Downtown economic leader departs post

All the buildings popping out of the ground may make this easy to forget, but when Norm Gollub took the position of downtown economic development coordinator in 2012, Sarasota wasn’t exactly abuzz with activity.

“There were a lot of vacancies in the storefronts downtown,” Gollub said. “I could count the number of projects on less than a hand.”

Friday is Gollub’s last day on the job, and he’s leaving downtown in a very different state than when he first arrived. He can’t take credit for the growth — the city’s emergence from a recession  helped — but his colleagues believe Gollub has contributed to a healthier economic climate.

As Gollub prepares for his new job as executive director of the Foss Waterway Development Authority in Tacoma, Wash., the downtown Sarasota economy seems to be in a good place.

Still, Gollub believes his hypothetical replacement won’t be lacking for work.

“There’s still a lot of troubleshooting to do,” he said.

More than three years ago, three organizations joined forces to create Gollub’s position. The city contributes $40,000 per year, while the Downtown Improvement District and Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce chip in $25,000 each.

Steve Queior, the president of the chamber of commerce, said reinvigorating downtown was a top priority for both city and business officials. Quickly, Gollub became a resource for anyone who had questions about development in the city’s core — an invaluable resource as the economy began to rebound.

“Go to Norm, and if he can’t help you, he’ll know who can,” Queior said.

“Go to Norm, and if he can’t help you, he’ll know who can.” — Steve Queior 

When he arrived, the city lacked a centralized resource to keep the public abreast of ongoing development — a product of the fallow economic times.

Gollub started giving a monthly presentation to chamber leaders regarding new projects. As the number of projects grew, the report evolved to a formal document shared with businesses, city staff and the general public.

Tony Veldkamp, president of the commercial investment division of the Realtors Association of Sarasota and Manatee, said the development reports have been a valuable asset in his line of work. Before, keeping tabs on local trends posed a challenge.

“It was anecdotal, and it was piecemeal,” Veldkamp said. “We would just ask Realtors in a building, ‘Do you have projects going on in this area?’ It was typically behind the eight ball.”

Gollub gave an annual presentation to the Realtors Association during the group’s Downtown Horizons breakfast meeting. Veldkamp recalled a moment when one member asked what type of project was seeing the most activity, and Gollub surprised the audience when he answered rental apartments.

Today, more than 1,000 apartments are under construction in the Rosemary District. Having a better sense of the direction the city is headed in helps brokers target appropriate clients for the space they’re working to fill.

“Any developer we work with, we’re looking one or two years down the road, because it takes that long to get a project done,” Veldkamp said.

Eventually, Gollub constructed a website, sarasotaeconomy.com, to share the monthly development report and other key information. Although seemingly simple, aggregating a list of projects was a legitimate step forward for business downtown.

“It’s unbelievable, the demand for that report both locally and out of town, out of state,” Queior said. “It’s not just an informational piece — it’s a marketing piece that lets people keep tabs on our city center.”

Building Bridges

The public-private partnership that funds his position has helped define Gollub’s work. It’s easy to characterize the city-developer relationship as adversarial. For Gollub to perform effectively, he had to bridge that gap, be it real or imagined.

Gollub’s office is based out of the chamber, which gives him the opportunity to hear businesses’ concerns about permitting, zoning or other issues firsthand.

He can relay that information to city staff and feed staff’s comments back to the businesses, which helps speed up the process of development downtown.

“He helped facilitate businesses looking to move here and grow here, in terms of how to cut red tape, who to talk to and our processes and procedures,” City Manager Tom Barwin said. “I think he was definitely able to slay a lot of myths.”

The various stakeholder groups that work in the city’s core have tended to work in silos, and Gollub has focused on encouraging downtown leaders to coexist more harmoniously.

There has been some progress on that front: Gollub helped lead the We Are Downtown marketing campaign, which touts the DID, the Downtown Sarasota Alliance and the Sarasota Downtown Merchants Association as sponsors.

“He was the face of the city for the merchants.” — Eileen Hampshire

He also regularly checks in with individual merchants, communicating any concerns they have to city staff. DID Chairwoman Eileen Hampshire, the owner of Art To Walk On on Palm Avenue, said his presence was significant to a group that has tended to feel ignored by city officials.

“I think he went a long way to making us feel like the city cared,” Hampshire said. “He was the face of the city for the merchants.”

So what now? Queior said the funding organizations plan to meet shortly, but he thinks the position should remain in place. Barwin points out the city is losing the Community Redevelopment Area funding that contributed to Gollub’s position. Hampshire thinks there should be a conversation to re-examine the split funding — she thinks it can’t be easy to work for three different bosses.

There is still work left to do. In particular, Gollub believes it’s crucial to spark growth in the office sector downtown, which is lagging behind retail and residential development.

Gollub is sad to leave behind his city, chamber and downtown colleagues. He’ll miss Tuesday morning breakfasts at Coffee Carousel and spending Saturdays at Bayfront Park with his dog. But as he exits, he sees potential for someone to capitalize on the foundation he’s laid over the past three years. Even as the downtown economy takes off, a good facilitator is always helpful.

“I would hope whoever they hire next would be able to continue being that big umbrella,” Gollub said. “It’s important to try to get all of these groups talking to one another to advance the community conversation about what needs to be done to bring Sarasota forward.”