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PROVOCATIONS
January 2004

"Good Old Urbanism - part 3 - Sarasota, FL"

by Susan Bilenker

Continuing our exploration of examples of successful "old urbanism," existing communities that already manifest many of the principles of the New Urbanism.

Sarasota, a lush and quirky small city on Florida's Gulf Coast, is trying to use principles of New Urbanism to weave its various charming "old urbanism" districts into a cohesive live-work-culture-nature experience.

Blessed with a gorgeous location, nestled alongside the mid-Gulf Coast, an hour south of Tampa, protected by even more gorgeous barrier islands--here called "keys"--including Longboat Key, Lido Key, St Armands Key, Bird Key and Siesta Key--Sarasota is also the arts and culture capital of Florida.

In its very walkable and compact downtown, you'll find theatres, a beautiful opera house, a soaring modern library, a purple-painted waterfront concert hall, a municipal auditorium, upscale shops and restaurants, and many art galleries. A few blocks away, across the only scenic section of Tamiami Trail (Hwy 41), is the magnificent Sarasota Bayfront, lined each winter season with modern sculptures, and featuring a lovely tree-shaded walking path and park, impressive yachts, and two restaurants, one upscale and one of the sea-shack variety..

Several blocks south of Main Street, separated by a non-descript, pedestrian-indifferent office-building-zone, there is a charming antiques district along Pineapple and Orange Avenues, with restaurants and boutiques, an art movie house, and a neighborhood of artist studios offering monthly Friday night studio/gallery strolls.

Crossing Tamiami Trail and south a few blocks more, is the tiny retail crossroads called Southside Village, surrounded on one side by a lush neighborhood of old residental streets and on the other by the expansive Sarasota Memorial Hospital Center. Southside Village has been undergoing "upscaling" in recent years, and it's a delightful mix of lux gift shops, gourmet markets, restaurants featuring international cuisines, as well as cozy neighborhood bar-restaurants, bakery-cafes, hair salons and boutiques.

A few winding miles down the road is Siesta Drive, which crosses Sarasota Bay and winds through Siesta Key, a tropical paradise enlivened by Ocean Boulevard with its funky shops and restaurants, leading to an exquisite wide beach composed of soft, powdery white sand that is 99% crystal. Perfect for walking, swimming, sunning, parasailing, and sunset-watching and applauding, which is a nightly tradition on Siesta.

Heading northwest from downtown Sarasota, over a couple of short bridges, you enter the world-famous St Armands Circle retail district. It's a "circle" of short blocks that wrap around a park on St Armands Key. There is every kind of store and restaurant, as well as Lido Beach, a long and deep expanse of not-so-soft sand with unbroken vistas across the blue-green waters of the Gulf.

Over another couple of bridges and you're driving alongside the perfect lawns and landscaping of Gulf of Mexico Drive on Longboat Key, a golf-course- and luxury-high-rise-lined gold coast community with its own long strip of wild beach towards the north end. Cross another bridge and you're on lovely Anna Maria, a key of old houses and cute shops just north of Longboat and west of Bradenton.

All these bridges and keys, taken along with downtown proper, make Sarasota a diverting place to live. Within a few miles of any one spot is another with different views and amenities.

The urban design challenge for Sarasota is to connect at least a few of the downtown pedestrian districts with one another, so as to encourage walking and biking among them. Each district is charming, but one has to get into the car, drive, and find another parking space, in order to go from one to the other.

Another problem for retail and dining establishments in the area is the seasonality of their customers. It creates the odd phenomenon of a downtown filled with high rise luxury condominium apartment buildings and plenty of retail, yet lacking significant pedestrian street life. It's a very relaxing downtown compared to most, but not so healthy for the businesses trying to make a living there.

A step in the direction of trying to energize downtown Sarasota is the high-rise residential/retail complex, currently under construction, which will be anchored by a big Whole Foods supermarket. Local planners and the developer hope it will attract more full-time residents who want to enjoy the complete urban experience of walking--not only to culture and dining--but also to shop for basic everyday needs.

Looking beyond the downtown core, Sarasota is a city of neighborhoods characterized by houses of many design styles and eras, most of which are serviced by convenient local shopping plazas. The commercial spine that links all the Gulf Coast cities in this area is Tamiami Trail (Hwy 41), a six-lane shopping strip with every chain store and restaurant and car dealership one could ever need (or not need!). It's convenient and also frazzling at times. Luckily there are ways to get many of one's errands done while mostly bypassing or simply crossing it at critical spots.

What's amazing about this city is that, from moment to moment, you can choose to be in a sophisticated urban downtown, or walking a soul-expanding white powder beach and staring out into the vast emptiness of the gulf, or sailing your boat on the bay, or enjoying a quiet life in a nice little house with citrus trees in your backyard, or taking advantage of theater and restaurants, all within a few minutes drive of wherever you started.

Residential real estate values are predictably keeping up with these unique qualities, and they'e apparently rising about 15% per year. For baby boomers thinking about where to be next, either soon or in a few years when they retire or the last kid goes off to college, Sarasota has appeal. It's diverse in age--lots of young and middle-aged families, year round retirees, snowbirds, and singles of all ages. And it has an energy you can tap into if you're looking for things to do. It's also exceedingly laid back, requiring not much of anything if you want to kick back and enjoy gazing at seagulls and pelicans.

As with much of America these days, something is always under construction in Sarasota, and usually it's as big as the zoning will allow, and as high-priced as the market will bear. The days of a $20,000 beach cottage on Siesta Key are long-gone. But with some careful sleuthing, there are still good values to be found here, especially in older neighborhoods undergoing upgrading.

The City of Sarasota is in the process of integrating its newly adopted Downtown Master Plan--crafted with urban planning firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company--with its existing zoning codes, which will hopefully have the eventual effect of requiring new development to be consistent with principles of the New Urbanism. One question is whether the current policy of taking a reactive stance to new development projects, rather than proactively seeking desirable projects, will most effectively take the city where it wants to go.

One other convenient feature of Sarasota is its airport: small, modern, and underutilized. It's only a 15 to 20 minute drive to the airport from downtown Sarasota, and a short 2 1/2 hour flight to Newark Airport via Continental Airlines (one flight per day). Many travelers choose to fly into Tampa and take the 1 1/4 drive to Sarasota. The flight's cheaper, on airlines such as Jet Blue, which fly from JFK Airport in New York. But it's so easy and low key to arrive right in Sarasota, that for me it makes living here even more appealing. As soon as you're off the plane, you're "home."

(Where do you see yourself spending the next phase of your life? Staying put? Or venturing to a new place? If you've found any that are particularly appealing, let me know, for future chapters of "Good Old Urbanism." Email to Susan Bilenker at info@design-site.net. Thanks.)

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Susan Bilenker is Publisher of DesignSite. She spent many years involved with various aspects of architectural practice and most enjoys a daily life that maximizes walking and minimizes driving.

More about Sarasota . . .

Amy A. Elder, Sarasota, 2003

Patricia Ringling Buck, et al, A History of Visual Art in Sarasota, 2003

Bonnie Wilpon, Bonnie Wildon, Sarasota-Bradenton, FL, 1999

Editors of Twin Lights, Sarasota, Florida: A Photographic Portrait, 2000

Chelle Koster Walton, Karen T. Bartlett (photographer), The Sarasota, Sanibel Island and Naples Book: A Complete Guide, 2001

John Howey, The Sarasota School of Architecture 1941-1966

Steve Rabow, Steve Rabow's Guide: Sarasota, Bradenton and Venice, 2000

Michael Brown, Streetwise Sarasota

Kevin C. Myers (preface), Buy It, Fix It, Sell It: Profit, 2003 (not specifically about Sarasota, but it's a thought . . .)

William Bronchick, Robert Dahlstrom, Flipping Properties: Generate Instant Cash Profits in Real Estate, 2001 (not specifically about Sarasota, but it comes to mind here . . .)

PROVOCATIONS is an online journal of architecture and ideas.

Editor: Susan Bilenker, info@design-site.net.
Publisher: Susan Bilenker Communications for DesignSite™ .
Opinions expressed by authors published in Provocations are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Provocations, DesignSite, or Susan Bilenker Communications.

last update: 1/12/04