Sarasota Livin'

SHT reports FPL will help "clean up" downtown

Now the boom in Sarasota's downtown core is creating both a demand for more power and the quandary of where to put poles and lines to carry it.

"The city was starting just to break loose," said Russell Chamberlin, the FPL major customer manager working with the city on the project.

In some cases, development is spilling into rights of way, leaving little or no room for a traditional overhead power system.

"You get to a point where you can't physically build the poles," said Scott Shuck, the manager of the Sarasota project.

In spring 2003, a roughly T-shaped area incorporating land along Fruitville Road and north to 10th Street, west to Golden Gate Point and Sarasota Bay, south to U.S. 41's turn by Selby Gardens, east to South Orange Avenue and east along Morrill Street to North School Avenue became what FPL calls a "designated underground area," or DUGA.