Commission plans walking tour of green-space site

Town Commissioners are planning a field trip in advance of their June 3 regular meeting, but they won’t be going far.

As they consider what they’d like to see happen on the land set aside and mostly cleared for the now-on-hold Arts, Culture and Education Center, commissioners asked to walk the property with town staff to get a three-dimensional sense of what the parcel looks like and its possibilities.

The logistics of such a tour are steeped in public-meeting regulations, but the plan is essentially this:

• The commissioners and staff will meet at Town Hall at 10 a.m. to hear a staff update on the plan, then head outside, down the steps and across the street to tour the site, which is smoothed and graded now but otherwise unimproved. Then return to Town Hall for further discussion on possible paths forward. Once that’s completed, a break will be called for lunch.
• The at 1 p.m., commissioners and staff reconvene for the remainder of the meeting’s agenda.

A site plan for the property, which includes the former Amore restaurant land and an adjacent parcel, calls for a generally bowl shaped stabilized lawn of bahia grass, encircled by new sidewalks and shell drives, which connect in several places to existing sidewalks.

Additional proposals include an area of crushed shell in the southeastern corner, which connects to the former restaurant’s parking area.

That parking area is retained in the proposal, though resealed and striped, along with the circular driveway that once led to the Amore’s front door.

A stormwater pond is proposed from the northwestern corner meandering toward the center of the property. Many existing trees would remain.

Included in the town’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2020 is $150,000 toward site development on the land.

At a town meeting in early May,  Town Manager Tom Harmer said the demolition of Amore and initial clean up of the land, paid for by a grant from Sarasota County, is a first phase toward “making it available and then working through a public process to develop a further design or maybe some additional improvements commissioners would like to see there.

More complicated and permanent infrastructure has been mentioned, such as rigging for lights and sound, shade structures and other improvements, though specific prices have not. And though Ringling College of Art and Design announced its reconsideration of the proposed Arts, Culture and Education Center in April, citing negative feedback in the community and its likely effect on fund-raising for the privately financed project, several Town Commissioners delivered statements urging reconciliation.

Jack Daly called Ringling’s reconsideration the result of the board’s “significant and major failure to represent the interests of the citizens of Longboat Key.’’

“We need to regroup, we need to revitalize, we need to reform, we need to resurrect our relationship with Ringling,’’ he said, adding it was likely the only organization with which the town could work to develop the kind of facility it has in mind.