commissioner's corner i'm susan chapman today we're going to talk about the citizens guide to the bayfront contrary to what we think there are three bayfront plans that are being considered right now back in two thousand and two to two thousand and seven we had a baby from planned by coopers robertson and now bayfront two thousand and twenty is being considered by visit sarasota and my guest today is robert easterly or bobby's trail a former chair of a coalition of city neighborhood associations who is on the the panel for considering they front two thousand and twenty bob welcome thank you what we have in front of us is the two thousand and seven model for the cooper robertson plan and what the goal was this plan was to reduce the paving at the bayfront for the van ways still we have a forty two acre site and fifty seven percent of it is paved and so what you can see here is a park at the bay front right next to the van ways so you can see another performing arts center a second performing arts center here municipal auditorium and here is a parking garage what they do is they preserve the wetland on this side and here's a gee whiz here's another parking garage and then the chadsey library which is a former library as the garden club and the art center are still preserved but they move the pagoda over to the park essentially what they're doing is  how is this plan going to be in consideration of the bayfront twenty twenty plan will you know that the bayfront two thousand and twenty plan just got started just a little over a year ago and it was initiated by visit sarasota board of directors  virginia healey the president and also michael glover and their reason for doing this is that they saw there was an opportunity to revisit this issue on the base front and so they have gone out part of it from the direction of the commission and yourself is to build a grassroots support and from the community and get as much information they can where they stand right now we don't have a plan what they have is a vision and let me just read the vision to you so you'll know what they're talking about their vision that they're going around to all the grassroots basically we support the an articulated vision and long term master plan for the sarasota bayfront area that will establish a cultural and economic legacy for the region while ensuring open public access to the  bayfront where they are now where they're at right now is trying to raise money private money and hire a consultant of new york city who's been here once and looked at the bayfront and have done many of these projects the high line some of the battery park in new york so they've got a pretty good track record their plans are to hire this group come in and develop core values get more  participation of the community and move forward right now they don't have a plan i thought it was premature to put a plan on the table and they are planning to go back in with the consulting group and use some of the history of some of the designs that have been done by the city in the master plan i know when michael clough or came before the city commission he said a lot had changed since two thousand and seven and let's talk a little bit about some of the changes that have happened since two thousand and seven right now there is preserving the bayfront view we have a rendering of one way that we can preserve the bayfront view and it is basically angles off a walkway or a tree lined parkway all the way from the roundabout to the bay front and that is at ten st and also at the area where the quake to be from fruitvale road to that one on opening in the bay i presume this is a conceptual idea what the quake might have done that was the irish american project that went bankrupt and this is actually what they were proposing right that was a concept plan why was it this plan i know the quake they followed some difficult financial times but why didn't this move forward independently of the quake since the city spent an awful lot of money developing the plan and dusted it off and starting over again well the recession happened essentially and the recession slowed everything down so as we are emerging from the recession we have started to talk about revitalizing this plan this is called the cultural park master plan with the idea that our identity as a city is one that has a lot of cultural institutions so an eight hundred twenty eight hundred square foot performing arts all performing arts hall for the symphony are all proposed separately and then another performing arts hall for the players of sarasota the question that we have from all of that is that sustainable and even the coopers robertson group when they came forward said none of these plans are economically sustainable so we have to have a way to do these plans that are sustainable  so in other words it really boils down to the city wants to initiate input from many many interested parties in the city and then you have to determine what can be done and how's it going to get paid for  right we need to have a plan that we as a city can have work over time economically so that the city doesn't end up giving up our great asset so what is the initial cost the other one sustainability of pain for the let's say structures in the main it's there in it seems to me that we just finished a parking garage downtown and they've got some parking garages in the area and there's no doubt you need some parking in an area and hopefully somebody comes up with a creative way not to have parking structures that take up the better part of them when one of the things that cooper robertson did proposes a parking garage that essentially has a green roof and then it is lined with liner buildings like the garage that country club plaza in kansas city in kansas at the country club plaza in kansas city you never notice that most of the side is covered by garages but they're lined with buildings that shops and other uses so this is a look and cultural park but you're into supporting some private interests and some mixed use in that park at this time or at this point time it's not not a given you don't know what what  what do you think that the commission is looking to do and because you're basically the stewards of the of the assets of the city that the citizens have and so therefore in the burden of doing the right thing and creating a great legacy for the city is on the backs of the commissioners right and basically in the cooper robinson plan they talked about iconic buildings and making this something special but they talked about doing it over time i would think that the first thing that we have to do is have a concept plan for parking otherwise none of this l none and this other development will work another interesting thing that was done in this plan is create a grid like a block like structure and that is more visually appealing and more sustainable as a design a thing with something we have to consider th part of this site is what's called submerged lands and submerged lands can only be used for public use so we have to make sure that we located public use on the land and any kind of entrepreneurial or private use has to be closer to the street if we do that was actually reclaimed land that was put in there and it is looked as if this is kind of a wetland and here it is a wetland and w cooper robertson plan was to upgrade it take out the pepper trees take out the potato vines and maintain the mangrove french as a nature park what's missing now is we had gee whiz which was the children science museum operating at that time now that building is empty and in need of major repairs so how we're going to frame this environmental park is another issue that's changed since two thousand and seven well the exciting thing is there's lots of interested parties were we hopefully are coming out of the recession and something like this can move forward i've been told by the consultant in new york that this piece of land is not only the most sought after in a piece of land in the south west  florida it may be the most it sought after piece in all of florida in the southeast they said this is incredible piece of land to do something special that passes the test of time right which brings us to the third plan which is the bay front now plan in which marine is proposing at this part of the site one hundred million dollar aquarium and then close just beyond that a conference center education center and then just beyond that a hotel pool all of that on public land that is proposed to be a two hundred fifty five million dollars project with economic development bonds financed by economic development bonds that has not received as much favor from the commission well i think the issue here is is it sustainable you know we know that conferences don't make money  and we know that most marine although it's i think term it similar to the monterey bay one is that sustainable one hundred million dollar investment and then the state saying ability  i just don't think the taxpayers are going to be interested to where in any liability going forward with some of these developments is my thinking some of these financial this forty two acres belongs to us as citizens and we have the job of preserving this incredible asset for the future especially access to the public my preference is to have more park land rather than less park land and have almost a necklace of parks around the city from centennial park through this through bayfront park through pain park all the way to pain park and through loop would park that we have a sustained and continuous park connected by the multi use recreational trail connected by a pedestrian walkway  and connected by transit what is your position would talk about the financing what is your position in the meat rights on some of these to raise capital i'm all in favor of legacy donations in fact that then ways it was called the van ways though because a couple gave money to help finish that van ways or david cohen hall is a legacy of david cohen and and certainly naming rights are a way that a city without spending taxpayer dollars can get public benefit and sustainability if they put it in a trust and they whatever the length of that legacy is able to pay for itself in terms of maybe it's an upgrade similar to what i think doc worley did just with the city commission right at byrd key park it's the elouise whirlin memorial park and certainly we should be we should have a meaningful legacy program and that and we are considering what is a meaningful legacy program that vides not just for the initial gift but for maintenance of our parkland are there any other plans that you've seen or as a design studio come up with any other conceptual ideas that have this well one other thing that the design studio is thinking about is should we put a garage on the bay front what they're talking about is maybe that we would raise the level of this area to ten feet which is the layer level near the street and put the entire garage underground and put the green in the park on top of that and the buildings on top of it so you'd either slope it down or you'd stack it in some kind of nice architectural detail and still have your parking garage right which does look like a pretty garage well i want to thank you for coming in having this conversation with me this is been commissioner's corner