Action: Preserve Payne Park

PRESERVE PAYNE PARK

Come to the City of Sarasota Commission meeting, City Hall, 1565 First Street, Monday, May 20th 6:00 p.m. (arrive early if you can – you may need to be there by 5:00 to get a seat).  We want to fill city hall with park supporters. The Orchestra’s plan to hijack seven acres of our public park in order to build the largest structure in the City is the only item on the agenda. If you wish to speak, sign a speakers' card at the hall entrance. You are allowed three minutes. Please wear YELLOW!  

Contact Us

Write the Sarasota City Commission:  commissioners@sarasotafl.gov 

Sign our petition  

Visit our Website  

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The Sarasota Orchestra is petitioning the City to give away seven acres of our community park to develop a 2,500-seat music hall. This amounts to over five football fields of concrete and asphalt covering precious greenspace. Under their plan, a duck pond, now teaming with life, would be paved over to add “convenience parking” for the Orchestra’s employees and big donors. This is simply wrong.

Payne Park, a 40-acre community park centrally-located in downtown Sarasota (on Adams Lane off  US 301), was donated to the city with the stipulation that it always be a public park. The Payne family explicitly forbade any other use of this land when they presented  “the greatest gift Sarasota has ever received” to the citizens. 

The City of Sarasota reopened the former ballpark-site as Payne Park on October 6, 2007, as a public park space partially funded by a funded by a county-wide penny surtax. After a $20 million dollar investment of our tax dollars, the park as it stands today features a tennis center, a skateboard park, Frisbee golf course, tracks for walking and riding bikes, three ponds, a circus playground, a cafe, numerous shade trees, and established wildlife habitat.  

Help us save this park land from development! The Manatee Sierra Club and the Sarasota Audubon Society support our efforts to preserve one of the rare park natural environments that remain in downtown Sarasota. You don’t need a ticket to enjoy Payne Park. It is free!

Once it is gone…. It’s gone!  Please take action today!

Three perspectives on the public realm

1. A consultant's recommendation to put an 80,000-square-foot industrial facility on public land a short walk from the Celery Fields will go to the Board of County Commissioners for discussion on Oct. 10. If the Board sees fit, the Lambert recommendation for rezoning Quad Parcel #3 could begin the public review process soon after. For the present, the Quad parcels at Apex Road and Palmer Boulevard remain in public hands.

Paley Park, NYC

2. A distinguished city planner talks about why she believes in the human importance of planning successful public spaces. "Communities can tell whether or not you understand their neighborhood," says Amanda Burden. "It's not something you can just fake."

3. Two long time citizen advocates urge a NO vote on a county-initiated amendment on the November ballot that would make it much more difficult in the future for voters to gather enough signatures to place a citizen-initiated Charter amendment on the ballot.

Please share this with your networks - our public lands, public spaces, and public voices are now at risk.

Public space can shape the soul of a city

Amanda Burden, a famed city planner who contributed to Manhattan's High Line, talks about the value and importance of public spaces as well as the happiness bestowed by them.

"Public spaces have power," says Burden. "A successful city is like a fabulous party -- people stay because they are having a great time."

The trick, she notes, is to get outside the compulsion of the developer profit motive, and make the most of opportunities for the common good.

"Communities can tell whether or not you understand their neighborhood," she says. "It's not something you can just fake."

To make successful public spaces, more than professional skills are necessary.

"You don't tap into your design expertise," says Burden. "You tap into your humanity."