Update: City Not To Pursue Timeliness Issue on Goodwill Appeal

This article has been updated to reflect the city's change in stance.

A miscommunication by the city to an appelant of a proposed Goodwill Industries Manasota super store has caused the city to back down from an argument of dismissing the appeal on timeliness.

City Attorney Robert Fournier had discovered the City Auditor and Clerk's Office had mistakenly told Robert Casella, who filed a petition in Circuit Court against the city and the property owner of the proposed store, that a resolution that the city commission wouldn't heal an appeal had yet to be signed by Mayor Suzanne Atwell.

But it turns out the resolution was signed five days before the Auditor and Clerk's office communicated with Casella, Fournier said.

"I think they honestly didn't know," Fournier said. "... I don't feel right about taking postion of untimely now."

Fournier said he learned of this exchange after his comments to the city commission Monday night.

Judge Lee Haworth also noted the descrepencies between dates of filing with the clerk's office and when the petition was filed. To appeal the commission's decision, Casella only had 30 days to do some from the time the resolution signed by the mayor and filed in the city's Auditor and Clerk's office.

It is possible, Fournier mentioned, that the land owner named in the same suit, James Bridges Florida Land Trust, could maintain the timeliness argument.

Bridges told Patch he just found out about the situation a few hours ago.

"I really don't know how to answer that," Bridges told Patch when asked what his stance was on the timeliness argument.

Casella of Citizens for a Responsible North Trail Development filed the appeal Feb. 27 wanting the Circuit Court to hear arguments that the proposed Goodwill Manasota super store is in the incorrect zoning and the Sarasota Planning Commission erred in approving the store to move on to the next round of approvals.

City attorney Robert Fournier had originally argued Monday at a city commission meeting that the appeal should be denied because the appellant used the wrong date to base a deadline to file the appeal. 

However, Fournier's office has since apologized and said it will not challenge the timeliness of the appeal, according to a letter sent from his office to Casella.

Casella's argument was that the store had impromper zoning because he perceived there would be enough truck traffic and storage space to make the retail space a distribution center and felt that intersection improvements needed to be made. Goodwill will provide an extra turn lane for that area.

, will be relocated to 5100 N. Tamiami Trail, scheduled for a January 2013 opening and has the same zoning  has.

Lu Anne Kirschner, director of communications for Goodwill Industries Manasota, said regardless of the decision, Goodwill wouldn't be affected.

"We're moving full speed ahead and are not affected at this point with going forward with construction," she said. "The only person who would be really impacted would be the developer."

The group hopes the court would determine if the information on the Petition is sufficient to warrant an inquiry into the validity of the site plan approval under the zoning code, according to an e-mail sent to Patch by the group's attorney Paige McMichael.

If the court finds sufficient evidence, the Sarasota Planning Board and Goodwill Manasota would have to present their arguments in oral testimony, McMichael wrote.