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Downtown Center vs. Fairgrounds?
By: Matt Walsh
When the slide show projecting the new vision and possibilities for the Sarasota Fairgrounds projected a row of cages filled with piglets, that sealed it. There it is - the future of Sarasota.
"Y'all ready for this?"
That was the background music to the video presentation by the Sarasota Fairgrounds Association, designed, of course, to inspire Sarasota Tiger Bay Club members to envision what "could be" at the bedraggled fairgrounds property on Fruitville Road. It was part of the day's discussion on the topic of conference centers for Sarasota.
Here's the quick summary: Three groups in Sarasota County want tax subsidies in varying levels to finance projects...
• The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce wants a $50 million, 200,000-square-foot conference center financed with a 40% increase in the bed tax.
• The fair association wants a new multipurpose sports-conference center arena, hotel and new midway. Price tag unknown.
• And the city of Sarasota wants additional tax dollars to upgrade Ed Smith Stadium to keep the Cincinnati Reds here for spring training and be able to offer more events.
Promoters of each said they're not competing and are communicating with each other to figure out how to make things work.
Two audience members, when they took to the microphone, crystallized Sarasota's never-ending predicament: Talk, talk, talk. Study, study, study, they said. This has been going on for 25 years. Let's do something:
• Kerry Kirschner, executive director of the Argus Foundation: Sarasota City Manager Mike McNees and Sarasota County Administrator Jim Ley should be the catalysts to bring the parties together.
• Former Sen. Bob Johnson, a Fairgrounds Association board member: The talking must end. The leaders in the room need to make something happen.
Afterward, everyone went back to work. They've heard it all before, for 25 years.
Of the three, the two most compelling projects and most difficult to complete are the downtown conference center and a redeveloped fairgrounds. They are crucial to what Sarasota will become over the next 10 years. And when you consider both ideas, they have equal merit. They can be and should be different projects and serve different markets.
The fairgrounds property should be what it is and always has been - a venue for, to be polite, the middle masses and lower. Tractor pulls, rock concerts, middle-market trade shows, folk festivals, AirStream camper campouts - for local and regional groups. You know the genre.
A downtown conference center should be targeted at the higher end, the corporate, entrepreneurial and higher-education crowds, a place that serves as a springboard to broaden Sarasota's leisure tourism season to more business tourism, which typically is stronger in our slowest months.
(As an aside, pragmatic thinkers here should recognize how important this is. At this moment, sales are beginning to plummet in all of our restaurants and retail stores. Waiters and waitresses are seeing their tips drop dramatically. And restaurateurs are laying off the help they can't afford to carry. If you ask any business owner in Sarasota and Manatee counties whose sales are tied to the local market what one thing they would most like to change, here's a good bet on what they would say: That their revenues wouldn't gyrate so dramatically. A conference center and redeveloped fairgrounds would help that - much more than a spiffed-up stadium.)
The $100 million question is how to get both accomplished? To think that redeveloping the fairgrounds' 65 acres is the best and one-and-only thing to do would be wrong.
Doing both should be the vision. But how?
For starters, read what Irish developer Paddy Kelly has to say in the accompanying story. After that, consider this: Ask the voters. Let the market speak. Conduct a non-binding referendum of Sarasota County residents that would give them options on what they might be willing to finance with subsidies. Find out if they want to mortgage their futures to do both projects at once, one before the other or how they prefer to pay for them if at all. If taxpayers are going to subsidize these facilities, they should have a say.
Taller buildings can help finance center
Irish developer Paddy Kelly, whose firm is still working on designs to redevelop the Sarasota Quay property and surrounding 14 acres, gushes about Sarasota and what a beautiful city it is. Like many developers, when he looks at a piece of property, he doesn't see what's in front of his face. He sees what could be - and usually it's something grand.
For Sarasota, says Kelly, "We'd love to see a pedestrian city, nice shops, nice restaurants, attractive to tourists and residents and a cosmopolitan flavor." He envisions architecturally attractive covered walkways and escalators spanning Tamiami Trail so pedestrians can get to and from the Quay and Hyatt and Ritz-Carlton hotels to downtown.
He also sees an upscale conference center as an important piece in this vision.
But here's an interesting point: "We think the last thing the city should do is raise taxes on hotel beds," Kelly says.
Kelly has another idea: Let his group build condos, offices and hotels higher than 18 stories, the legal limit in Sarasota.
"Say you have the potential to go up higher than 288 feet (the legal limit)," he says. "You can create value by doing that. Then what can you do with that value? We as developers and investors could share that value by way of contributing to the city maybe to a conference center, affordable housing, a cultural center, whatever. That could happen at the Quay, or even on city property."
In other words, in exchange for Kelly's Quay project rising, say, another 40, 60, 80 feet, some of the additional income created from additional condos or offices could offset Kelly's land costs if he were to put a conference center on his property. Or those revenues could be used to offset costs if a conference center were built on city property.
Taller buildings?
Sarasota's Grumpy Geezers would have conniptions. But Kelly argues taller structures would have another benefit beyond helping finance a conference center. "When you go up like that, you don't notice a difference that much," he says. "People think you do. But we also find in Sarasota when you look at that wall of apartments (on the bayfront), they're all the same height. It's almost like a hedge. There's no variety in height. How does light and air get through? You don't create an environment that is conducive to pedestrian city."
Asked whether any of Sarasota's political leaders have approached him about incorporating a conference center on his property, Kelly says: "No, and we're a bit surprised at that. But don't forget the mindset of most communities is they think developers only want and want, and they don't want to give anything. We're used to doing the best we can, not from our own point of view alone. It's got to be a win-win situation."
Meantime, Kelly says his group is continuing to design its Quay project according to the city's codes. "If we were invited to have another look, I wonder if we could find a solution to this. We'd use our best endeavor to come up with proposals."
Sounds like Sarasota's new mayor has a phone call to make.
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