hi welcome to commissioner's corner i'm vice mayor alist alpert and i thought today rather than have a guest i would do something a little bit different in january the city manager gave a presentation to the lido beach homeowners association and gave everyone and update on what's going on in the city so i thought all of you might find that interesting too so we're going to go right into the slideshow and  enjoy this is going to be a twenty seventeen year review of sarasota let's see what we've got we've got two new city commissioners that were elected in may of this year ha cotch here is a pic of our existing commissioners of course our mayor shelley freeland eddie me as the vice mayor and commissioner willie charles shaw here's a group shot just having fun down  that hurricane but even with that even though it was only a level two hurricane we still had quite a few impacts one of the biggest was the power outages and it took for some people two weeks or more to get their power back but overall florida power and other power companies were out there day and night to get everybody back on track some trees  blew over not as many as it could have been and we went last couple of weeks ago to talk to all the people who had been involved in the response and the recovery the city police departments the sarasota sheriff's department the firefighter all of the staff and first responders and did a review of what could have been done better in hurricane irma and what was done well and i think the overall consensus was that basically everybody really did what they were supposed to do performed well and just needed to make some improvements in just a few areas here is just a picture of some of the people at the emergency operations center newscaster lester holt came to our this parking garage that's going to start career start construction around april of twenty eight thousand and it should be done sometime this year so everybody on a know in the community is really looking forward to getting this garage out there and eliminating maybe some of the people driving round and round trying to find parking now it just a little since this was for the key homeowners association just a little information on lead ok key itself and even if you don't live on lido might be kind of some interesting facts for you the year round population is only six hundred and sixty two people on the lido key and on st armand's it's actually only two hundred thirty six people of course in season that grows  to more than twice as many as you can see by this slide the number of residential units and lido key was saying armin's a seven thousand nine hundred eighty nine four hundred sixty single family twenty nine multifamily forty one percent of those have been homestead exemption so that's how we know that you know the the population and the rest star of course not homestead  hotels five condo timeshares the room count is three hundred forty four and unit count four hundred ten i think there's going to be some actually least one more hotel going survey of visitors and seventy eight point nine percent of lido beach is overnight visitors are drawn to the destination for the beach and ninety five point four percent volunteer enjoying the beach during their stay fior ridges of people who come out to lido beach pretty evenly divided between the midwest the northwest and floridians  remaining about twenty five percent are from the southeast canada and europe and other whatever that is the lido beach erosion which is a huge topic on the beach in the city because of course if so many people are coming to live for the beach it's important that we actually have a beach there and hurricane took out about thirty seven thousand three hundred  yards of the beach so there was a shoreline retreat between three and twenty feet the city and the residents of lido are working together to really nerve and replenish the beach now that they've been working on this for quite a while and it has been involved in a lawsuit some of the residents of siesta key decided that they were concerned that if we took sand  from new pass that that dredging was going to cause damage to siesta key so the major nourishment project is in litigation and we don't know how that's going to come out but in the interim  million dollars the army corps of engineers will be covering sixty two percent of that the state nineteen percent of the city's going to have to come up with one thousand percent or about three point eight million dollars the lido beach concession stand here's a picture of it as it currently exists and one of the things that the residents there complained of is its rundown  maintenance the cleanliness and just just the overall atmosphere of it not being really up to par with what a city park should be like so and posing on one of the seahorse statues that was part of the can see you know at that time but what we've done is we've brought in a  new concessionaire who will take take possession of the property around may first they are leasing the property and the plan is that they will be investing their own money somewhere between three and four million to fix up the buildings of the pavilion the poorer the bathrooms manage the entire place and  tiki bar a splash pad for the kids and a place to have special events and a playground so i think it's going to add a lot of value out on lido beach and i think  it's completed the residents and all the people in the city or the people who visit there are going to really get an enhanced experience from from doing that the upgrades to the  pavilion are going to cost somewhere between three and four million and isaiah said the group that's leasing it will be putting in that money will be paying rent on the lease and also then taking over the almost one hundred fifty thousand dollars annual maintenance that the city has been paying so it brings their their monthly rent somewhere around if you add in all those things about twenty six to thirty thousand dollars a month before it can happen with the new lessees have to get a major conditional use go through permit and get approvals and if they don't get approvals then the police won't be valid anymore twenty eight teens sarasota where are we going and that's what everybody seems to want to know this is just a small sample of just the number of projects in the area and i know growth for everybody has been a huge concern and i'm sure you can't see that all that well but there are several dots on there representing all the new projects that are going on in the community there's actually a total of thirty nine project with a construction value  of almost a little over five hundred seventy four million dollars will be an additional seven hundred twenty eight rental units sixteen hundred fifty nine condo units nine hundred seventy three hotel rooms and so that that adds up to really an addition of four thousand three hundred sixty residential units in the city so and i did and i know this is no surprise to anybody that we have been experiencing this tremendous growth and it's because the economy came back and there was a lot of pent up demand for people to come to our area to move here and they move here for all the same reasons that most of us did during this year we're going to be starting a project to actually replace lido it's one of the little bridges that's been there for many many years and is just really ready for an upgrade we're going to include a multi use recreational trail along there so it'll be a lot less scary walking across when when you want to walk out to see an arm it's just a little picture of our planning department at work some ground breaking and you know that is probably one of the busiest departments in the city right now with just all of the things happening along with the added growth we're also working on a transportation master plan and i know a lot of you will be really happy to hear that because they think sometimes there's the perception that the city commission is not thinking in terms of transportation with all of this growth going on but i can assure you it is something that we are looking at and working on all the time to try to come up with better ways for everybody to get around the city this is a depiction of some of the places where there's going to be or possibly will be round abouts on u s forty one and the idea is to create sort of an urban thoroughfare theirs that is not just this sewer pipe of cars running down from you know south sarasota to to university to make it you know it to kind of slow the traffic down allow for some connectivity between the bayfront and the rest of the city and make this make this a much more appealing roadway and i get a lot of i get a lot of people who say why are you doing so many  roundabouts there are you know they're terrible they're awful but actually the engineers at d o t it's the florida department of transportation have determined that when you're going to work on an intersection that the roundabout is the preferred method over a stop live aid or a far four way stop because what it does is it makes it easier for pedestrians to cross it a skeptic out there give give the roundabouts a chance and i think you my find once you know everybody kind of learns to navigate them that you'll be glad that it was something that that  the transportation planning decided to do this year the roundabouts that are being worked on right now actually will be at tenth street and fourteenth street on forty one so there are won't take all that long and that the end result will be worth it to another location that it is likely to have a roundabout is at gulfstream and forty one and the hope there is that the traffic coming off the barrier islands will be expedited by having this system put in into place there and again help create the connectivity that is really needed between the bayfront with all of the things going in and such is the view that just opened the new quade property that will be built  north of them and just north of that the new bayfront twenty twenty project we're also looking at doing something chew for the road and this is going to be counterintuitive to a lot of people buy between three zero one and forty one and then between just orange and three and forty one we're looking to narrow fruit again create connectivity between the rosemary district and the downtown and make that road more a more urban thoroughfare as well so that it can encourage walkability and all of the things that you'd want to see and a really walkable city this is one of the alternatives that we are looking at narrowing it to two lanes and before you panic it really does work and there is an extra apron on the side so that if there needs to be evacuation or if a fire truck needs to get around they'll be able to do that so the engineers have done the math and done them the modeling of how this will work and actually it will be  faster than what it is now with the stoplights we started last year actually the downtown circulator called i ride that spin very popular the the ridership has  increased every month and it's just it is free you can you can call them i think they're still working on an app that you can do on your phone or you can just flag them down on the street and all that we ask is you give a little tip to the drivers because they don't get paid so they're only form of income is is the tips so if you haven't tried that try taking it one day it's a really is where the docking areas would be and how to get this up and running so we're very excited and hopeful that this also will create another way to get on the islands and back to the mainland without tying up  bridge where we're looking at a bike share program that's just kind of in the formative stages to see if that will work again another option for getting around the city november there's going to be a referendum on the november ballot regarding funding for the legacy trail and if you haven't taken the legacy trail you should try it were the i think the idea is that it will take us all the way from venice and south counting up through downtown sarasota and eventually beyond this is what's also coming  of some autonomous cars will be on our road sooner than we think and so that's one of the things in terms of our transportation master plan that we're looking at to make sure that we're set up for being able to handle those so picture of downtown sarasota and actually what an ideal street scene is the ideal walk urban environment where you have you have the retail or restaurant on one side room for pedestrians to walk in the middle and as you can see street trees right along the street to act as a buffer between the cars and so everywhere that we can make that happen that would be our ideal this is a depiction of forty one looking north and that big vacant lot that you see there on the left is what was the sarasota quake it was for those of you who moved here it was  like a restaurant retail a little area that was there for years and before the recession it was torn down and it's been sitting vacant all this time so a new project is coming in there it's not going to be all condos there will be some kind of but the developer of this is going to be creating a downtown kind of atmosphere with retail and access to the water so that people can go there for you know go to a restaurant go to a shop and walk around the waterfront so it won't be just condos sitting there blocking everybody's access to the waterfront so i think it's going to be a really exciting project this is part of the community planning that goes on when we're looking at projects many or most of them especially the very large projects are subject to public hearing there are two munity workshops that the community can come in and weigh in on what's you know what's happening in the community and what's being built you should  sign up for one of the newsletters that come out from the city so you can be notified of things that are going on in case you'd like to weigh in on on what's happening believe it or not we have over one hundred special events every year we had a really large woman some solidarity march that's another political rally our twenty seventeen christmas parade and i didn't have marathons so again if you aren't getting our e mails about what's going on check the city website to and to find out what's happening in the city because you you want to be able to take part in some of these events just a few more scenes we've got that the lower left there that's the lights from the lighted boat parade the farmer's market every saturday morning in downtown sarasota on lemmon the upper right hand corner is the splash pad that we currently have in island park right off downtown and the lower right hand corner that's the van ways al friday nights for friday festering the summer public art is something else that we're interested in the community and one of our our goals is for all of these roundabouts that were built that we're installing that we want to have some kind of public art in those roundabouts we actually go along with the theme of the city as being an arts community and having a lot of public art on display one of the things being considered is not god oh no this is going to happen any time soon was even a possibility a projection are in the community we've adopted a green building technology a sustainability plan for the city and we have actually a sustainability manager that we're making sure that what the city does is  done in an environmentally friendly way and any new growth is done with considering the environment that's our climate adaptation plan that we've worked on so you can go to sarasota green city dot com if you'd like more information about what we're doing affordable housing has been an issue and i know people think we are working on that we we  really are working on trying to find ways to create affordable housing in the city other initiatives the size the climate adaptation a parks master plan and  possibly a renovation to bobby jones golf course are at a really big project this year is the development of the bay front right around van ways all performing arts center about forty two acres that are owned by the city right on the waterfront and as you can see from this picture most of it is devoted to a parking lot it's not the best use for a beautiful waterfront property like that so a group called bayfront twenty twentieth's been working on this for a few years to come up with what the community is looking for there and now they have hired they've transitioned into a group called the bay sarasota and have hired a designer to actually hopefully present the city commission with a concept for what we could do there by the by this summer so if you have any comments or at sarasota f l dot gov and you can always sign up for the city news at sarasota gov dot com to get a weekly update on what's happening in the city and you can also go to our web site get involved find out what's going on in our great community so i hope you enjoyed that update on what's going on in the city and what we've done in the past year if you want more