Town center Concept hits speed bump

A town center in the Bay Isles area is no longer in the express lane.

Complaints about a town center workshop and design process, along with a need to talk with town center area stakeholders, have prompted the town manager to slow down a town center implementation timeline.

A final town center master plan won’t go before the Longboat Key Town Commission this month as originally expected. 

Town Manager Dave Bullock received permission from the commission Monday to cancel a town center public workshop planned for next week and stop Tindale Oliver representatives from working on a concept plan until further notice. 

“I’d like to recommend we pause on the formal planning,” Bullock said. “Let us do a little more work with the area property owners and other interested parties to make sure any plans that would be drawn up in the formal process are amenable to property owners.”

Bullock said he needs at least two months to review concepts and build concensus with property owners. 

Rough draft concepts drawn on a map by Tindale Oliver show potential locations for two-story retail and office space, a cultural center and two two-story parking garages around a civic lawn with a pond and walking trails as potential options (see map, above).

Commissioners unanimously agreed with Bullock’s request, also expressing concern with the rough draft proposals drawn up by Tindale Oliver and its recent role as an information gatherer at public workshops. 

Mayor Jack Duncan and commissioners Phill Younger and Pat Zunz, who have attended recent town center workshops, all believe the process itself needs another look.

“They are supposed to be planners, and I don’t get the feeling they fully understand what they’re supposed to do and they are giving us the information we deserve,” Zunz said. 

Duncan suggested there’s a leadership problem with Tindale Oliver representatives, who ran workshops in February and March to obtain information from residents about what they would like to see as part of a future town center.  

“I wholeheartedly agree with taking a break,” Duncan said. 

Younger suggested that break should be a permanent one from Tindale Oliver.

“From what I’ve seen out of Tindale Oliver, it was far less of a return on what we have invested,” Younger said.

To date, the town has paid Tindale Oliver $37,634.82 of a $48,598 contract for its town center services. The company was hired to create concepts for a walkable, mixed-use environment at the center of the community. For the last three months, residents, property owners and a town center steering committee have met to discuss future amenities for the site with Tindale Oliver. 

Bullock, though, asked the commission to give him a couple of months to figure out the process and talk to property owners. 

“I’m not ready to make a decision on Tindale Oliver right now,” Bullock said. “There’s some work we can do on the town staff level and maybe we will have a whole new approach when I report back to you.”

Once Bullock resumes the planning process in a couple of months, a master plan with renderings and maps needs to be created for the commission to review and vet later this year. At that point, the second phase of the project will begin, consisting of finalizing a zoning overlay district to implement the master plan concept. 

A report by the Urban Land Institute ignited plans for a town center concept in 2013, when a panel wrote that the town was fractured and needed a town center for all residents to congregate in a central location.