Siesta Key residents fight Beach Road parking

In the early morning hours after the bars in Siesta Key Village have cleared out, and Siesta Key Beach is mostly vacant, Robert D’Orsi can still hear commotion.

D’Orsi is president of the Sunset Royale Association, which represents the residents of the 34-unit condominium building at 711 Beach Road, located a short walk from the Siesta Key Beach Pavilion. It’s also directly across the street from eight picnic shelters and 12 on-street parking spaces designed for beachgoer use.

Despite suggestions to the contrary from the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, D’Orsi and other Sunset Royale residents say these shelters are a hot spot for late-night activity. 

“We have to lock our doors at night, put signs up and surveillance and whatnot,” D’Orsi said. “There are members of the public coming here and doing graffiti on cars, defecating in the hallways, peeing in the bushes.”

That’s why in April, the Sunset Royale Association submitted a petition to the county Traffic Advisory Council requesting the removal of the 12 on-street parking along Beach Road. On June 13, the advisory board will consider the residents’ proposal.

Residents are primarily concerned with late-night partying in those concrete shelters. 

The bars close at 2 a.m., and the beach access parking closes at midnight, but the beach, shelters and on-street parking spaces stay open all night, D’Orsi said.

If visitors want to keep the good times going after last call, the shelters become a natural destination. That’s why when the County Commission voted on replacing the previous wooden shelters with new, concrete structures, D’Orsi spoke against the plans. 

Since then, the sheriff’s office has been working with residents at Sunset Royale to address the complaints. Lt. Debra Kaspar said the department directed deputies to keep a close eye on the individuals spotted near the shelters late at night.

Kaspar said there have been 13 calls for service from 711 Beach Road to the sheriff’s office in the past year; six of those were related to noise from the shelters across the street. By and large, though, the people at the shelters weren’t doing anything illegal — and they often weren’t even actually using the shelters.

“They weren’t at the structures,” Kaspar said. “They were coming from the beach and going back to their condos, or they were waiting for an Uber to arrive.”

Kaspar said the sheriff’s department continued to monitor the situation this spring and believes the issue has essentially been addressed.

But D’Orsi insists that as recently as this weekend, there were people using the shelters after bars had closed. The conduct might not rise to the level of a crime, but it’s still an undue burden on residents, he said.

“Are they being loud and disorderly? Not really,” he said. “But just sitting there talking, everyone in this building can hear you. People shouldn’t be over there drinking outside when there’s a residential area so close by.”

Kaspar said deputies who don’t witness a noise violation first-hand need direct communication from residents who can identify the potential culprit. Often, residents have declined to meet with deputies, which makes citing an actual violation a challenge.

“Don’t go to bed mad,” Kaspar said. “Try to address it at the time it’s occurring.”

D’Orsi was frustrated by the notion that officers would rely on residents to reprimand partiers.

“If it’s 3 a.m., I don’t want to meet a deputy — I want to go to sleep,” he said.

Merchants at a Siesta Key Village Association meeting hoped to at least reach a compromise — perhaps by instituting a time restriction on the street, rather than eliminating the spaces entirely. D’Orsi said he was open to that idea, although he thinks there are safety and logistical issues with the daytime parking setup as well.

Meanwhile, Michael Shay, president of the Siesta Key Association, cited the reports from the sheriff’s office as evidence the complaints might be overblown.

“I think the allegations about the all night partying and this and that were unsubstantiated,” Shay said. “They make some good soundbytes on Channel 7, but there’s not much reality there.