City Commission continues State Street garage talks

The City Commission first considered four design options for a parking garage on State Street at a June 3 meeting.

The process of selecting a design for the garage continues at today’s City Commission meeting. City staff has again narrowed the number of design options down to four, according to documents included with the meeting’s agenda.

The four options are:

• A five-story “base” garage, with about 18,000 square feet of ground floor retail space and 4 levels of parking.

• An eight-to-ten-story “over/under” garage, which would allow for a developer to build 1-3 additional floors of commercial space above the parking levels.

• A seven-to-eight story “pad site” garage, which would include a smaller “pad” commercial building — built up to ten stories — on the site adjacent to the garage.

• A seven-to-eight story “liner building” garage, which would include a 20-foot arcade and shallow commercial liner buildings fronting the garage.

Discussion slated for the last commission meeting was cut short when City Attorney Robert Fournier said he wanted to speak with legal representatives from Pineapple Square before the city took any action.

An agreement between Pineapple Square and the city requires the garage to be constructed by February 2015. Pineapple Square developer John Simon, in an interview with The Observer last week, expressed his intent to hold the city to that agreement.

The four options that will be considered at today’s meeting come with estimated construction times between 18 and 28 months, none of which would meet the February 2015 deadline.

Also at today’s meeting:

• Commissioners will consider approving a lease agreement for the Burns Square parking lot located at Orange Avenue and Laurel Street.

• City staff and commissioners will discuss the future of the former Gulfcoast Wonder and Imagination Zone (GWIZ) property, located at 1001 Boulevard of the Arts. City staff is requesting that the commission provide guidelines for what they’d like to see occupy the property before seeking proposals.

• Commissioners will hear a presentation on the county’s Sarasota 2050 Plan and discuss the effects it may have on the city.

Contact David Conway at [email protected].