Sarasota & Manatee Counties news thread

[wondermint2]

Sarasota County Solid Waste hosting public workshops to discuss upcoming changes

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/real...f955157e&ei=18

The Sarasota County Solid Waste Department is inviting community participation as they work to make changes to its collection program and assessment rates for 2025.

Services include the weekly collection of residential garbage, recycling and yard waste, operation of the residential household hazardous waste collection centers and proper disposal of materials. Solid waste services are funded through a non-ad valorem tax paid annually through the property’s tax bill.

The department is hosting several public workshops to discuss affordability and other planning in partnership with Waste Pro of Florida, Inc and FCC Environmental Services.

Public meetings are scheduled from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the following dates:

- Monday, April 15: William H. Jervey Jr. Venice Library, 300 Nokomis Ave. S., Venice.

- Tuesday, April 16: Gulf Gate Library, 7112 Curtis Ave., Sarasota.

- Thursday, April 18: Betty J. Johnson North Sarasota Library, 2801 Newtown Blvd., Sarasota.

[wondermint2]

What to know in Manatee: Beef with 211's Planned Parenthood ties, food trucks and housing

For full article:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/real...f955157e&ei=33

Manatee County is taking a deep dive into its relationship with United Way Suncoast after Manatee County Republican Executive Committee Chair April Culbreath complained about 211 hotline referrals made to Planned Parenthood.

County commissioners discussed the matter on Thursday during a land use meeting, where they also discussed plans to move forward with land development code changes that accommodate food trucks and food truck parks. Commissioners also approved a slew of zoning changes that could lead to more development, particularly in the Parrish and Palmetto area.

[wondermint2]

Top 10 concerts this week in Sarasota, Bradenton, Anna Maria Island, Englewood

For full article:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news...od/ar-BB1l7mnV

As we fully enter April and its lengthy local events lineup this week, and as the spring/summer concert season starts, it'll be another star-studded roster of musicians visiting the Sarasota area. We have multiple Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees in town this weekend, as a double-bill of hip-hop pioneers plays the second of two local shows Friday and a founding member of one of the most famous bands of all time performs a solo show Saturday.

We'll also have multiple national names in country music and Blues Music Award-winning acts in town. And while touring musicians comprise all this week's concert picks, some have ties to Sarasota-Manatee, including a Grammy-nominated bluegrass musician who was born in Sarasota and a former Bradenton resident who recently appeared on a Grammy-winning album. Here are this week's highlights. Event details are subject to change.

[wondermint2]

A New Mixed-Use Development Is Headed to North Orange Avenue and Fourth Street (Photos)

Gillespie Park is slated for new retail, condos and townhomes.

For full article and photos:

https://www.sarasotamagazine.com/hom...ent-orange-one

Area condos and townhomes may have entered the buyer’s market zone, according to the latest real estate data, but more are in the pipeline because the demand for what’s new continues to persist. Add that to the oldest real estate rule in the book—location, location, location—and it makes sense why projects like Orange One, pictured above, are moving forward.

“The reason existing condos are slowing in the market is because this year there are new engineering guidelines that soon go into effect and all those costs will be borne by residents. But new construction is in huge demand,” says Frank Lambert, of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty, who’s representing Orange One’s listings.

Orange One will be located in Gillespie Park, just east of the Rosemary District, on the corner of North Orange Avenue and Fourth Street. It will be mixed-use, with 30 units.

What’s there now is a collection of six small wood-frame structures previously owned by the Brothers of Holy Cross Inc. for staff housing. They sold back in 2022 for $3,325,000.

According to the county appraiser’s website, the structures range from 46 to 100 years old, but none are designated historic. Behind a fence thick with jasmine vines, they’re hard to spot.

Orange One will not be.

The 1.4-acre site will soon be prepped to make way for 10 three-story condominium residences atop 10 retail condominiums, plus another 10 three-story townhouses along Fourth Street.

Most of the retail spaces, located on the first floor, will span 799 square feet and front onto North Orange Avenue, across from Citrus Square. (One of them will be smaller, at 522 square feet.) They’ll be available in three different floor plans, and buyers will be able to finish them to their specific needs at their own expense. The intention is to attract non-restaurant-type businesses since the space won’t allow for associated needs like dumpsters and loading. Retail spaces are listed for roughly $400,000.

[wondermint2]

More affordable housing is coming to Newtown

The City Commission approved zoning text amendments to clear the way for Sarasota Housing Authority to build up to 770 units.

For full article:

https://www.yourobserver.com/news/20...using-newtown/

With plans to add as many as 770 multifamily residential units to the city’s low-income and affordable housing stock, the Sarasota Housing Authority on Monday received City Commission approval of zoning text amendments that will allow high-density development on two sites in Newtown.

The SHA requested two zoning text amendments that would allow it to develop property it owns at 1442 and 1456 22nd St. and, in the future, develop the Bertha Mitchell public housing complex into high-density public and affordable housing.

Specific to the two properties, which total 14.65 acres, the SHA requested to change the future land use map classifications from Multiple Family-Medium Density to Multiple Family-High Density, which will allow it to increase density from 25 dwelling units per acre to 50 dwelling units per acre. The two properties, separated by several city blocks, are the last two that it owns in the Sarasota city limits.

On the eventual Bertha Mitchell redevelopment, SHA consultant Joel Freedman told commissioners, “That’s the last hurrah.”

In conjunction with those changes, the SHA sought to amend the Housing Authority Overlay District to include the higher density zoning and to expand it to the smaller site on 22nd Street.

In a reversal of the Planning Board’s recommendation to deny the changes on the 22nd Street property, the City Commission unanimously approved the change that will allow the SHA to build Central Gardens, a 39-unit, four-story apartment building across Central Avenue from its Janie’s Garden apartments.

[wondermint2]

Partnership supports new shelter for homeless teens

A $500,000 gift match challenge helps accelerate progress on a new Safe Children Coalition shelter.

For full article:

https://www.yourobserver.com/news/20...omeless-teens/

[wondermint2]

Toll Brothers joins Lakewood Ranch to market new Monterey village

Lakewood Ranch continues to expand its holdings as builders want to capitalize on the brand.

For full article:

https://www.yourobserver.com/news/20...anch-monterey/

It looks like Lakewood Ranch, and even smells like Lakewood Ranch with all that fresh air and mowed grass.

So it must be Lakewood Ranch.

Unless it isn't.

That was the dilemma facing Toll Brothers after it bought a strip of property along Fruitville Road, east of its intersection with Lorraine Road.

Toll Brothers had great success with The Isles on University Parkway in Lakewood Ranch. The executives immediately saw the power of being in Lakewood Ranch in terms of drawing power.

That No.1-selling, multigenerational, master-planned community in the U.S. label is worth its weight in gold. Those executives already found it to be true at The Isles.

The problem was that this planned community, now called Monterey at Lakewood Ranch, wasn't really in Lakewood Ranch, at least not part of what Schroeder-Manatee Ranch calls its 31,000-acre Lakewood Ranch.

How do you get around it?

Toll Brothers paid for the right to be "annexed" by Lakewood Ranch, as much as you can be annexed by an unincorporated area. Then again, when a community puts in three decades of work to build its reputation, it should have the right to protect its name.

Rex Jensen, SMR's CEO and president, explained it all well in a 2019 interview. Jensen said that Lakewood Ranch's success is tied to being not just neighborhoods filled with houses.

“When you buy a home here, you’re not just buying a house," Jensen told Mark Gordon of the Business Observer. "You’re buying into a very active, engaging lifestyle.

"Some real estate developments are “projects,” not “communities,” he said. “They don’t have schools. They don’t have churches. They don’t have parks inside them. They don’t have employment opportunities. To me, that’s the difference between a square and cube.”

[wondermint2]

2024 US Rowing Olympic Team Trials hit Benderson Park this week

For full article:

https://www.yourobserver.com/news/20...als-benderson/

The United States' top rowers have been training for years to reach the 2024 Paris Olympics.

This week, a handful of them will find out whether their hard work will pay off, or be for nothing.

The 2024 U.S. Rowing Olympic and Paralympic Team Trials will be held Thursday through Sunday at Nathan Benderson Park, with racing tentatively scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. each day. More than 100 athletes in 73 boats are scheduled to race in the trials.

At a press conference Wednesday morning at the park's finish tower, Nathan Benderson Park Conservancy COO Bruce Patneaude, Sarasota County Commissioner Ron Cutsinger and members of the U.S. rowing program ushered in the event, with all involved excited for what the event means for the sport and for the area.

The trials are free for spectators to attend. They will also be available to stream on Peacock, NBC.com and NBCSports.com on Saturday and Sunday. Heat sheets and results will be available on HereNow.com. For more information, visit USRowing.com or NathanBendersonPark.org.

[wondermint2]

Englewood Democrat Tony Dunbar files to run for a State House seat in Charlotte and Sarasota counties

For full article:

https://www.wmnf.org/englewood-democ...sota-counties/

Englewood Democrat Tony Dunbar opened an account to run in House District 75 in Charlotte and Sarasota counties. That seat will be open because House Majority Leader Michael Grant, R-Port Charlotte, faces term limits. Also in the race is Republican Danny Nix Jr.

[wondermint2]

Opinion - Siesta Key traffic is an accident waiting to happen

Opinion by Carrie Seidman

For full column:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/si...en/ar-BB1l6W0U

It was the height of spring break and traffic on Siesta Key’s Higel Avenue, the prime route from the mainland to the beach, was nonstop. And not just vehicle traffic: A steady stream of both seasoned and newbie cyclists, walkers schlepping beach paraphernalia on their backs and Amish on three-wheeled “tricycles” pulling infants in unprotected wagons streamed south on the sidewalk and bike lane that run down one side of the thoroughfare.

That is until they encountered, in the 4000 block, as many as a dozen vehicles whose owners were working construction on two adjacent luxury homes across the street, parked so as to entirely block not only the pedestrian and cycling lanes, but a bus stop as well. The travelers had no choice but to enter the traffic lane and maneuver around the vehicles in order to continue on their way.

Janice and Mark Harper, who live outside Toronto but have been visiting Sarasota seasonally for decades, have traversed that route at least twice a week on bike or on foot for more than 40 years, traveling from the Southgate home near the corner of Osprey Avenue and Siesta Drive that has been in Mark’s family since 1966. They first noticed the blockage back in January, assuming it was a temporary aberration – after all, the area is posted with signs that read: “No parking or obstructing right of way.”

But as days passed, the number of people continued to rise and the trucks remained. They felt they were observing an accident just waiting to happen.

“These trucks are blocking both the pedestrian sidewalk and the cycle route and forcing people into fast-moving traffic,” Janice Harper said. “Most of Sarasota is incredibly dangerous for cyclists – at least on Siesta they’ve made an attempt to make it safer by painting a bike path. But if it’s then covered by trucks, it’s a moot point.”

The danger wasn’t a hypothetical to the Harpers. In 2018, Janice’s brother-in-law was thrown 20 feet in the air and over a fence after being struck while cycling on Siesta Key’s Midnight Pass, by a young man cited for “careless driving.” He has never been able to work again due to a traumatic brain injury.

But what put Mark Harper “over the edge” was watching a near-miss as a mother pushed her baby in a stroller into the traffic – after all, his visiting daughter had pushed their granddaughter in a stroller down the same route just weeks before. That’s when Janice decided to call the appropriate authorities to get the vehicles cited and removed.

Only it wasn’t quite that easy.

Janice initially called the transportation department at the city of Sarasota, where she was put on hold for 25 minutes before being told that Sarasota County was the responsible entity, and she should call the non-emergency line for the sheriff’s office. That prompted a runaround from one department to another – development services, building and planning, permitting, code enforcement – with no one seemingly able to address her concern.

Eventually Janice gave up and called 911. They said the situation didn’t qualify as an emergency but, “We’ll get a car out if we can.”