i marry densely your host and i'm also the executive director here at our beautiful theater and i have michelle ben take who works with us in the marketing department welcome michel thank you very much glad to be here i know you're not totally aboveboard you under the weather yes that's ok though it right i have enough energy for the day there you go well listen summer friday fest is almost back so you're ready for that i am really ready for that i realize it's it's such a great event lots of people come out we have a lot of fun lot there and it still is fun it is still fun to matter what but our first friday fest is going to be on june twenty second and it's john movement yes and that is tell is the lead singer and she draws a huge crowd  crowd up and dancing and the nice thing is you can come to friday fest you can bring your dog you can bring your grandmother your kids whatever and we have a lot of great vendors out there with food and and we have we all serve up the beer or you know we have gulf coast is a really great sponsor of ours and so it's a lot of fun and then of course the sun comes down which is spectacular it's a beautiful beautiful sunset and then july twenty seventh we're having reverend barry and the funk and then i went to i went to social one of the nearby restaurants and i heard this fantastic young girl she's from sarasota from lakewood ranch her name is a lotta and she just sings some gorgeous song so this friday fest we're going to have two groups and so during the breaks we'll be hearing a lot of singing and she's just amazing yes i did hear her i thought clip and size of the if you want to live yes and she when i was over at social she jumped up on these on these high things and in these high heels and i was just astounded you know it's like i need to be young and and because we like to do all kinds of music the next one is going to be country right yes country rebel heart they but they also do pop and rock as well so they that it's you know they kind of have something for everybody else and that's august seventeenth and so rebel heart should be a lot of fun yes and then we're going to end up in september with the dr dave band on september fourteenth yes and that's  classic southern rock and bluegrass so and i just think these festivals are a great time sometimes we have jewelry designers out there you know sometimes face painting a lot and i do there's a lot to do and it's really a great time and we've had some wonderful sponsors get a lot of motive and cold today are preventing sponsors and testing as well as b and i as our talent sponsor they've been on for a number of years and of course you know all of our media a b c seven is a huge supporter as well right so i think that is a fantastic thing it's free you come out people start arriving around four thirty that the music goes from five to nine it's just a great time and then we recently had the giving challenge here in sarasota where so many people gave so much money to zero numerous numerous five zero one c three it's special causes and our vision with the foundation was blessed to get you know a good amount of money from donors who were so special for giving us to support our education programs are our capital projects and you were involved in that too were you yes there was a lot of things that we got involved in as well and you know the giving  is so great for our community and so much on social media and how excited everybody got really great yeah and so you know i think this really gives us a fantastic platform with the giving challenge with friday involves everybody in the community and a new project that's coming up is you probably heard it started out as a front two thousand and twenty and now it's labeled the bay and we're going to have gina ford as our guest and she's the lead designer on the s the team that is is tasked with developing this beautiful bayfront project into a beautiful green and blue oasis for everybody and we'll be back in just a minute hurricane season is upon us and city of sera so to residents are urged to have an emergency plan and be prepared before the storm make sure your disaster supply kit is well stocked with water food medicines extra batteries for flashlights and portable radios first aid kit and supplies for infants children and pets electricity baby out for several days so be sure to get cash and fill your car with gas also know if you live in a flood zone and be aware of evacuation routes near issue having a plan and being prepared to help keep you and your family safe in the event of an emergency for hurricane preparedness guide and information on shelters any accusation routes go to dot com slash e welcome back to at the van ways well as i mentioned before my guest i'm so excited you know ford the lead designer with the saki firm that's working to transform the bay front into a beautiful always says around the bend waves will and hopefully a new performing arts is here with me as my guest i marry where you are welcome so gina i know you also have your own for arms so you're really busy you keep yourself very busy but can you give us a little bit about your background i know you've gotten a number of awards and any similar experiences that you can liken to this project sure thank you so much for having me i'm sorry about this project it's been fabulous working with mary and the whole van ways all crew on this masterplan so i'm a landscape architect and i specialize in  who's leading this master planning effort and so we love all things to do with really challenging complex sites like this one where there's environmental challenges and sea level rise and cultural vitality and this is such a beautiful piece of property it's a list ordinary and you know i i come here for these we've been here pretty much monthly since we were selected last fall and i spend a lot of time out on site i run the site when i can in the mornings and i come out at night to capture the sunset and i have taken so many photographs of the sky isn't it i it's just here and and western florida might not appreciate how unique it is to have a western you know that over the water  is it is really stunning i mean that's one of the things we love to do if we have a show at night people come early and we have a beautiful you know we have a beautiful terrace and you can have a glass of wine and look at the sunset and i think part of that is what we want to develop on this piece of land that it's just more than once that the van ways will this park could be used by almost anybody every day and where really blessed so we came here in the fall to interview for this project and there had already been work done to establish the community princip what this place would be and there are six or seven of them and they really focus on all dimensions of twenty different twenty twentieth's work that really got us to this place to this master plan so things like cultural vitality connectivity really overcoming some of the connectivity barriers that  can't you had three different different versions of a site plan how did you how did you lead the team into developing these three different concepts and then you've now sort of settled more on one or two of them that's right so we call ourselves  like this incredible the broad team of specialized skills so we've been designers architects landscape architects civil engineers and so when we came up with the three options we had done all this listening to the community and site surveillance and understanding the site and we went back to saki and we did these day long work sessions where we would sketch together and so all of us had different ideas that work themselves into these final three schemes that we showed to the community and it's always our dream to show the community wildly different dreams for what the place could be and then really just listen to what resonates and what doesn't and so that's what we were doing here in april and i know you had a number of public meetings so when you get these comments from the public or you also did surveys i think that how many people responded to these surveys we had close to twenty five hundred last time in april but all in all through all the process to date it's about thirty three thousand we think people have been tough process so that's really great that's you know ordinary actually save our size to get thirty three thousand people out of course we're not the van ways all of this site isn't just about the city that's right sits on the city but it's all the county we're very close to the border of another county as well and we see the school kids that are brought here for performances come we see the license the garden club it's just and the boat ramp these are all regional resources that people come from all over so that the question is how can the site better enable that life and add more dimensions so that there's even more to do when people come so they're not just coming to as they're standing the day right because we do friday fest which which are our outdoor free concerts but you know we're looking at the possible development of the site with a special outdoor venue that could be used by many people and i know we've talked as part of the process just really wanting wanting to wanting to broaden engagement with the site so that the performances that happen outside my capture a much bigger question of the community you know might enable more people to come i might enable more different kinds of performance and so  it's an exciting kind of and hansing of the existing arts and i know one of the things that this site will not be is tall condominium towers or anything like that but one of the things i think people talk about over and over is having a place to get something to eat and have a drink you know so there might be small shops and and restaurants on the site as well whether it that's right and right now in the preferred direction so we had three and we're sort of honing in on one direction and as part of it there's this idea a kind of dining district around the existing moonlit that really takes advantage of something you don't have a lot of here in sarasota which is waterfront and you do not we were just very limited it struck me to be as i'm like you always want in there's really one main restaurant and then a few small ones and then over on the other side there aren't a lot do you think that's right so we heard from the community a real concern about overcommercialization and not wanting private development here in one tower as you have set up but really wanting dining opportunities and so we're trying to figure out what's the most extraordinary mix of hopefully largely local restaurant dining opportunities and how do we fit that into this public park because i know here at the van ways well we now have a restaurant in madison's on the bay where we have people come for dinner every every night and then we have people having cocktails out on the bay front but you know i know i hear over and over again where people want to be able to come here every night yeah and enjoy something and this new park would would enable that wouldn't it yeah and and courts and fields to this kind of dining in this kind of dining district to this cultural and performing i think it's super because you know you when you go into some of the parks in europe and everything people are playing games or even  i watch these people playing in a park playing chess when it was the snow was on the ground you know and i we don't have to worry about snow here but you know there could be multiple different sporting activities couldn't there you know yet and we have also recommended in the latest plan a kind of destination play space for the kids of the region so you could imagine and you get educational for the ecology of the place but also kids come here for performance and can go outside and play for an hour before going back to it makes us sad we have the kids here and they see the show we've seen that some of them invented up eating their lunch out in the parking lot you know what i'm like that is not the way i wanted to go i wanted to be you had oracle as they are and they are going to work you know they also need a place so what are the next steps i mean you need i'm sure you need the city because the city owns and operates this facility as well as owns and operates this land and as you said there's a huge boating community that's involved what are the next steps to get this master plan endorsed so we are honing in on a single direction we're here for the course of these couple of days really showing the community the last couple of sticky issues and getting their feedback and our plan is to come back by the end of june with a real master plan so hopefully with as much fixed as we can but building a lot of flexibility for things we might not know now we are going to be a lot of detail on this master plan in some ways and the things that we feel more confident about and that we feel are pretty just have a high level of confidence will happen i think we'll have more detail in some ways there will be things we won't have a full year of but but i think any good master plan is a framework that really enables things to happen in  performing arts hall i say the orchestra hall was ready to open so it would have to be phased what it would and i think you know that orchestration of how do you build something new while letting the old be operational and how do you move those pieces on site so that things like traffic and transportation  are all still fluid those are really challenging issues so that's part of the master planning sequence as well is to think about how do we start to move pieces around on the site over time and i also know that you really want to honor the van ways will and the great history that we've had for the last almost fifty years so i know a lot of thought has been gone has been gone into that but we're sort of running out of time and we could probably sit here all day and talk about it but if people want to know more or see plans where should they go to be able to understand  where that we have a really robust website at the base or such a dot org and on there you can actually trace the whole history of the project including downloading and looking at all of the previous public presentations and material they want to see the plans absolutely and all of the press so you can really get a snapshot of what we've done so far well you know thank you i'm good so happy to have you come into my life as well so exciting if i were a baby mary and this is yeah follows this with great joy it's very exciting i really think you're part of a legacy for this community for many generations for the participation of residents and local government is very important to the well being of any community volunteer advisory boards and committees are a great opportunity for local governments to engage their citizens in the process of crafting policies and tackling issues the city of sarasota has over twenty five advisory boards and committees with numerous opportunities for our citizens to volunteer their time and expertise from parks and recreation public art to these historic preservation board many advisory boards require some experience in particular fields or professions and some only require residency in the city of sarasota for more welcome back to afghan ways so michelle and i were recently in new york city we were at the broadway league conference and the broadway really really encompasses all of the performing arts halls like ours across the country and all the producers of the shows from new york there were about eight hundred of us at this conference yes it was amazing yes and it was great and i've been going to these for thirty years because of course the major job i have in addition to everything else is to book the shows and look at new projects and so in addition to seeing shows which you know hopefully will that we will then see on the van ways a stage in the future i had meetings with agents i know you were meeting with the team from the lion king which is coming up next year so it really is a great trip not only to learn but also to experience the projects that will be having in the future absolutely it was a great conference and lots of information learned there were and because it basically focuses on the marketing of shows the producing in general management and a lot of social media and i t v and so we took our new social media director and she i think she really latched on to a lot of different things she said she learned a lot as well but one of the key wonderful things is that this conference a lot of  really famous people come and talk to us i mean in the past but midler has been there meryl streep for me was the all time favorite what was your favorite guest that poke i guess you know tina fey was you know that was a that was one that you know i thought there was a need everybody was pretty excited about yank her she was hosting saturday night live that way right and i know you know what mean girls which you know about mean girls the new broadway musical that's up for a number of tonys yes so it definitely is a lot of fun to  see them in person but you know i sort of like this i like mike birbiglia who is a comedian that i've wanted to have here at the van ways off and this object was was was a lot of data big data and i swear he made a joke about everything and i think he really got people interested you know i think so but i mean gosh there was jessie from modern family was there andrew garfield and nathan lane upsetting thing about  said he never wanted to do another musical and that just about was like an arrow to my heart but lynn manual miranda who wrote hamilton was there as well as oh gosh felicia resaw and her daughter think you know he could win a tony this year because the band's visit is one of the big musical in the but what was your favorite show that you saw i would say beautiful that was my favorite and it was just it was a great story and but it's also the music you know that's something i really love about broadway you know and this is something well i've been working on bringing that darn show here and there so you know i keep my fingers crossed but we saw a lot of shows because a lot of the producers you know were generous in giving tickets and then you have to buy but i had a chance to see the show of the season it's harry potter and the curse of child and i'll tell you it's a very hard ticket to get you have to win a lottery to be able to even buy a ticket but it's two parts and so i saw a matinee and an evening so was over six hours and there's a lot of magic in the show and it's really dramatic and they have course came and spoke to us and they even gave everybody a wand and it's the romance of that show but this production featured renee fleming who's been here several times and she sang of course will never walk alone and then i enjoyed my fair lady that they did at lincoln center because that was sort of in a thr katharine mcphee new year's eve and to film a p b s special and this was so cool to see her do this part numbers or first broadway show and she was spectacular and so i took my whole family to see hamilton i bought them tickets as a christmas present and so you know that was really special for me and then frozen was great fun yeah i saw frozen and you know i have four year old twins so that was it was a great performance they really did a great job with it and  my kids probably eventually will make it to new york or maybe see it live on stage i mean you know i want to be there when they go but we have right now we have subscriptions on sale and our broadway season of course is lion king org or call us up ninety five three three three six eight and we'll be glad to send you a brochure or you can actually download the brochure from our website and then tell us about some of star wars and e t raiders of the lost ark yes so i'm really excited about that that actually boston possible my first orchestra as it really kind of got me really involved in that as well so you know course you have flew to the end i coming back that's a class looking forward to that we also have some dance shows that's going on we have a lot of lists we have sleeping beauty we have the ballet trocadero demonic carlo where the men are on point the whole time and it's a funny show a lot of fun and then we already but as you know come and visit us at friday fest learn about the baby jack and subscribe to next year it's going to be the biggest one we've ever had and we'll see you very