Residents protest proposed DeMarcay changes

There are lots of reasons Jay Bradley Leonard opposes proposed changes to the 18-story, 39-unit DeMarcay condominium project. Dust, for example.

Bradley is a resident of the condos at 1350 Main. That building is next door to 33 S. Palm Ave., the proposed site of the DeMarcay. He was a part of a group of residents — more than two dozen — who spoke out last week against the developer’s request to use a new construction technique to build the high-rise.

A 2006 agreement with the city requires the developer to build the project using precast construction. That methodology uses prefabricated pieces of concrete, but Illinois-based property owner XAC Developers now wants to use post-tension construction, which involves pouring the concrete on-site.

An application from the developer, filed in November, makes the changes seem relatively innocuous. There are no buildings taller than seven stories under construction in Sarasota that don’t use post-tension construction. XAC purchased the land in 2014, and when the company sought a contractor to build the project, it struggled to find anyone willing to use precast, developer Greg Kveton said.

Kveton argued post-tension was supposed to minimize the impacts on the community during construction. If that’s what people wanted, then the change to post-tension would benefit everybody, he said.

Construction would take four months fewer. It wouldn’t involve hoisting 9,600-pound concrete slabs 200 feet in the air, and it wouldn’t necessitate the transportation of hundreds of those slabs from outside the downtown core to the project site.

“It’s the mainstream system — everybody uses it,” Kveton said of post-tension. “If another system was better, a developer would be using that system, and the contractors would be using that system. Nobody’s going to go and look for the hardest way to do something.”

Based on the number of speakers who opposed the process at a March 8 Planning Board meeting — and that board’s narrow 3-2 vote to recommend approval of the changes — some people believe the new construction technique may not be as innocuous as XAC is making it out to be.

So, back to dust. Leonard sees concrete dust as one of the many side effects of post-tension construction that will impact the residents at 1350 Main and other properties. At the Planning Board hearing, a representative for the DeMarcay acknowledged post-tension could lead to small fragments of cement falling off a construction site. That representative said the debris might scratch a car, but Leonard and others are worried about the potential for something more severe.

Leonard said he believes the requirement for pre-cast construction — a voluntary condition from the developer that the commission accepted — was not put in place as a matter of expediency, but for reducing the impact on the surrounding area. With that in mind, he doesn’t believe post-tension is a satisfactory construction methodology.

“I think there was a reason why they made that deal, and there were reasons why they were required to use precast concrete,” Leonard said. “Those reasons shouldn’t be dropped without renegotiations or further examination of the agreement.”

Planning Board member Chris Gallagher, a designer with Hoyt Architects, pointed out that concrete dust isn’t a phenomenon limited to post-tension construction. Indeed, it’s likely to be a side effect of pre-cast construction, too.

“It’s not the wet concrete the dust comes from,” Gallagher said. “It’s the dry concrete. In either condition, there’s going to be plenty of concrete around.”

Acknowledging that fact, the 1350 Main residents are making the case this isn’t an either-or situation. Pre-cast and post-tension aren’t the only two ways to build a building. Attorney Robert Lincoln, who is representing the condo owners, argued XAC should be required to examine all options before the city changes the conditions governing the DeMarcay construction.

“What I would say needs to be put to this developer is that they’ve developed every other alternative to doing a poured, post-tension technique and found that it’s truly infeasible,” Lincoln said. “Not that it’s more expensive, not that it’s a pain in the neck.”

Kveton admits part of the motivation for the change is expediency for the developer. That doesn’t mean a less time-consuming process doesn’t benefit the city, he said.

“There’s nothing better for the downtown, as far as reducing the impact of the construction, than reducing the time it takes,” Kveton said.

There is history between the 1350 Main residents and the DeMarcay developer. In 2015, the condo association sued the city and XAC in an effort to block the project, arguing the site plan had expired. 

That effort failed. At the Planning Board hearing, some speakers hinted at — or openly expressed — a desire to complicate the construction of a project they didn’t like.

“At some point, the city decided to build these crazy buildings,” 1350 Main resident Peter Daley said. 

“Anything that could hinder that type of building, we should go for.”

Leonard said he was disappointed in that sentiment and believes most residents aren’t necessarily anti-development.

“We have to accept something’s going to be built there,” Leonard said. “We just want it to be safe.”

Now, the question of whether to allow post-tension construction moves to the City Commission for consideration. 

It’s hard to detach this narrow issue from the broader project — which involves replacing two historic buildings with a high-rise — but Kveton is hopeful city leaders will block out the larger narrative when making a decision.

“We want to build the building in the best possible way,” he said.