Sarasota Christmas boat parade lights up Florida lagoon
The annual Holiday Boat Parade of Lights dazzled along the Sarasota Bay. This year’s parade also included a toy donation drive.
The City of Sarasota is seeking public input as it embarks on the long process of revamping Main Street, the pulsing artery of Sarasota’s downtown, for its “Main Street Complete Streets” project.
The city showed off concept designs as part of a Dec. 17 open house at Selby Library. Chief Transportation Planner Alvimarie Corales encouraged residents and stakeholders to provide as much input as possible.
“We hope to receive feedback from the community to ensure the design and vision palette represents the community’s preference to enhance Main Street as an inclusive and thriving hub of activity,” Corales said.
City officials have held public engagement sessions, canvassed downtown businesses, and offered an online survey. The feedback led to several top priorities for Main Street improvements: additional shade and lighting, better public spaces, enhanced landscaping, and additional outdoor dining and shopping.
The online survey was taken from Nov. 25 to Dec. 20. It received over 1,500 responses.
About 66 percent of survey respondents wanted to prioritize outdoor dining and shopping. The only other priority that received majority support was “lush and attractive landscaping.”
The lowest-rated priorities were parking for bicycles and other small personnel vehicles, upgrades to pavement finishes, and public art.
City planners would prioritize elements and ideas for improvement that overlap or, as Corales told the Herald-Tribune, “blend together. “
City officials see a key part of the process as finding a middle ground between the wants of different downtown stakeholders and groups. Residents may want more walkability, while businesses may want more parking to compete with the likes of the University Town Center shopping district. Tourists would be inclined to spend more time and money if there were an influx of shaded shopping and dining.
“The only way you can do that is by widening the sidewalk and taking a portion of the parking,” Corales said. “Now, parking is not going to go away, but there’s a reduction in parking to strike that balance.”
The city is currently in the opening “visioning” phase, which includes community input and draft designs. Officials want to develop a solid “vision palette” for a revised Main Street before moving on to the next planning stage.
Corales expected the visioning phase of the project to wrap up in the spring.
“What you see right now are rough draft concepts, but everything is going to get solidified once that vision palette is done, and then move forward to that planning and design,” Corales said.
It will likely be several years before the city actually breaks ground on the project. Before then, planners will need to conduct transportation studies, determine economic and environmental impacts, specify construction costs, and purchase any required property or land use agreements.
Christian Casale covers local government for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Email him at ccasale@gannett.com or christiancasale@protonmail.com