hi i'm jenny sarasota city commissioner and welcome to commissioner's corner on june nineteenth two thousand and seventeen the sarasota city commission voted unanimously to approve a resolution to rename pineapple park t is president of michael saunders we are here to discuss our experience with paul thor and his contributions to the city of sarasota i wanted to start with you you have a production company producing festivals throughout the country and some very very well known festivals in our city there's a quote and it goes something like it's an amazing it's an it's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit and that was said by harry truman when i read that quote i think of paul thorpe after i think he gives everything he has for our city and for our community and i want to know about your experience with paul and all of the festivals and events that he has created and that you've been involved with over the years he has created so much we could be here all day talking about it but if you go back to this seventy's i think paul came here in one nine hundred seventy talked to pac calhoun today and he was talking about paul being on the advisory board for parks and recreation and the king net neptune frolics i was i was here then i was at college but they have some great stories so it goes way back to sarasota downtown you and i had talked about this earlier growing up here you could roll a bowling ball down main street and you couldn't hit anybody on a friday night paul changed the landscape of our downtown with festivals bringing restaurants businesses just everything i've always said nobody loves downtown more than and he did most in a lot of the stuff he never got paid he he did it for the love of this town period as for him being a humble person we threw a party for him about four years ago his wife told me he just couldn't stop talking about it why did they do that why did i get the key to the city why am i getting the part named after me humble is the word that goes with paul for he just wants this city to be connected and a better place that's and that's that leads me to my next question because you know i know and you all know that paul is given credit for the pineapple drive new year's eve for new year's eve fireworks  in downtown the are shorter races yes the memorial day parade the holiday parade in december and a number of other festivals he's brought in especially the farmer's market so when we were talking about honoring paul we mediately came up with pineapple park because that's where he said the farmer's market market actually started he is a humble man he has been given some sort of recognition over the years but you said to me that this was particularly meaningful to him to have pineapple park named after him after him can you just clarify what you mean by that he said a few years ago there was talk about a roundabout being named after paul but nothing happened it just got lost in the wayside somewhere but i i said if anybody deserves a partner after him it's paul so collectively a group of us you included all decided very recently to try to make this happen because they were already redoing pineapple park and it just seemed fitting so i think it's great that the community came together and this happened so fast and pollitz got a park i said to him yesterday i've never known anybody that out a part named after him it's so cool well and that's a testament to paul isn't it that you can have so many groups and so many different people come together from different angles and what we all have in common is that we all love paul and we really want to honor his contribution to our city and paul you and i have talked often about how madison city grill is the center of the downtown of the city of sarasota and paul for very specifically got in touch with you to be the one to drive that corner to make that a successful corner can you talk to me about how that happened yeah i had known paul  for quite a while at that point and we had seen each other different events they were together in some different things and at the time he was leading in the organization called the downtown partnership which is morphed into a couple of other organizations since then but you know basically a downtown civic group of businesses and just overall improving downtown everything from a lot of those events the holiday parades to a decoration for main street just just  working on those kind of kind of programs and just connecting businesses together so he actually he actually called me to cater a breakfast meeting for them for the downtown partnership  and so we did and i just opened my first medicines restaurant in st petersburg after being in sarasota for ten years so you know we had such a connection to sarasota being here for so long still continuing to live here i think it was over over in the rosemary district and it was they were cultivating some new growth over in that part of the city and so we did this breakfast meeting and a lot of different business leaders from the town where there are a lot of people from the city were there several of the commissioners are mayor at the time was there and so we were things are on along well and it was certainly wind and he pulled me aside and said you know you're on afterwards what you made a couple people so i said sure so i did and we sat down with a couple of people that were on the board for the partnership an commissioners and they said you know we've got this little corner it's kind of a dark little corner and it belongs to the city and we'd like to see something different happened there and of course they're talking about the corner of main lemon eminent and you know for years they had  past that corner and and at one point it went from being a little park to they started to put it out to bed and i remember when the little coffee shop or something was going to go in there and i read about in the paper and i wish i had known that was coming up i would have been in that situation because i i just thought that was such a neat little spot in and you know the city was still quiet at the time things were starting to change slowly and i just thought you know i've been to italy so many times that i thought a european sidewalk cafe with my music and lunch and dinner and just the neighborhood place a place you go to all the time would would really fit really well there so i so they he suggested to everyone in the room you know maybe paul could do something that corner and i said thank you for the government's i no idea this was coming at me day and so i got very excited about it as soon as they brought it up and said what it was and i said gosh as interested in doing something there so they said well let's let's look at it there's you know there's there is the not possibly an opportunity there and the partnership was  this empty lot that had a little bus bench on it is turning into whole foods and all the underground utilities are being very redone and during all this time and getting all the history of the series you know that was the original train depot and in and we repositioned them so that we could cover the entire space with the covered awning that we have or just about the entire space and and then we had something that was a little easier to deal with with that with weather and everything else and but no it was it was him that pulled me aside and said you should do this you'd be great down there you know and he was just that is just that kind of guy he's just you know as he puts puts people together and puts people in places in gets gets people connected and you know and once we got there again you said it is kind of the center of the city and you know all the curves and parking spaces went away and it really became one big plaza and with the intention of that is where we're going to hold festivals that's where the farmer's market is going to going to take place and be better than it was  with with what they had to work with and and so then from that point on we just work together several times a year again new years eve and vote parades and holiday parades and all kinds of events all the time and you always come and go you're in the middle of  let's get this done you know and i got every minute paul you got it and he was just such a mentor is such an inspiration and such a great guy i've always just enjoyed working with him over the years and i love it but every time the phone rings and i love that you mention the train tracks there because i would be remiss if i didn't mention that one of the things that paul was very proud of after he came to sarasota in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine was during the seventy's when there was the big boom actually was started before the sevent but it was very popular for strip malls to be on the outside of the city so that was sort of led to some of the death of the downtowns and he saw downtown sarasota where we are located all of the culture that we had here and said sarasota downtown is potential and one of his initiatives that he's very proud of us he brought that freedom train which was touring the country and it came right into downtown sarasota a whole week of festivities and it was parked actually right in front of where the city grill is madison city grill is but his vision that he has for our downtown is that streetscape that you mentioned it's not it's a place where you're downtown is a gathering place where people can walk their restaurants there are trees there are parks there are open spaces and so one of the things that i wanted you to talk about train was that paul's one of his gifts is likely talked about earlier is that he brings people together groups and different businesses residence visitors cultural institutions and he makes everybody stronger by making networks and by making groups and you are very involved in boards and in all kinds of groups in our city can you talk about some of your spirit experience with paul i know you've served on some boards together actually john i'd love to and it's interesting you mention that i think paul first had a city  part not sure of the order of that but yeah but i think it's a third thing that paul paul gets is and it's passion and i think that that passion for staying involved and i think my entry into the  nexus was i moved back in zero three a little little after your opening probably in the middle of the street scaping and that was the downtown partnership and i think you can move to sarasota and you can live here and enjoy it and blissfully go on your way without ever having to dell below the surface but when you get below the surface and that was the downtown partnership and learning from paul and watching some of the dialogues is that you have to be engaged if you care about the future you have to be passionate and you have to be engaged and i think that's the third thing that paul has really given us as a community so if you've served with him if you've been around him you begin to get that passion for involvement and that was the down time partnership and it was my entree into the true  part of creating a community is you got to get involved i think paul would say that first and foremost is whether it's a down time partnership or it's the you know the nexus of the arts through through any one angle whether you're a restaurant tour ultimately all those things conver healthy downtown it's walkability it's livability it's affordability it's amenities and the one thing about a city unlike a residential neighborhood i grew up in sarasota along booky but my dad lived heartbreakers  y live there now and the street i live in although the houses might be bigger the streets the same in fact the trees are very similar some of the houses are the exact ones i took or treated at well cities not cities really meant to evolve and i think paul saw that this is the city that was becoming maybe more more more forty years was a little longer than maybe him to support it but we're still becoming as a city we're still writing our chapters and paul had the foresight to kind of see beyond the obvious and say you gotta stick to it i mean how long was paul talking about a circulator forever forever now we didn't get paul's version of a circulator what we now have these i know what they're actually quite right i write and i have to think that the group that pushed i ride over the hill was some of the people that sat with paul thirteen years ago at the partnership table hearing talk about the circulator and it took thirteen years to evolve to a different solution but i have to give paul the credit for planting seeds so got to put the stamp of approval on it it did i mean it was different then and that's a credit to paul as i think that the idea that he might have advocated thirteen years ago he wasn't so tied to the way you do it as long as it served the end goal and so when that came up i could see a small kind of paul's smile that he gives that you know just sort of is that knowing i brought it you know another thing that i believed in cross the finish line i love what you said about how  town sort of evolves and grows and news and i think that paul was is a strong force in making sure that our downtown has certain elements that that are maintained you know as we grow and as we evolve and as we have more people move here there are elements that that that we we love that makes us special and i think he is the one who has put it in all of our heads there are just certain things that are very important for our downtown to stay takes everything he does so seriously everything cross the t's and dot the i's we were doing a holiday parade and paul would stand at the corner and he would be directing everybody your turn to go down in here come the girl scouts and here comes the churches and whatever it is and i would do girl whatever paul wanted me to do i did it and i like to take go excuse me he said you've got to do something about it i go i have to do something about it the princess to do something about that open about the girl scouts are coming around the corner barbara you've got to do something so the biggest applause i have ever gotten was getting the pooper scooper and picking the pope up but only would i do that for paul or were you not so we had great fun together i had his bag he had my back your back and everybody in this  stem thing if i have to and and i were in a room and it was it was it was just a few years ago and i want to say that he shocked me when we were talking about it at some point we're having a meeting at city growing or going over how we're going to do this and how this is going to happen and so sharp you in him and everything he does and just such and such and he can i but i have to say when it came to office stuff that we've all time together paul would be there we'd have to come and set up new year's eve some time at six in the morning and we'd be there four the next day and paul was right there with us absolutely eighty five eighty seven years old i was proved and i had to tell you but he never he never gave out never left he was always there from start to exciting i think that's what makes him so special is that he is he is one of those people that has that long term vision and mid term vision and then the immediate what has to happen right now and can very easily articulate it and break it down and that's how he gets people on his team i  ago a younger guy that is coming to this town went in the newspaper in and said he was mr downtown and i was like oh no no no no no i'm there is only one mr downtown so i somebody who's born here i know you went away but you also came back like a lot of us do and what do you feel that has paul's greatest contributions to downtown are well that's a there's so many things in that question and yes i grew up here i think i've begun to remember coming down town for this that the other thing is a really young man shopping at moss brothers that was sort of my torture session as a sort of fourth grader to go to mosque brother and then you know i remember distinctly in the eighty's when downtown was emptying out to your point when when i going through the old war it was well worth at that time and the cross plaza and just that sense of it not being a place  and then really fast forward a move back in two thousand and three which is really interesting time in sarasota where it was just at the cusp of the next wave of downtown's of evolution and i think for me the take away and relating it to paul is really not so much what i realized then but what i realized now is that so many things that i took for granted moving here in two thousand and three as you all have so clearly saw while i was gone and you were here we take we would not have been here if but for paul others have carried it forward but that initial impetus as you said not just going down to city hall and saying you guys do something for me which is i know you get a lot of that but really saying here's what i'll do for you and i think that's the difference that somebody like a paul and there aren't many pauls who will not only tell you what he thinks but i'll show up and do the work and leave a legacy and i think that whether it's the parade of the farmer's market which i love i go there with my daughter now that i'm a dad we wouldn't have that what would downtown be without all the things you all mentioned it would be just streets and buildings and what's nice is we have a downtown with a soul and i have to think a big piece of that soul on over forty years absolutely absolutely i think that that's one of the things for our downtown that makes it different from a lot of the others that sort of fade in and out as ours is just getting stronger and stronger because it is a destination and i think that you know i've spoken with paul a lot over the years and he always impressed on me that you have to have this balance in your downtown you know you have to have a balance of retail restaurants clubs bars music events entertainment festivals not too many not too little that it has to be it's this continuous growing balance that you talked about earlier if it's going to grow but it still has to continue to grow in a balanced way and like what you said as well he doesn't not only come down to the city commission or speak to city staff and say i don't like this he would say i don't like this and this is how we're going to solve it or here are three ideas on how we can solve it and i have a team of people   i love paul he's a role model of what a truly good citizen should be if everyone spent a tenth of the time that paul spends trying to improve their community we would be one hundred times better off not only as a city but as a country it's totally fitting to name the park after paul and i'm so glad you did it while he's still so young and fighting for our community so that was about right and on that we are going to have a dedication dedication of pineapple park a soon to be resolution to rename it the paul and for junior park and we're looking to do it on a saturday during farmer's market we don't have a date set yet but it will be on the city's website which is sarasota f l dot gov so make sure that you all join in and participate and be there to help we're going to have a plaque made is that right barbara the plaque is in production so we're just really waiting for that paul and thank you because i am toyed heard about the park i knew there were some things to honor paul but what a nice compliment that you all picked up and ran with that it's very well deserved but if you have that kind of brought to the forum oh sure we'd be sitting here today he taught me how to nag ok well it was actually barber they came to me a little while ago and said we need to make this happen it's been started several times but it's never been finished let's make it evolve throughout the years to we can have benches and trees and make it a place where you know we truly honor paul and his contribution to our city into our community beautiful well thank you all very much i appreciate you joining