Merchants Urge Careful Timing of Downtown Work

A few downtown business owners are urging the city to schedule construction of the and at different times.

The projects are on parallel tracks, and some in the community hope they don’t cross during construction. Both the City Commission and Downtown Improvement District committee are trying to sort out the timing.

Business owners said they don't want consumers and merchants to be inconvenienced with both projects going on at the same time.

It seems that no matter the economic climate, it’s never the right year to do construction, said Mark Kauffman of the Dowtown Improvement District. 

“You certainly don’t want to do it when the economy is bad, and you certainly don’t want to do it when the economy is recovering,” he said. “And you certainly don’t want to do it when the economy is great and people are making a good living.

“When would be the right time to do something?”

That’s what everyone is trying to answer.

The district has scheduled additional meetings to address the streetscape on Dec. 15, Jan. 3 and Jan. 10 at to go over preliminary costs, recommended improvements. It hopes to make a final recommendation to the commission on a completed product.

Meanwhile, the City Commission narrowly decided at its Monday session to stick with a request for proposal process for the State Street garage in lieu of a invitation to negotiate that was suggested by . The ITG would have put the project in greater control of a developer.

Timing of Projects

Three business owners appeared at both Monday’s City Commission meeting and Tuesday’s Downtown Improvement District meeting to tell officials to construct the State Street garage before the Main Street work starts. 

“We are asking the State Street garage be built before any change to the parking or sidewalks are considered in the downtown improvement district,” said Wendy Getchell, owner of dress shop on Main Street, to the commission.

The commission debated Monday whether to change course on the State Street garage and have the construction controlled by a developer. A key component of the invitation to negotiate would place the onus on the developer to immediately fill the storefronts at the mixed-use garage.

The commission The garage, which is lined by State Street and Lemon Avenue, would  have at least 300 parking spaces. 

Mayor Suzanne Atwell and Commissioner Shannon Snyder voted against the measure to stick with the RFP.

“People may argue, but we’re sitting with a bunch of real estate that’s been vacant for a year now,” Snyder said.

The city is also tied to the to have the garage opened by 2014. The RFP will be published in January, City Manager Robert Bartolotta said, and the process would take a year to 18 months, then another two years to build. 

Approved in December 2010, the Pineapple Square project requires the city to build the garage within four years of that date. 

The invitation to negotiate would take longer to complete and the city would have less control, yet would lessen staff time spent on the project, said Steve Stancel, chief planner for the city. Also, the city would have less control of the parking aspect of the garage, too, he added.

The city would have had to validate each detail in the proposed contracts for ITG whereas the RFP, the city dictates the details up front, said Mary Tucker, purchasing manager for the city. 

“Even if you had two or three proposals, it’s going to take longer,” she said.

Christopher Gallagher, senior designer of Jonathan Parks Architect—the firm that designed the —wrote to the commissioners that the city should follow an ITN and outlined several measures the city should dictate in the agreement.

One of the agreements would that the developer should sell the parking portion of the structure back to the city for $1 while the retail space is maintained by the developer, Gallagher wrote. 

In addition, the city has an agreement with Isaac Group Holdings 1400 State LLC that gives the company a right of first offer and right of first refusal on that parcel if the city decides to sell it, Stancel said.

That is the same developer who controls the rest of Pineapple Square. The developer was granted last year a 10-year extension on the project. Also, the organization has turnover at the top and hopes to see progress on the project soon, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.

The Palm Avenue garage was done through a RFP, and the .

Atwell questioned why in both cases the city doesn’t have a professional Realtor sale the space.

Part of it is that hiring a Realtor isn’t subject to competitive bids for services, Tucker said. Another part is weighing the pros and cons, Stancel said.

Palm Avenue garage was “a learning process …,” he said. “It does cost some to hire a professional Realtor, but if it means getting retail filled faster, it’s a smarter move.”

Streetscape

Meanwhile, the Downtown Improvement District is preparing to go into overdrive to quickly tackle so the City Commission can make a decision when or if to implement the plan to avoid running into the State Street garage construction.

Ann Jackson of says she’s had an excellent November for sales and is trying to pay on past loans at her business and doesn’t want that momentum to catch up stop. 

“We just can’t do anything if there’s another hold in our business,” she told the district.

Planners will prepare proposals that include several interchangeable options, said Chris Hice of Kimley-Horn and Associates.

Brick streets and sidewalks versus a repaved street and concrete sidewalks are one those choices, including how wide the sidewalks should be.

Another is pull-in parking or parallel parking, he said.

“The comments we heard ask for parallel parking and wider sidewalks,” Hice said 

“Has the public selected the plan?” DID Chairman Ernest Ritz asked. “Because nobody likes the plan.”

Instead of the Main Street construction Getchell suggested using more way finding signs on U.S. 41 to point people to downtown and computerized lighting that’s used at Five Points Park. City officials estimated the lighting would cost $3,100 per tree in the Downtown Improvement District.

“We just need to make a little bit of effort,” she said. “It doesn’t take all that much.”