Sarasota Livin'

In an email exchange with Mayor Mary Ann Servian ... she commented on an article written by Jon Thaxton titled "The affordable housing enigma" (very well written -- he devotes one paragraph of a long article to downtown Sarasota) the focus of the article was that protecting environmentally sensitive lands would have no real impact on the price of housing in Sarasota County. (I agree)

Joe,
Only counterpoint I have is that City has actually lowered densities not increased them. That has dramatically increased the cost per unit. We went from 200 unit per acre down to 50....
Mary Anne

My response...

Just to clarify your response .. are you saying that the density before the "new downtown plan" was 200 units / acre?

and is now 50 (not yet including the increased density bonus) ...

The Mayors response..

Yes when we adopted the Master Plan and finally implemented the new zoning districts we actually lowered densities from 200 to 50 per acre in the core and even lower on the edges. That is why the density bonus in some selected areas may in fact make sense in order to lower the cost per unit.

At the price of an acre of land in the downtown zones it is nearly impossible to build anything that resembles affordable if you can only do 50 or less units. The cost of land and the infrastructure needed to build a condo drives the costs way up. To work in conjunction with the Land Trust and increase densities, on a case by case basis, makes a lot of sense to me.

Mary Anne

As reported by Save our Sarasota CCNA did vote Saturday morning to ask the city commission to remove the proposed "attainable housing density bonus" comprehensive plan amendment from the current comp plan change cycle.

Read the article and comments they are a pretty accurate description of the discussion.

I voted with Park East / John Susce to not support the motion. I think there is some serious FUD going on around this issue. I can understand not wanting to live next door to a 200 unit / acre development. I don't think that is going to happen to people in single family homes. Certainly not like we see in Laurel Park.. but sometimes you just have to trust the process and the people we elected to do the right thing.

I think we should have a pretty dense downtown area I feel there are lots of benefits. I am excited about what is going on downtown ... I really enjoy being downtown ... I wish I worked downtown .... I wish I could afford to live downtown.

For more discussion on this and other topics..

March 27 HOT TOPICS

MAYOR MARY ANNE SERVIAN from the City of Sarasota, as well as TONY SOUZA, President of the Sarasota Downtown Partnership, discussing the state of our "downtown".

Community Foundation of Sarasota
2635 Fruitville Road

(between Tuttle Ave. and Lime Ave.)

11:30 a.m. $10 per person

Reservations can be made via the League email LWVSC@comcast.net, or phone 921-9778

We will be having a “deli” lunch, featuring sandwiches, chips, a drink and cookies—served buffet style, for under $10