Leaders pitch ‘don’t miss’ downtown

Imagine this: a free public transportation service traveling throughout downtown, redesigned streetscapes with flowers planted along the sidewalks, wayfinding systems guiding visitors around the heart of the city and increased connectivity between downtown and nearby neighborhoods.

All this could come to fruition, according to speakers at Tuesday’s Downtown Improvement District workshop, and one step would go a long way toward making this vision a reality — the expansion of the DID’s boundaries.

Four presenters at Tuesday’s meeting spoke on the costs and benefits of transforming the urban core into a “don’t miss” downtown: Shawn Dressler, a landscape architect with Kimley-Horn, Norm Gollub, the downtown economic development coordinator, Roger Barry, a planning professor, and John Moran, the DID’s operations manager.

The meeting — held for the group to once again take up the oft-discussed topic of expanding the taxing district’s boundaries — concluded with no decision made. Still, the speakers left the meeting having hammered home a cohesive message: The DID is arguably the best mechanism to generate funding necessary to improve downtown.

“We have a pretty good downtown, but it might not be as good as we think it could be,” Dressler said. “To get to a don’t-miss downtown is going to require a substantial investment.”

Expansion talks are nothing new for the DID. After committing long-term funds to a 2013 Main Street improvement project, the board is lacking liquid assets. Currently, only about 13% of the board’s annual income is available for discretionary spending. For the group to have a significant impact going forward, Moran has stated the district should consider expanding its boundaries.

Stepping Up

One factor that may make the timing more pressing is the potential end of another downtown funding mechanism. The downtown Community Redevelopment Agency is set to sunset in 2016, and the county has been cool on a potential extension. If the CRA were to expire, speakers at Tuesday’s workshop said the DID could help fill a void by growing to the CRA’s boundaries.

“With close to half a billion dollars in construction activity underway within the CRA boundary, once those projects are built, we need to maintain the infrastructure around them,” Gollub said.

City Commissioner Stan Zimmerman cautioned against the mentality that the DID could serve as a substitute for an expired CRA. The CRA, which collects tax-increment financing money from within its boundaries, generates about $8 million in revenue. The DID, if expanded to the boundaries of the CRA, could collect $1.93 million in taxes as downtown grows. Each commercial property owner in the DID pays an extra 2 mills on his property taxes. The current DID collects about $345,000 annually.

Who’s in?

Other issues arose after the presentation — most notably, whether property owners outside of the DID were willing to impose a tax on themselves.

Several members of the DID board indicated they didn’t have a satisfactory answer to that question, and, as a result, the group declined to take a position on the potential expansion.

When the speakers assured the board that projects could be distributed equitably throughout the new DID area, it led to a question from the opposite angle: Would the tax dollars committed by downtown businesses be worth less in a larger district?

“My business and the property I own is in the DID,” said board member Ron Soto. “I don’t want to see my taxes being diluted into other areas.”

Some opposition existed from outside the DID, too. Denise Kowal, a commercial property owner and resident in Burns Square, suggested that people in the area were uninterested in being incorporated into the DID. Kowal said the DID was functioning fine in its current role, and that growth would hamper its efficacy.

“The city has proven it is incapable of doing big, broad plans with many special interests and many different groups in a meaningful way,” Kowal said.

The reception was not all negative, however. Ian Black, a real estate broker and property owner in the Rosemary District, said the area would benefit from creating a stronger connection to the downtown. DID board member Steve Seidensticker implored his colleagues to look at a bigger picture.

“We need to start to think like adults in Sarasota,” Seidensticker said. “As a board, I hope we can come to some kind of consensus so we can gently guide our City Commission into making improvements.”

As Seidensticker indicated, the decision on whether the DID can expand falls to the City Commission. In the meantime, the board wants to gather more facts.

Although the board is taking its time to evaluate options, Tuesday’s speakers conveyed an imperative to take action soon.

“It’s time to look at the greater downtown,” Barry said. “This is the opportunity to do so.”