The city paid a facilitator to ask what St. Armands should become. Its residents answered with a survey and a number: 70% want the Circle held at 35 feet. Every group agreed, and the verdict lands as Shore’s 40-foot plan hits the height limit and City Hall floats “zoning or code considerations.”
—The City of Sarasota hired a professional facilitator, filled the Keating Center twice with more than 150 people a night, and kept an estimated 20 or more staff members there after hours to ask one question: What should St. Armands Circle become?
—The St. Armands Residents Association asked the same question in an email.
—The answer came back loud. Leave the Circle the size it is.
—Seventy percent of members who answered SARA’s 2026 Annual Member Survey want St. Armands Circle kept at its current building size, up to 35 feet, and its current uses. Only 18% would allow larger buildings and expanded uses such as a hotel.
—The survey, released Nov. 5 by SARA President Chris Goglia, drew 152 responses from 303 invitations, a 50% response rate. It is not a scientific poll, and Goglia’s own report calls the results a “directional indicator.” But when strong majorities line up across every corner of the island, the direction is hard to miss.
—The timing is not subtle. At the Oct. 7 Development Review Committee hearing, city staff ruled that Shore’s proposed redevelopment at 24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents, roughly 40 feet tall, exceeds the maximum height. Its third floor is drawn as a single eight-bedroom “dwelling unit” around a rooftop pool, and Shore co-founder Tom Leonard has said it could serve as a boutique hotel if the code ever allows. In July, city commissioners told planning staff to write a condo-hotel policy. And at the second visioning session in April, a city business relations coordinator floated a separate meeting with business and development interests to discuss “zoning or code considerations.”
—So was the city’s visioning exercise worth the public money and staff time?
“In my view, the answer is no,” Goglia wrote.
—Who Answered
—Of the 152 respondents, 117 live on St. Armands Key, split across its four quadrants. Another 32 are “Friends of St. Armands” from Lido Key, Lido Shores, Bird Key, Longboat Key and the mainland, which SARA calls its fifth quadrant. Seventy-nine percent are full-time or seasonal residents, 62% vote in Sarasota, and 21% of St. Armands property owners in the survey rent out a property.
—The 35-Foot Line
—Support for keeping the Circle’s scale ran highest in the Northeast Quadrant, home of the parking garage, at 81%, followed by the Northwest at 76%, full-time residents at 75% and Sarasota voters at 73%. Even off-island members backed it at 63%. The softest groups, seasonal residents and occasional visitors, still delivered majorities of 57% and 55%.
—This is not a new answer. In 2022, 90% of SARA members opposed a commercial height increase. In 2025, 77% opposed changing the Coastal Islands Overlay to allow taller buildings. And in November 2022, the City Commission voted 5-0 to reject a request to allow hotel use across St. Armands.
—Upscale, Not Late Night
—Sixty-four percent want more of the Circle’s shops and restaurants to become upscale, rising to 84% in the Northwest Quadrant and 75% among full-time residents. Another 29% want some change but a mix similar to today’s. Only 4% want later hours and more nightlife.
—Goglia writes that longtime residents tell him they miss the more upscale shopping district the Circle once was. One worried it was becoming “one big food court.” He also hears repeated complaints about too many T-shirt shops, and too many storefronts left vacant or in disrepair.
“Something clearly needs to change,” he wrote.
—The storefront picture is mending. In June, the St. Armands Circle Association counted fewer than 20 vacancies among 124 first-floor spaces, many already leased and under renovation. Tommy Bahama left after the 2024 storms, citing pump failures; Armel Jewelers returned in September.
—Hungry for a Market
—Here is the twist. Asked to pick up to three new businesses, members chose food: a small market with a deli and prepared foods (72%), a new restaurant and bar (49%) and a breakfast-and-lunch café (47%). A boutique hotel of 10 to 30 rooms drew 19%. Write-ins asked for basics: groceries, convenience items and pharmacy needs.
—On what kind of restaurant, there was a dead heat: upscale steakhouse 28%, Asian with sushi 28%, casual with reasonably priced entrées 27%.
—One Hotel? A Coin Flip
—The hotel question split the island almost exactly. Forty-one percent would support one boutique hotel on St. Armands Key, 40% would support none, and 11% weren’t sure. Only 7% would support more than one.
—That is softer than SARA’s 2025 survey, when 63% opposed a zoning change allowing hotels on the Circle, though the questions were worded differently.
—Location matters. Among supporters, 64% chose the Wells Fargo lot, 32% the Fillmore surface parking lot, and only 20% the second and third floors of Circle buildings, which is the model Shore is pursuing.
—Goglia calls the Wells Fargo lot “the one commercial parcel currently zoned to allow hotel use.”
—Not in My Quadrant
—The Southeast Quadrant, home of the Fillmore lot, was the most supportive of a boutique hotel at 58%. But only 20% of its hotel supporters wanted one on the Fillmore lot.
—That lot has history. In 2021, a development group pitched a 98-room hotel, a 15,000-square-foot gourmet market and townhomes there. Five proposals followed, Leonard’s among them. The commission paused the effort in 2022, and the push ended when the St. Armands garage’s bond covenants were found to protect the lot’s paid parking spaces.
—The Northwest Quadrant showed the same reflex. Only 45% of its hotel supporters favored the Wells Fargo lot in their own backyard, versus 60% to 75% everywhere else. The only group where a majority favored hotel rooms on upper floors around the Circle was the Southwest Quadrant, home of the Kingston Arms, at 64%.
—Keep the Event Limits
—Since 2014, city rules have barred major events in St. Armands Circle Park in February, March and April, allowed three in January and October, and capped every other month at two. Merchants and landlords pushed for the limits, citing season traffic and competition for customers.
—Fifty-three percent want those limits kept. Thirty-seven percent would allow one more a month. Only 5% would scrap the limits. Off-island members were the most open to more events at 56%; the Southeast Quadrant the least, at 23%. Members who rent out property were more open than those who don’t, 50% to 37%.
—What they want is smaller: musical performances (62%) and food and wine events (60%). Large concerts drew 13%.
—Free Parking, North vs. South
—About 150 free, all-day spaces survived the paid-parking district that arrived with the St. Armands garage in 2019, along the residential ends of North and South Boulevard of the Presidents. Fifty-one percent want them to stay free. Forty percent want a two-hour limit or meters.
—Geography decides it. The south side, 67% in the Southwest Quadrant and 69% in the Southeast, wants free parking. The north side leans toward limits. SARA notes the 50-unit Kingston Arms lost free spaces its residents’ caregivers, contractors and guests relied on when the district took effect.
—Support for free parking ticked up from 45% in 2025, as the city’s broader paid-parking fight still simmers.
—Slow Them Down
—FDOT replaced eight temporary speed humps around the Circle with permanent asphalt speed tables this year. Members want more. Seventy-two percent support one or two additional speed bumps on John Ringling Boulevard heading east toward downtown, and 72% support the same on North Boulevard of the Presidents heading toward Longboat Key, with 88% backing in the Northwest Quadrant.
—A traffic light at John Ringling and Adams or Washington Drive split members, 51% to 35%, with the final call belonging to FDOT. Seventy-two percent of the Northeast Quadrant wants it, but only 37% of full-time residents do. The report notes that the left turn onto John Ringling from those streets, one many garage users must make, “can be difficult, if not dangerous.”
—Bury the Lines
—The clearest mandate came on undergrounding utilities: 79% want the city to keep going, with property owners paying a share as on Longboat Key. Every group cleared 75%. That is down from 87% a year ago, before the July 20 votes that launched the consultant study and an $8 million credit line. Parcel-by-parcel cost estimates are due by the end of winter 2027, with first assessments targeted for the November 2027 tax bill and construction in early 2028 if owners approve.
—What Residents Wrote In
—Flooding topped the write-in comments, even after ordinary rain, with calls for a funded plan, working pumps and clean drains. Goglia says residents want the city to take responsibility for the stormwater system and be accountable for it. Members also flagged e-bikes and Veo scooters on sidewalks, aggressive encounters with people believed to be homeless, fishing on the Little Ringling Bridge despite the signs, and “hotel houses” and rentals shorter than a week, which violate city code.
—At roughly $15,000 in city property taxes per $1 million of taxable value, Goglia asks whether the barrier islands receive services to match.
—The Chokepoint
—Goglia closes on traffic. St. Armands is the only direct route from the mainland to Lido Key and Longboat Key, and every delivery, contractor and beachgoer shares its streets with pedestrians.
“Short of building another bridge, there may be no easy solution to this traffic challenge,” he wrote.
—That, he argues, is why residents resist taller buildings and denser uses. The city asked for a vision. St. Armands just handed it one, in writing.
