- March 26, 2025
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Just days after a sign went up near the intersection of Ringling Blvd. and South Pineapple Ave. announcing a new development there, the developer of Adagio had its pre-application conference before the city’s Development Review Committee on March 5.
The Lutgert Cos. of Naples revealed plans to build a two-tower mixed-use development above a single podium building on multiple parcels. It plans an 18-story, 100-unit luxury condominium building in the west tower and a nine story, 67-unit, all attainable rental apartment west tower above structured parking and 18,584 square feet of street-level retail and office space.
Project consultant Joel Freedman described the plan as “very preliminary,” and the purpose of the conference was for staff to meet the architects as they begin to refine the project.
That refinement will require reducing the number of rental units and firing out how to carve three stories off the top of the condo tower.
Zoned Downtown Core, the property currently has a surface parking lot and an office/retail building. In order to achieve 18 stories in Downtown Core, which has a height limit of 10, Adagio will be developed under provisions of Florida’s Live Local Act which, among other benefits, requires municipalities to allow height matching that of permitted uses within a one-mile radius of a project if it includes requisite housing prices as attainable for households earning up to 120% of the area median income.
Additionally, to achieve the density, Adagio is proposed to incorporate the City of Sarasota’s downtown bonus density ordinance.
That’s where conflict arose with the DRC over the zoning code.
Among his comments, Development Review Chief Planner Noah Fossick told the developer to intersperse all attainable units among at least half of the floors and to ensure they share a common entrance with the market rate units. Additionally, the plan must demonstrate how the building entrance of the attainable units is indistinguishable and functionally equivalent to the market rate units. Exterior appearances, also, must be indistinguishable and functionally equivalent to the market-rate units.
“The plan was to have market rate and affordable in separate towers,” said Freedman.
Fossick repeated the plan must demonstrate the attainable units are interspersed throughout the project.
“Okay, so that's your interpretation of the Live Local Act?” asked Mathieu Picard of the project architecture firm, Kobi Karp of Miami.
“This is our attainable housing requirement,” Fossick replied.
After Picard responded, the project is being submitted under the Live Local Act, Fossick said, “The density proposed is utilizing our bonus density, so you now have to comply with our attainable housing requirement.”
Reducing the rental units to 50, which meets base density, would no longer require application of the local ordinance, Mathieu suggested.
“Yes,” confirmed Fossick. “Live Local only authorizes base density.”
In addition to the previously planned density, prior to its initial submittal to staff, the developer must also reconcile a conflict regarding its parking structure design. Because a portion of the two-level deck is below grade, Lutgert representatives contended that qualifies as a basement and should not count toward the 18-story limit.
The grade change from one end of the block to the other, however, nullifies Lutgert’s argument as Fossick said the current design, including the parking, is 21 stories and must be reduced by three.
“No basement level can extend more than four feet above the finished grade, and since this entire building is from Palm to Pineapple, that includes the finished grade on Palm, so you are extending more than four feet above the finished grade for that first basement level,” Fossick said.
The Lutgert Cos. assembled five parcels for the project along Ringling Blvd. between Palm and Pineapple Avenues, including the U.S. Garage building at 330 S. Pineapple Ave. and a parking lot now formerly owned by Church of the Redeemer. It paid $26 million in separate transactions, one in July and one in January.
Although the developer has not commented on the project, Senior Vice President Mike Hoyt wrote about it in a blog post, “It’s not often that a property as unique as this comes along in Florida.”
