City Commission to revisit State Street garage design

Yet again, city commissioners are slated to discuss the design of the State Street garage.

At Monday’s City Commission meeting, commissioners will revisit general design options first presented to them June 3. Following that meeting, real-estate broker Ian Black solicited and received offers for commercial space at the garage, but commissioners voted to discard those plans due to legal concerns about the process by which they were obtained.

The most basic plan would include four elevated levels, with just the ground floor reserved for commercial space. Two “over/under” plans are detailed, making the ground floor under the parking levels and the air rights over the parking levels available to developers. The final plan would create a “pod” next to the garage for commercial space.

While State Street garage design has come before the commission several times, there’s no guarantee significant movement will be made Monday. According to agenda documents for Monday’s meeting, “City Commission action is not required until the City Commission has all of the information it deems necessary to make decisions.” 

At Monday’s meeting, commissioners will also:

• Discuss their visits to Pinellas Safe Harbor, a homeless shelter in Pinellas County that could serve as a model for how Sarasota addresses its homelessness problem.

• Consider holding a workshop in November to go over the results of a mobility study, with an eye towards holding public hearings in 2014 to adopt parts of the study.

Contact David Conway at [email protected].