STEVE REID
Editor & Publisher
sreid@lbknews.com
It was T.S. Eliot who said the end is where we start. And that is apt for St.
Armands Circle, a gem born from the vision and psyche of the great circus magnate, John Ringling.
Ringling imbued Sarasota with meaning, soul, and architecture — a true vision that extends from Ca’ d’Zan and his namesake museum to the promenade leading into St. Armands Circle and beyond.
But now, we are seeing a complete ricorso—as if we are in the middle of a Carl Hiaasen-meets-Giambattista Vico cycle of history. We are returning to the circus town, but this time it is not the work of a great visionary. It is the exact opposite: a pedestrian development push where the City of Sarasota is the ringmaster of a “Clown Show.”
Immediately, the circus tent is rising for what the City is calling a “St. Armands Visioning Process.”
To the uninitiated, this looks like good governance. To the veteran observer, it looks like a setup—a mechanism to manufacture consent for the unpopular.
The “Zombie Project” and the Prop Spear
The current saga centering on the Shore Restaurant’s renewed push for density and hotel rights is a textbook case of a “Zombie Project”—the bad idea that refuses to die.
A developer (Shore owner Tom Leonard) wants to redevelop properties on Boulevard of the Presidents into a “flagship” complex with a controversial third floor for residential or hotel use. Facing strict federal flood-zone renovations, the developer needs a zoning concession to make the project “pencil out.”
Rather than rejecting a proposal that violates the district’s intent, the City acts with a dysfunction that borders on farce.
A Legacy of Failure: From Art to Sawgrass
To understand why residents are alarmed by this new “Visioning” process, one only has to look at the City’s recent track record of entertaining the insane until public outrage forces a retreat.
Remember the Lido Beach Pavilion? The City practically laid out the red carpet to turn a cherished, family-friendly public concession stand into a “Daiquiri Deck.”
Then came the Fillmore Parking Lot, where they entertained handing over a critical public asset for a private hotel. Then came the plan to turn Ken Thompson Park—one of our great green spaces—into a putt-putt golf course.
And let us not forget the “Art in the Roundabouts.”
We garnered national attention for this innovative process; taxpayers bought actual artwork like “Seagrass” and “Poly.” But then came the clowns in the City who bungled the bidding process for the pedestals. Instead of negotiating a solution to get the job done, commissioners argued about dumping the artwork in fields to save money.
The result? All they’ve done in the last three years is plant some sawgrass and left nothing in the largest, most important roundabouts. We let the community down. So, instead of a great vision, we got generic landscaping serving as filler..
The Brothel Strategy
Now, this same crew wants to hold a process “with integrity” to determine the zoning at St. Armands.
The City sits back passively like their job is to hang out in a brothel in Amsterdam’s Red Light District, waiting for sailors—and developers—to approach them with offers. They immediately entertain them, pull the curtain back, and try to tell us this is a legitimate “Visioning Process.”
There is nothing legitimate about this. It is the laundering of political decisions through a “neutral” process. If the Shore project is approved directly, Commissioners own the precedent. If it is approved as part of a “Data-Driven Vision Plan,” they can point to a consultant’s binder and say, “The experts and the data and input told us to do it.”
Aging Beauty vs. Municipal Botox
The “Visioning Session” is asking the community to participate in a theater production where the final act—higher density and hotel uses—has already been written.
What is so special about St. Armands? It is the same reason people go to broken-down, old, aging Europe. Like Prague, Kraków, and Sevilla— it is the aging beauty.
Just like we see in the faces of those on Longboat Key, there’s something beautiful about a human and a soul as they age. People have memories that show. That is something truly amazing. That is something that Botox, superficiality, and plastic surgery erases—and guess what you get? The soulless, vapid, empty look.
That is what I don’t want to see at St. Armands Circle. We cherish the Circle for its unique, historic charm, not its potential to maximize floor-area ratios. We want to preserve it like Main Street in Sag Harbor or Nantucket or Bar Harbor or Santa Fe. If we can embellish the Circle, enhance it, and breathe life into its intrinsic beauty, that is closer to what we need to accomplish.
We do not want a Benderson/Leonard homage to Rodeo Drive, or the sterile look of an upscale suburban shopping center.
Stick to the Snapper
Ultimately, there is a simple solution that requires no visioning sessions, no tax dollars, and no circus acts.
Tom Leonard seves us best as a restaurant owner, not a district-altering developer. The Shore built its reputation on hospitality, not hotel zoning. The community wants him to succeed at what he does best: serving great seafood and curating a top-tier dining experience.
It is time for the city to stop “visioning” ways to give developers what they want. It is time they stopped acting like clowns holding a prop spear, and started listening to what the residents have been screaming for years: Keep St. Armands St. Armands. Do not allow our treasure to be plundered by the modern circus.
