"What we did have will never be the same" - This quotation is taken from a comment left on my last post. It is representative of something I am hearing from people who don't like the changes they see taking palce in the city. I would like to share some thoughts I included in an e-mail to one such person and hear your comments, because there are certain issues being raised that have to be based on misunderstanding on someone's part. Of course that could be mine.

I am hearing a lot of reference to what Sarasota used to be. One thing I know is true is that all of downtown Sarasota has been zoned to allow for 18 story buildings for more than 40 years. The fact that more of these buildings weren't built in the intervening years has much less to do with city government than it has to do with the attractiveness of those potential investments. When I studied Sarasota 4 1/2 years ago in preparation for the City Manager selection process, the predominant angst was over the stagnation of downtown and the fact that nobody was willing to invest there, and I spoke to neighborhood leaders as well as businesspeople. The Five Points property was a tall building in the past. The One Hundred Central project was formerly surface parking and a bunch of bank drive-throughs that weren't particularly attractive.

At a presentation sponsored by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects I saw an extremely enlightening (and entertaining) presentation made by a Sarasota native who had gathered photographs of downtown taken 20 years ago, a period he said had recently become a reference point for the "charm" of old Sarasota. Let me just say that it wasn't pretty, nor was anything much on the charming side. That was asphalt and concrete, which was exactly the point that native was making.

I used to come to Sarasota around that time for weekend escapes from Naples, where I lived, because there was a lot of charm here - but I don't remember any of that being downtown, that's for sure.

There is also a lot being said about the City Commission "allowing" too much downtown development. In truth it is not the city that allows development, but the United States constitution, which guarantees private property rights, which includes development rights as allowed under city codes.

Here are my questions: First, do you understand that what the City Commission did in adopting the new downtown zoning codes was lower the number of stories allowed in most of downtown? Second, if you believe less development should be allowed, would you support the use of your tax dollars to purchase development rights from private property owners, which is just about the only constitutionally-allowable mechanism to stop such development? Finally, which of the changes downtown do you see as positive?

This should be an interesting discussion!