Shore gains approval for Longboat site

Restaurateurs Tom Leonard and Mark Caragiulo’s decision to remove 114 additional seats they originally sought for their Shore restaurant concept in Longbeach Village from the menu paid off. It garnered support from their neighbors — and approval from the Planning and Zoning Board Tuesday morning.

The planning board approved site plan and special exception applications for the new Shore by 6-0 votes. The votes allow the owners to request a permit to demolish the existing restaurant this season and submit building plans for a new restaurant to be razed this season that will be up and running a year from now. 

It’s the final step Leonard and Caragiulo needed to develop the former Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant property. The Longboat Key Town Commission will not review either application.

A site plan and special exception application submitted July 28 originally sought a 299-seat restaurant as part of a plan “for a banquet suite for private parties on the second floor.”

As backlash for the application grew this summer, Sarasota land use agent Peter Dailey submitted
a revised application Sept. 4 that nixed a proposed second floor and reduced the seat count back to the original 185 seats for which former Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant already had approval.

The approved applications also allow the restaurant to use some of its 185 seats for outdoor dining.

The new applications also increase the number of parking spaces from 47 spaces to 55, even though the site is only required to  have 47 spots. A larger dock for boaters will increase the number of boat slips from 14 to 16.

“The building and dock (are) in bad shape and need to be torn down,” Dailey said. “What they’re doing is going to be a very good thing for this community.”

Village residents had just a few questions about the height of the new restaurant and landscape buffering for the new restaurant.

“I like what I’m hearing,” said Village resident Carla Rowan. “Designing a building that fits with the quaint nature of the 100-year-old fishing village is very important.”

Planning board Chairman Jim Brown said he believes the new restaurant enhances the quality of the Village, noting the site plan calls for a continuation of landscaping and Broadway sidewalks that currently end at the property.

“This is a vast improvement over the current site that’s just had a shell lot and nothing else for years,” Brown said. “This building fits within the community and scale of the neighborhood. If it didn’t, we would be having a long discussion here today. But we don’t need to do that.”

It will take planning staff approximately eight weeks to review and approve building plans once they are submitted in the coming weeks. The restaurant will take approximately seven months to construct and will be open in time for next season.

“We intend to be good neighbors and will bring an asset to the area we think this community will be proud of."

— Shore co-owner Tom Leonard

Leonard told the Longboat Observer that the criticism about the original application was heard loud and clear.

“We intend to be good neighbors and will bring an asset to the area we think this community will be proud of,” Leonard said.

Leonard and Caragiulo, who own the Shore Diner on St. Armands Circle, plan to create a similar Shore restaurant in the Village that Leonard says “will have a woodsy, surf watch, Old Florida feel to it while keeping traditions like stone crabs.”