To energize Five Points, city officials may let it snow

Forget benches: If the city administration's vision comes to fruition, Five Points Park may include a vendor and café area as new amenities in the near future.

Although that vision is still being sketched out, one business has emerged as a potential trial balloon as a temporary vendor: the Baltimore Snowball Factory. Owner Eric Garfield said he’s excited by the opportunity, and thinks his snow cone operation would be a good fit for the park.

“Hopefully it’s just somewhere where a kid can spend a couple of bucks and get something he likes to beat the heat,” Garfield said.

That change is part of a larger conversation, as the city has given serious consideration to the future of the downtown park this year. New landscaping is a definite. The return of once-banished benches is a bigger question mark, but one for which some city commissioners have already signaled their support.

At Monday’s City Commission meeting, City Manager Tom Barwin revealed the city is thinking bigger. He asked for the board’s permission to solicit a vendor for the park on a short-term trial basis of perhaps 90 days. Hes wants to gauge the interest of businesses near the intersection of Orange Avenue and Main Street, currently closed for the construction of a roundabout.

The Baltimore Snowball factory opened just over a year ago along Orange Avenue, and although Garfield says the city has been eager to help with any issues, he admits his business has taken a hit since construction began.

He's still sussing out the configuration of a potential operation with the city. Still, he knows it will be an opportunity to promote a business Barwin described as a perfect fit for the park in the late summer months.

“I’d have some type of setup where my logo can be seen, where customers are aware of my product and what it is, and customers can have the opportunity to be refreshed,” Garfield said.

Despite Five Points Park’s classification as a passive park, Barwin said there is a growing push from residents to create more activity in the area. That may have been partially inspired by the Sarasota Farmers Market, which held a Wednesday event in the park from November through April.

“We began thinking: How do you do that?” Barwin said. “How do you activate a totally passive park like Five Points?”

"How do you activate a totally passive park like Five Points?" — Tom Barwin

Eventually, the city began to entertain the option of creating a café setting along the wide sidewalks of Pineapple Avenue. The construction at Main and Orange gave the city an opening to experiment with the park while also offsetting the pain of at least one downtown business.

Barwin  he hopes to take action swiftly. He's picturing maybe six small café tables to begin with, though the number and precise location are subject to change as more information becomes available.

“That outdoor environment is so beautiful and downtown is so beautiful and there’s so much to enjoy,” Barwin said. “We want to, I think, look at experimenting with activating the park a little bit.”

Hitting the benches

Also at Monday’s commission meeting, Vice Mayor Suzanne Atwell took up the cause of adding benches back to Five Points Park, setting discussion of the issue for a future agenda.

Downtown Improvement District board member Ron Soto has asked the city to return those benches, removed in 2011 in an attempt to discourage the gathering of homeless individuals. Although Atwell voted for the removal at that time, she said enough time has passed that she's willing to bring that experiment to an end.

Still, not everybody is ready to see the benches return to their former home in the park. At an August Downtown Sarasota Association meeting, the board expressed worry regarding the lack of a comprehensive plan to address issues that may arise following the return of the benches.

Barwin acknowledged lingering concerns, but he said the changes to the park would be designed to invite a wide swath of the community to engage with the added amenities. With an increased emphasis on combating homelessness and creating a more walkable community, creating a more inviting park environment would be a natural extension of the city’s existing goals.

“I think once we have these challenges managed, you will see a community interested in more strolling, more sitting, more outdoor opportunities,” Barwin said.

He added that the tables and chairs could be stored at night, that the entire project could be adjusted if problems arose or residents raised legitimate criticisms. That’s also why he’s proposing a short trial run to begin with. If the city doesn’t give it a shot, it’ll never know whether the idea is a viable one.

“We can use that as a gauge to see how it works — or doesn’t,” Barwin said.