Only current Planning Board member Patrick Gannon said he supports the proposal to narrow a portion of Fruitville Road downtown and add roundabouts to three of its intersections.
SARASOTA Most of the candidates running for the Sarasota City Commission do not support a "road diet" plan that would narrow Fruitville Road and add three roundabouts to its intersections downtown.
The proposal will be submitted to the commission for review in April and has been the subject of several contentious public hearings over the past year, including one that erupted into shouting and cursing last week.
Of the eight candidates running for the two at-large commission seats next month, nearly all said they disagree with the plan at a forum Monday night hosted by STOP!, the ad-hoc group of neighborhood leaders advocating for changes to city development and improved pedestrian safety.
The so-called diet would eliminate two of Fruitville Road's four lanes from Lemon Avenue to Cocoanut Avenue, adding roundabouts at each of those intersections and at Central Avenue. City planners argue the idea would vastly improve the streetscape and pedestrian safety without worsening, and potentially marginally alleviating, traffic congestion there.
One by one, though, the candidates cited repeated concerns about traffic, commuters and the road's availability as an evacuation route in the event of a storm as pitfalls of the plan.
Only current Planning Board member Patrick Gannon, who lives on the bayfront and leads the Downtown Sarasota Condominium Association, spoke in support of the proposal as a way to safely and attractively bridge downtown and the booming Rosemary District.
"Do you want your commission making decisions based on fear or facts?" Gannon said. "If you come to the workshops or actually read the studies, some were actually done to include worst-case (traffic) figures.
"If you leave it alone its only going to get worse," he continued. "This is not for developers development is already underway. There are 12 projects being developed in the (Rosemary) district. Those are the facts were grappling with."
Incumbent Commissioner Susan Chapman argued instead the proposal highlights the limits of the Andres Duany-inspired downtown master plan. Fruitville is a major traffic artery and evacuation route that is not part of a larger, more elaborate traffic network, she said.
"One assumption about a road diet is you have a transportation grid, so there are alternatives to use in the event this road is on a diet," Chapman said. "There are no alternatives, thats the problem."
Businessman and frequent Chapman opponent Martin Hyde even agreed with her, noting as much to laughs in the audience several times throughout the night, and simply concluded: "Are you serious?"
"The ship has sailed, cmon," Hyde said. "This argument about traffic is fallacious. The reality about is traffic is ... these people are coming from elsewhere to here. No matter what you do here, unless you nuke them on the way here, theres nothing you can do."
STOP! co-founder Jennifer Ahearn-Koch, former Mayor Fredd Atkins, attorney Hagen Brody and St. Armands businessman Mikael Sandstrom all essentially echoed those same comments. Longtime city critic Matt Sperling, the eighth candidate in the race, was not present and has chided the STOP! group at previous forums.
The rest of the forum focused largely on development issues central to the STOP! campaign to reign in an existing administrative review process that can allow downtown projects to be approved without public hearings.
The candidates have discussed the issue at length before and split evenly on whether formal public hearings should be needed for major projects or whether the concerns STOP! has highlighted should be addressed in the zoning code.
Ahearn-Koch, Atkins, Chapman and Sandstrom all argue for formal hearings before the Planning Board and/or City Commission. Brody, Gannon, Hyde and Sperling have all argued against, with the former two specifically arguing the zoning code is the key.
"Changing the process does not address the substantive problem," Brody said. "We can talk about it 'til were blue in the face, but you have to address it in the zoning code. Thats the only way youre going to change the way buildings are built."
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Only one candidate endorses Fruitville 'road diet' plan - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
