- December 5, 2025
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Executives who lead three local agencies advancing tourism, business relocation and growth, and arts and culture have joined forces in a collaborative effort to demonstrate Sarasota County as a destination to live, work, play and visit. To that end, they all rely on county government for funding in various forms.
Representatives of the three agencies met with the Sarasota County Commission during an Aug. 22 workshop to discuss how they collaborate and cross-promote to leverage their collective resources while avoiding duplication of effort.
Commissioners heard from the leadership of Visit Sarasota County, Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County and the Sarasota Arts and Cultural Alliance about their individual roles in boosting the local economy and how they work together to provide a return on the county’s investment.
Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Erin Silk calls the partnership a “force multiplier.”
The leaders of all three organizations — Visit Sarasota County President and CEO Erin Duggan, Arts and Cultural Alliance CEO Brian Hersh and Silk — all began their roles at about the same time about 30 months ago.
“I've known Erin probably for a decade,” Silk said of Duggan. “Brian was a little newer to me, but as soon as we all came into these roles we got together and we acknowledged that there was an opportunity to educate our cross-membership, educate the community and the stakeholders about what each of us did, and talk about our collaboration.”
The results, all three agreed, is a mission to grow business, tourism and cultural awareness across the country, and even around the world, on the lifestyle opportunities available here.
The EDC and VSC have even moved into the same space in an office building at Cattlemen Road near Fruitville Road where the two Erins consider themselves “roommates.” The co-habitation also affords greater opportunities for teamwork.
“We have constant collaboration, but really our collaborative priority is coordination, never duplication. We do not ever want to duplicate efforts,” Silk told commissioners. “We focus on county brand cohesion. I really admire Visit Sarasota County and call them the marketing experts. You will see that a lot of the imagery that we use is from Visit Sarasota County. We're extremely thankful for that, but for us it's very important whether you're a resident, a tourist or a business owner, that you see the same cohesive brand across the county.”
The cross-promotion among the three begins on websites and multiple URLs where the curious may begin to explore. Part of the visitsarasota.com is the vanity URL workwhereyouwanttolive.com, which directs visitors to both the EDC and Arts and Cultural Alliance websites.
“This is where all things live that we do with the EDC,” Duggan said of the main website. “We point to the EDC website where they've got a very robust job search engine, but this is also the place where we're talking about our health care system, our school system, about neighborhoods; things that you're not necessarily going to find on visitsarasota.com.
“Working very closely with the Arts Alliance as well made us realize there are also folks who are going to want to move here, but they're interested in retiring, and that's where we came up with the vanity URL LiveWhereYouWantToPlay.com.”
Beyond websites, the cross-promotion extends to trade shows, marketing campaigns and more, all designed to entice businesses to visit and visitors to vacation and relocate while emphasizing the area is also home to a rich cultural history. That domain, FloridasCulturalCoast.com, is also hosted at the VSC website.
More than culture and entertainment, Hersh said, the arts also mean big business. At nearly 4% of the nation’s GDP, he said the arts generated more than $1 trillion in 2023, supporting more than 5.4 million jobs. Florida's arts nonprofits, he added, generate more than $5.8 billion in economic activity annually, supporting more than 91,000 jobs and $3.8 billion in household income.
Sarasota’s arts and culture reputation, Hersh said, and the economic stimulation it brings is a contributing factor to the business-tourism-arts trifecta.
“Florida is the number one state in the nation for net income migration, and Sarasota County is number four in the state of net income migration,” Hersh said. “If Sarasota County were a state, we'd be number eight in net income migration. We want to make sure these folks are moving here because of the quality of life and amenities that we have. Folks are coming here because they have a high expectation, and before they move here, we know that they visited here.”
