Help create an exciting area -- and protect the Celery Fields

Do you have thoughful ideas for the citizens' public lands near the Celery Fields?

The Fresh Start Initiative wants to hear from folks with the vision to see that sensible, creative planning can produce a uniquely vibrant urban/rural destination -- connecting the open spaces of the Celery Fields with the commerce and fun of the Packinghouse Area.

Where else can you find a 400-acre natural preserve within walking distance of cafes, shops, and markets, thanks to an I-75 underpass that connects a burgeoning urban core with wildlife, wetlands, and recreational opportunities?

Three publicly owned parcels form the intersection at Apex Rd. and Palmer Boulevard, just east of the highway and just west of the Celery Fields. The County has decided to sell parcel #3. For parcels #1 and #2, it's given Fresh Start six months to invite the community to come forward with ideas, proposals, outside-the-box thinking to achieve a more integrated approach to the possibilities in this area, the anteroom to East Sarasota County.

One idea for lands near the Celery Fields has already been noted in the Herald Tribune -- a visionary center where people could experience the natural and historical past through the potent new possibilities of virtual and augmented reality.

Fresh Start's search for viable ideas is open to all. We contend that community consideration of the relationships among neighboring public lands will yield a greater good than making random land use decisions in piecemeal isolation.

The effort here is to identify options that respect the inherent qualities of our public lands and integrate them with compatible, interesting, and economically stimulating uses in the surrounding area.

We are preparing community workshops in late March. If you have an idea or proposal please get in touch (see below). Fresh Start's role is to simply to facilitate these meetings. The community itself will choose the options it prefers, and we will bring them to the County Commission.

If you have some ideas to share, this is to let you know that Fresh Start is now gathering proposals. Please bear in mind that a basic proposal needs to specify at least a rough idea of land dimensions, the kinds and sizes of structures, the envisioned purpose, and ideas about funding. Considerations of impacts and planning will take into account

• impacts on traffic on Palmer Boulevard and Apex Road;
• compatibility with surrounding assets: the Celery Fields, Packinghouse area, homes and schools;
• economic enhancement: employment, raising land values, etc.

Fresh Start is now gathering proposals. If you have an idea you would like the community to consider, we need to receive your proposal no later than March 1. Please send to FreshStartSarasota@gmail.com.

We look forward to hearing from you.

More about Fresh Start:

• Letter to the Editor 11.18.17
• Fresh Start's Letter to the Board of Sarasota County Commissioners
• Sarasota News Leader Story
• Sarasota at the Crossroads

Letter to Sarasota's Tourist Development Council (TDC)

Update: Sarasota County has set aside a full day -- Aug. 23 -- to hear a developer's proposal to build an industrial construction/demolition waste plant near a treasured Preserve, Bird Sanctuary, recreational area, and the Sarasota Audubon Nature Center.

To All Members of the Sarasota County Tourist Development Council:

In advance of your June 22 meeting, please consider a crucial decision facing a burgeoning tourist opportunity near the I-75 and Fruitville Rd. area.

The County has an extraordinary success story in its efforts to build a regional stormwater facility at the Celery Fields. It protects property, Phillippi Creek, and Roberts Bay, while giving rise to a natural bird sanctuary, Preserve, and passive recreation area. As this ecosystem has evolved, the Celery Fields has gained recognition regionally, nationally, and internationally.

At the June 1 Planning Commission hearing, a proposal to build a 16-acre waste processing plant adjacent to this area brought out hundreds of residents opposed to this project -- including some who testified of learning about the Celery Fields from national birding magazines, websites, and other media. The PC voted unanimously to deny the proposal.

The Audubon Nature Center has only been in operation at the Preserve a short time, but its first report speaks of strong growth, widespread interest, and many forms of local recreation as well as broad recognition.

Besides the fabulous natural amenity, and in part because of it, communities are flourishing to the east of the the Celery Fields. East Palmer Blvd. will soon have over 2000 homes. There were 52 homes there in 1992, when the underlying land use of the Quad properties at Apex and Palmer was last updated. The 33 acres at the intersection of Apex and Palmer where a developer wishes to build a waste plant are public lands that deserve reconsideration given the dramatic changes in the last 25 years. Changes that include the development of clean small businesses in the Industrial Parks, a public school, and close by, through the I-75 underpass on Palmer, a growing commercial area: the Packinghouse District.

A giant open-air waste processing operation situated at the intersection of Apex and Palmer would have multi-layered adverse impacts on this area -- to the residential, commercial, and tourist facilities. It could seriously damage the promise and vision of the Fruitville Initiative, the gateway to Sarasota designed to attract hi tech businesses to a walkable, mixed use community facing on and linked to the Celery Fields. 

Polyzoides rendering of Riverwalk linking Fruitville Initiative and Celery Fields

For more context, please see this article: Sarasota at the Crossroads.

The Board of County Commissioners is currently set to address this proposed Construction Demolition Waste Plant on Aug. 23, beginning at 9 a.m. After this Thursday's meeting (June 22), your next  meeting is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 28. We ask that you make the pending decision about the Celery Fields a matter of high priority, and exercise your advisory mandate to provide clear and informed advice to the County in advance of the Aug. 23 hearing.

I would appreciate a copy of any minutes or correspondence indicating the Council's intervention in this matter, which has focused the attention of people countywide and beyond.

Respectfully,

Tom Matrullo

==

Co-Founder, Citizens for Sarasota County

Member, Bee Ridge Neighborhoods Committee

The TDC's current Board includes:

amadden@scgov.net, Angus.Rogers@sarasotaadvisory.net, Bharat.Patel@sarasotaadvisory.net, Bob.Daniels@sarasotaadvisory.net, "Charles D. Hines" <CHines@scgov.net>, Christopher.Hanks@sarasotaadvisory.net, Daniel.Bebak@sarasotaadvisory.net, JGregory.Ryan@sarasotaadvisory.net, John.Zaccari@sarasotaadvisory.net, Norman.Schimmel@sarasotaadvisory.net, Vern.Johnson@sarasotaadvisory.net, Shellie.Eddie@sarasotaadvisory.net, Terrance.Torvund@sarasotaadvisory.net, Terry.Gans@sarasotaadvisory.net

Sarasota at the Crossroads

Sometimes it takes a bad plan to recognize a good one.

The recent furor provoked by efforts to rezone and sell public lands adjacent to the Celery Fields for industrial uses is about more than Roseate Spoonbills and Purple Gallinules.

Putting a construction waste processing operation at the intersection of East Palmer Boulevard and Apex Road, as one developer proposes, would hardly be life-enhancing for the myriad creatures who thrive at this lovely open space, including thousands of Sarasotans who hike, bird, and exercise there weekly.

But there’s a more fundamental test of judgment, common sense, and communal identity at stake here as well.

Over the past two decades, while no one was paying much attention, the ingredients of a unique new area of the county have been quietly ripening. The natural heart has been the unforeseen success of a stormwater project that evolved into an 85-foot high observation mound rising from an environmental treasure that everyone seems to love -- the Celery Fields.

Just to the North lie 420 acres set aside for the Fruitville Initiative -- a mixed-use community that was conceived through the unusual collaboration of County staff, private landowners, neighborhood HOA’s and the Moule & Polyzoides architectural firm. The resulting plan is a success story ready to come alive: A civic gateway to Sarasota at the Fruitville exit that could feature a well scaled mix of homes, shops, an Audubon-themed hotel, a Sarasota history museum, even a 1.5-mile “Riverfront” along the northern watercourse of the Celery Fields.

People who have seen sketches for the Initiative wonder why, since its adoption in 2014, little has been done to make it happen. It’s a terrific asset that deserves a confident push in the right places, such as The Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, the Celery Fields are ripening into a stunning eco-tourism destination. Placing a 16-acre waste processing plant full of noise, diesel fuel, crushed concrete particles and asbestos-laden yard waste next to them is clearly not the best option.

We can thank this bad idea for galvanizing the people of Sarasota to think about better alternatives. Hundreds have turned up at rallies, neighborhood workshops, and County Commission hearings. There is a strong sense that the intersection of Apex Road and Palmer Boulevard is now a crossroads -- and so is Sarasota.

The 32 acres at that intersection known as "The Quad" form a central core. Here these promising assets connect with recently built residential communities (and Tatum Ridge Elementary School) down East Palmer, and with the Packinghouse District to the West, with its new bakeries and gyms alongside Detwiler’s Market and JR’s Old Packinghouse Cafe.

The core area doesn’t need much. East Palmer Boulevard cries out for a tree canopy. A well-shaded neighborhood market, a public garden, day care, walking paths, perhaps an eco-lodge -- with something so basic, three ripening areas will converge in a useful, walkable, publicly mindful way.

The alternative -- the industrial uses the county is now considering -- would insult the environment and the communities that love its unique features. Think of the reports reaching our visitors’ international communities -- how we turned our Observation Mound, whose unique open vista we relish, into a Industrial Debris Overlook. The economic ripple effects of this shock to our “brand” would be incalculable.

Sarasota: Define yourself. Something amazing has been gestating here for two decades. No one was looking at it until the news of selling our public lands for industrial use came to light. That uninspired proposal has sparked new public interest that could go far toward connecting the dots and bringing these promising pieces into a powerful alignment.

The potential in this alignment -- economic, civic, natural -- is still bright. It’s not too late to recognize what an original, multi-faceted place of commerce, tourism, history and neighborhood life East County has in its midst. A kind of Central Park, as many see it, for people as well as birds, bees and wildflowers.

Such recognition could spur a renaissance of the very thing that once made Sarasota County special: thoughtful consideration of place.

Tom Matrullo