To Arcade or Not to Arcade

Date last updated 10:16 am Mar 6th, 2007

Denise Kowal pleaded with the incumbent to keep at least the option of arcades in the downtown code; Kowal even spoke before the commission asking them to keep the option for approval on a case-by-case basis. The incumbent voted them completely out of the plan.

Arcades were never an inconsequential or cosmetic afterthought; they are an integral part of the down-zoning of properties from 18 stories to 10 stories. They were not a gift to property owners rather a necessity to accommodate space for parking and to provide back some developable area to make up for the lost 8 stories. Therefore, if as a community we did not want the arcades, it was the responsibility of the City Commission to study the cause and effect - the interdependence between arcades and the "developability" of smaller parcels, such as what existes in most of downtown. The incumbent did not even consider further study, assuming arcades to be a detail easily removed from the code.

As Duany stated "City council is not experts, not qualified to make this decision. Even the developers were not expert enough to not let this happen...The arcades were to hold more parking..and as a reward to coming down 8 stories. Now the commission has given property owners a 1, 2 punch."

This single decision by the incumbent is not protecting our historic smaller developments but encouraging larger developments that require large assemblages of land. This is not the vision created in the City of Sarasota Downtown Master Plan 2020.