
City Hall, July 17, 2008
At the City Commission meeting this afternoon, a recurring issue once again reared its ugly head. The long-running, on-again off-again plans, proposals, dreams, and schemes involving the land owned by the City of Sarasota on Palm Avenue- virtually right behind the Opera House- was the topic. This parcel has been the basis of four “RFP’s”, or Request for Proposals over the last decade, which the City has put forth to solicit suggestions to develop the land in a manner that would include lots of public parking … in conjunction with a hotel, and /or retail and/ or condos, and probably, all of the above in a synergistic, downtown-revitalizing, new urbanism conglomerate of uses.
Now, some people would say that the fact that the City has been unable to complete a satisfactory deal on the last three attempts says more about the City than about the various developers and their proposals. And certainly our city has shown incredible ability to fail to take action on many issues in the past. In this case however, the developer, Buck-Leiter Palm Avenue Development LLC, was changing the deal. Chief City Planner Steven Stancel prepared an analysis of the changes that indicated the City might have to come up with an additional three million dollars. There seemed to be a general consternation among some commissioners and staff regarding the transfer of the property to the developer along with having to front all sorts of expenses in a confusion of graphs and extrapolations in a fifty-year deal with the LLC. Stancel bluntly said the current proposal was “substantially different from the original proposal”.
Amusingly, at the end of the City Planner’s presentation, City Commissioner Ken Shelin raised his hand to inform the world “I am not allowed to ask any questions.” Commissioner Shelin did go on to comment “I don’t know why anybody would do business with us” referring to the decade long travail involving this land and every deal proposed for it. During a short break in the proceedings I heard Shelin say, “I am pissed off, she controls what we can say and when we can say it…” Commissioner Shelin continued his rant concerning Mayor Lou Ann Palmer but I could no longer eavesdrop without being obvious. Commissioner Shelin treads dangerously close to having a potty mouth.
Commissioner Kelly Kirschner and Fredd “Glossie” Atkins, both voiced concern over any changes effecting the legality of the acceptance of this proposal over the competing proposals, with the issue, I guess, being any substantial changes opening up the City to legal challenge by the losing proposals.
The developers with the winning proposal, Buck-Leiter Palm Avenue Development LLC, presented a quite different portrayal of the changes they had made, minimizing the changes and letting the City know just what a good deal this was. Projections regarding parking receipts and “rent” brought the City a return of almost ten percent on their investment, and untold returns in the less tangible value added from all the amenities to be included.
The rubber met the road when, after two hours of talk, Commissioner Kirschner made a motion to kill the deal. Commissioner Atkins wanted to amend the motion to allow the staff two weeks to look at the data and come back with more opinions. Mayor Palmer was in the process of seconding this motion when Kirschner called a point of order (basically arguing that if he made a motion to can the deal, you could hardly call sending it back to staff an amendment to this motion). City Clerk Billy Robinson concurred that parliamentary procedure did not allow an amendment to a motion that would effectively nullify the motion. A vote was taken, and the Palm Avenue Redevelopment deal was voted down.
Many people will point to the collapse of another deal involving this city owned land as further evidence of the ineffectualness of our commission. I feel that the developer tried to change the rules in mid-game and our City Staff rightly felt the changes were unfair and would cost the City (us) possibly many millions of dollars. The Commission, believe me, does not want to go back to square one on this. The City Commission did the right thing by listening to and heeding the opinion of their staff… no matter how much we all want to see action on this parcel of land.
Scott Proffitt
Sarasota
More about Palm Avenue:
• City of Sarasota page on project.
July 18th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Well said, Scott!