After the Nov. 2 Rally for the Celery Fields

A question:

What town, what community would receive the gift of an extraordinary water management system that not only protects our homes from floods, but also provides a fertile environment for birds, and a pristine open space beloved by people for its tranquil beauty -- what community would receive this inspired gift, and then direct public planners to put heavy industry right next to it?

We know the answer: The people elected as custodians of Sarasota County have never shown they have a clue about the evolving genius of the Celery Fields.

Board of Sarasota County Commissioners

In January it will be three years since James Gabbert brought his waste processing proposal to the Church of Hope. Three years since the community came out in force to tell him and the County: NO WAY.

Now, after saying little and doing less, the Board can come back on Wednesday Nov. 6 at 1:30 pm and direct the Planning Dept. to rezone these parcels for industry, offices, or affordable housing.

There are a lot of reasons why industry is wrong here. Here are two:

First, anything like what Gabbert wanted, or like the warehouses Bob Waechter owns, or a Restaurant Depot, would involve more big trucks or car traffic. Gabbert’s rising WTF there will soon be adding 100 trucks a day to Palmer Blvd., in and out, all day long.

Second, this is a gateway. Gary Walsh and others have noted the dramatic impact that they experience when, heading west on Palmer Blvd, they come through the underpass -- the world suddenly changes. The cramped corridors west of I-75 open up, turn green, then suddenly it's wetlands, birds, a huge open space and that radiant hill. 

Gary Walsh

This landscape is telling us a story - it’s introducing us to East County, to the rural Sarasota that's ranching, nurseries and farms, but increasingly getting sold and subdivided into single-family gated communities. East Sarasota's rural life is disappearing -- although Becky Ayech and others out East are fighting to protect it, with intelligence and determination.

If we rezone this gateway to allow industrial uses, this beautiful introduction to East County could also disappear. Instead of entering a prelude to a pristine open space, we’ll find a concrete barrier of 80,000-square-foot-buildings and parking lots. Instead of a walkable central open space drawing people and nature into communion, we’ll have Gabbert’s WTF, So and So’s What the Hell, and some other guy's Vision of Mordor piling on noise and traffic, devouring the light, and despoiling our landscape's story.

On Wednesday Nov. 6, the Board can try to “split the difference” by taking parcels 1 and 4, east of Apex, out of surplus lands and designating them for passive recreation or an urban forest. Great, so long as that’s a permanent and irrevocable designation.

But it’s still not adequate. Parcels 2 and 3 west of Apex should not be rezoned for industry, or for anything except simple uses that serve the community. They are public land.

Here's the chess game we're dealing with:

If the Board orders Planning to rezone parcels for industrial use or offices, the process will take several months, and then return to the Board for a vote. At this point, a public hearing will be necessary.

Note: the Lambert Advisory report the Board paid for to justify sale to industry did not consider actual conditions - neither surrounding land uses, such as the nearby Celery Fields, nor the poor roads, nor the community's input, nor the market's trending toward residential in the area. Its spreadsheet price study is also out of date.

Here's the big thing: The public hearing for the rezoning is likely to be entirely gratuitous -- that is, there will be no applicant. The Board will simply be voting on an application originated by itself. And yet, if for example they vote to approve industrial rezoning on Parcel #2, then it's a fait accompli: Gabbert, Waechter or someone else can buy the land from the County and build, so long as it meets whichever zoning the Board has approved. 

We see what they are doing here. They are pre-approving the sale of rezoned public land to a private developer, and once that rezoning is approved, the public has no further say, no public hearing. 

That's why, if the Board votes to rezone in ways the community feels are inappropriate, it will be essential to step up when Planning brings its plans back for approval. With no specific applicant named, Bob Waechter can wait in the wings till it's a done deal. This is just one way it all can go down. Let's call it the Waechter way.

Here's the thing: We've told our elected officials all this and more repeatedly over the past 35 months. We've told them that our wildlife area will need to expand and evolve to accommodate more visitors, some who come from overseas to explore this treasure.

We need to keep saying it:  Keep these parcels for public uses. We need our public lands to remain free from an industrial zoning concocted in 1975. For our central park to fully realize its potential, our planning process must totally be free from the degradation of developer greed and backroom cronyism.

We might have to give our commissioners hell so Sarasota’s Celery Fields can remain a heaven.

Elian Rosaire

Let's do all we can protect this beautiful place, and secure a healthy future for all of Sarasota County. We can start by sweeping out those who think it’s still 1975, and bring in people of vision, spirit, integrity, and common sense. 

Think of this not as our last stand, but as the first spark of restoring human sensibility and intelligence to Sarasota County in 2020.

Have you signed the Petition?

Board rezoning and sale of public lands at the Celery Fields

Wednesday, Nov. 6

1660 Ringling Boulevard

1:30 pm

Update from Adrien Lucas

Keep Our Bayfront in Public Hands

What lies behind the drive to privatizing public land, public services, governmental discretion? The government exists precisely to look after the human polity, in all its needs, hopes and wishes -- all those values that can't be found in Profit & Loss or Mission statements of private corporations. Why are our leaders so eager to give up the very things they are supposed to be guiding and leading? 

See the statement below from a Sarasota attorney, with these questions in mind.

 =====

The Sarasota City Commission is being asked by private business interests, organized as The Bay Park Conservancy (BPC), to turn control of 53 acres of City-owned bayfront over to them.

While the plan known as The Bay has much merit, and the private sector has much to offer in fundraising and suggestions for implementing the project, it is important that control of the property remain in public hands, through our elected Sarasota City Commission.

The City Commission is being asked on February 4 to approve a Memorandum which outlines “Essential Terms” to be included in a later Agreement between the City and BPC which will come to the City Commission for approval.  The Memorandum proposes to take far too much power away from the City Commission and grant it to BPC, both explicitly and in vague summaries.



The City Commission should do the following at its February 4 meeting:

1)     Ensure that any Agreement with BPC be subject to a public hearing before it is approved by the City Commission.

2)     Require that BPC be subject to Florida’s Government in the Sunshine Law and Public Records Law.  (The Memorandum calls for BPC to be “transparent in its operations” and to have a “good, public process” but omits these specific requirements.  It also states that BPC will “maintain financial records available for review by the City” but does not address their review by members of the public).

3)     Provide that the members of the BPC Board be appointed, and subject to removal, by the City Commission.   (The Memorandum does not state who selects the Board but that its 7 to 15 members will include two non-voting representatives of the City and one non-voting representative of the County).

4)     Provide for an advisory committee to the BPC Board, appointed by the City Commission.  (The Memorandum calls for “an advisory board, where practicable” and does not say who will appoint it).

5)     Explicitly require City Commission approval for any contracts or leases for or on the property, which the Memorandum refers to as The Bay Park (Park) and maintain control over project design and construction.  (The Memorandum states that BPC “will recommend building use, tenant, lease terms, and any other relevant issues for review and approval by the City” but does not require City Commission approval.  However, it also states that BPC “will set fees for concessions, rentals, sponsorships, et al to provide annual earned revenue” and states that all concessions, licenses and permits, other than those of the Van Wezel or Orchestra, will be turned over to BPC by the City and that BPC will determine policy to “handle and manage vendors, sponsors, contractors, concessions, and all sources of earned revenue.”  The Memorandum provides that BPC “will lead design and construction of project improvements”, “BPC will develop construction standards and specifications” and project management and decision-making “will be done collaboratively in accordance with” those standards, whatever that means).

6)     Provide full City Commission control over a detailed City-funded BPC budget.  (The Memorandum proposes to guarantee City funding of BPC’s annual budget for capital, operations and maintenance “based on” a budget that is prepared and “proposed” by BPC “and as is appropriate for a signature City park.”

7)     Keep authority over naming rights for all portions of the Park as well as the Park as a whole.  (The Memorandum, in an apparent negotiated compromise, grants all naming rights to BPC, except that the “City reserves discretion to approve the recommendation of the BPC” as to naming rights “on the entire site or existing buildings.”

8)     Maintain City control over the operations and maintenance of the Park, not just until each phase is built, as proposed in the Memorandum.  If the City must pay for it, it should be able to control it.

9)     Do not grant BPC the right to create parking rules and regulations for the Park, as proposed in the Memorandum.  One example of a potential problem is the extent to which a lessee such as a restaurant should be allowed to reserve public parking for its own exclusive use.   Also, do not provide shared authority to BPC to control parking on Boulevard of the Arts west of US 41, as proposed in the Memorandum through an obligation to “collaborate” on that.

10)  Provide that the Agreement may be terminated at any time by the City Commission or BPC at any time upon certain written notice, or at least make it for a reasonably short term, rather than locking it in for 45 years as proposed, that is for a term of 15 years with “options for two fifteen-year renewals”, presumably by either the City or BPC.  If the Agreement in practice does not prove beneficial to the City, the City should not remain locked in to it.

Dan Lobeck
Attorney, Business Owner, Homeowner and Resident of the City of Sarasota and for Control Growth Now, Inc.
February 3, 2019