WELCOME BACK: Mote: Bayfront Proposal

In September, Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium CEO and President Michael Crosby began a campaign to secure bayfront space for a new aquarium.

Mote’s plans for expansion called for its current City Island campus to focus almost exclusively on research work — and thus, for the aquarium to move elsewhere. After years of planning and feasibility studies, Crosby said, the best place for the aquarium to move to was the bayfront land near the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.

But the Sarasota City Commission dashed Mote’s plans in a 3-2 vote Oct. 20, in which commissioners declined to endorse that vision for growth.

Sarasota Vice Mayor Susan Chapman and Commissioner Shannon Snyder both worried that an endorsement of the vision was too significant a step at this point in the process.

“When we do this letter, we are creating an expectation, and that expectation will then be used for fundraising,” Chapman said. “Once the funds are in the bank, they’ll say, ‘Oh, but we raised funds based on our expectation.’”

Commissioners Paul Caragiulo and Suzanne Atwell cast dissenting votes. Atwell said she supported the idea of eventually putting an aquarium on the bayfront and wanted to avoid alienating Mote. Still, she said she regretted that the item came before the commission ahead of the schedule put forth by Bayfront 20:20, a group led by Visit Sarasota County board Chairman Michael Klauber that’s seeking broad community input on the development of the city-owned land before making any decisions on what goes where.

Before any further planning, though, Crosby needed an endorsement from the City Commission to begin securing funding and embarking on design work.

Mote had earned endorsements for its plan from the Economic Development Corp. of Sarasota County, the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, the town of Longboat Key and the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County.

But other stakeholders told the commission the city should wait for results of the Sarasota Bayfront 20:20 visioning process in progress.

Even if Bayfront 20:20 offered a full endorsement of a bayfront aquarium in January, when the group is scheduled to present its findings to the City Commission, Crosby said Mote needed to get into next year’s budget preparation process now. The organization is growing at a rate that will not allow it to wait much longer to expand, he said.

Mote came forward with its plans for growth after the city had already selected Sarasota Bayfront 20:20 to guide discussions of the future of the bayfront land. Mote was an early endorser of the Sarasota Bayfront 20:20 vision but found itself tied to a competing group in June.

Chapman presented a document that had been slipped under her door at a City Commission meeting that outlined an ambitious, specific plan for developing the bayfront that included a new $100 million Mote aquarium on the bayfront.

That group eventually stepped forward under the banner Sarasota Bayfront Now, touting its ability to get something done quickly along the bayfront. Mote declined to specifically comment on its relationship with the group, only issuing a statement that said no other groups spoke for Mote.

The City Commission quickly signaled its disinterest in the Sarasota Bayfront Now proposal, but that wasn’t the end of Mote’s plans for the land. In an August interview with the Longboat Observer, Crosby confirmed Mote’s interest in a new bayfront aquarium. Mote will re-evaluate its options, but a bayfront aquarium may no longer be viable.

“We’re pretty much dead in the water when it comes to moving forward with that vision,” Crosby said in October.

BY THE NUMBERS