Interviews to begin soon for north-end project

Six New College students will begin interviews this week in an effort to collect background material about the north end of Longboat Key as the first step of a community-based planning effort announced last month by Longboat Key Revitalization Task Force Chairman and former Mayor George Spoll. Spoll hopes that it will be the first step toward generating a widespread interest in planning.

“The last major planning effort was done by Arvida,” Spoll said. “What we have on the Key is a history of doing a lot of zoning that’s been reactive without much proactive planning.”

The north end is home to ailing commercial properties, including a vacant gas station and bank building and the struggling Whitney Beach Plaza. But it’s also home to historic homes, Mar Vista Dockside Restaurant and Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant and what Spoll believes could be one of the finest anchorages on the west coast of Florida. It was chosen for the pilot program because it’s a “blank slate,” according to Spoll.

“It is in crying need of a solution,” he said.

The students, led by New College sociology professor Dr. David Brain, will conduct interviews with approximately 40 stakeholders — not just residents but also business-and-property owners from both the north end and other parts of Longboat Key, including Task Force members and community leaders, to seek their ideas for the area, including potential uses for its commercial properties. Those ideas will coagulate and become the subject of a stakeholders’ workshop and planning charrette scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 28, at the Longboat Key Center for the Arts, a Division of Ringling College of Art and Design.

Task Force member and Longbeach Village resident Richard Levin, a retired architect, has put together a team of local architects, landscape architects and designers who will hold a sketching session to visually represent the proposed ideas in early February.

Later that month, the results of the charrette and the designs will be presented to the public.

“We’re really trying to gin up enthusiasm for what could be,” Levin said.

“This was intended to be our gift to the community,” Spoll said. “It was intended to be something this Task Force conceived of for the town and its community. The miracle would be if someone from the development community picked up on the ideas and ran with them.”