Longtime Sarasota planner masters the art of big project diplomacy

Following a six-year hiatus with the Bay Park Conservancy, the former head of Kimley-Horn's Sarasota office is back and focused on completing the downtown Sarasota puzzle.

By Andrew Warfield
| 5:00 a.m. June 27, 2025
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Bill Waddill, pictured speaking March 25, 2021, moved to Sarasota almost 25 years ago where he continues to make an impact on the community.

Manatee-Sarasota

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 in downtown Sarasota, 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.