Contentious meeting resutls in pared down golf course clubhouse

Ideologies clashed as a divided Sarasota City Commission votes to pursue a smaller clubhouse at Bobby Jones Golf Club.

By Andrew Warfield
| 5:00 a.m. February 4, 2026

Commisisoner Liz Alpert (right) questions Parks and Recreation Director Jerry Fogle during the hearing about the Bobby Jones clubhouse design as Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch looks on.

Sarasota
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Gone is the vision of a two-story Bobby Jones Golf Course clubhouse with wraparound veranda offering a panoramic view of the course and, farther in the distance, the adjacent nature park.

Gone is the second-floor restaurant sized to accommodate special and private events with the cart barn below. In addition, gone is $544,211 the city already paid Jon F. Swift Construction to design all that as the blueprints are shelved, perhaps applied to another project for another client in another location. That figure does not include $126,071 added for two on-course bathroom structures and golf cart storage for a total of $670,282.

And also gone, at least for one meeting of the Sarasota City Commission, is the traditionally collegial atmosphere at the dais.

At its Feb. 2 meeting, a divided commission voted 3-2 to scrap plans for a two-story, $11.5 million clubhouse at Bobby Jones and to instruct Swift Construction to embark on designing a one-story design with separate cart barn at a not-to-exceed cost of $7.2 million. The cost to, quite literally, go back to the drawing board — another $514,957.

Parliamentary pressure

As the nearly two-hour discussion over the Bobby Jones clubhouse neared its conclusion, tensions mounted as Commissioner Liz Alpert continued to plead her case, prompting Vice Mayor Kathy Kelley Ohlrich to invoke parliamentary procedure.

“Point of order. The commissioner’s time has expired,” Ohlrich said.

Alpert, who limits her pontificating from the dais, shot back, “And I never usually take any of my time, so thank you!”

In another instance, Alpert attempted to interject a correction into a point being made by Mayor Debbie Trice.

“I was doing my debate, so you're not interrupting that,” Trice said.

Finally, prior to Alpert’s first failed motion, as Trice was completing her comments to which Alpert was preparing to respond, Ohlrich said, “Call the question,” a parliamentary procedure to end discussion and require a vote.

“How can you always call the question when I wasn't even finished talking?” Alpert said.

“I was finished,” Trice responded.

Commissioner Liz Alpert, an attorney who from the beginning has been a proponent of the larger clubhouse design for what she believes would be its ability to generate additional revenue by appealing to a wider audience, tried to drive that point home in her cross examination-style questioning of Parks and Recreation Director Jerry Fogle.

Through her questioning, she also made the case that, after four years of planning — which during that time costs ballooned from a preliminary estimate of $9 million — the clubhouse has a firm price today while the not-to-exceed cost for a new design that may face another two years of planning is unrealistic. So much so, she added, that by the time a design can be considered it may cost millions more, or otherwise be pared even further.

“If this is extended out to one, two, three or four years, construction prices are going to go up,” Alpert said, providing to her colleagues a document of elevated cost estimations based on recent history. “If it's delayed two years it could be anywhere from $7.9 million to $8.3 million. We're talking about a timeline — the best case scenario 29 months — how is that (not-to-exceed cost) guaranteed? Are they going to have to continue to shrink the building because they aren't going to be able to construct it at $7.2 million as designed?”

Alpert was joined in her opposition to shrinking the project by Kyle Battie, who said a future commission may adopt a completely different approach by the time a new final design is brought for approval, one that could even determine the course operates just fine with its three attached mobile units serving as a clubhouse.

“The next time that it's brought before us, the composition of this commission could be totally different,” Battie said. “We could go in a totally, completely different direction. Please take into consideration that this is going to be coming before us again with a totally different commission, the third or fourth different commission.”

Sarasota Parks and Recreation Director Jerry Fogle speaks to the city commission about the Bobby Jones clubhouse.

Joining forces to oppose two Alpert motions — one to deny a new Swift design and, having failed, a second to propose a smaller two-story design with separate cart barn — Mayor Debbie Trice, Vice Mayor Kathy Kelley Ohlrich and Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch argued fiscal prudence in the face of budgetary challenges left by the 2024 storms and uncertainty regarding the future of property taxes statewide dictate clubhouse belt tightening.

That, and the capital needed to build the larger clubhouse would result in delays in funding other Parks and Recreation projects.

The matter of moving forward with a redesign settled, by a 3-2 vote with Alpert and Battie opposed, the commission also authorized using the Bobby Jones fund balance in the amount of $1.18 million, for costs related to the construction of the clubhouse.

author

Andrew Warfield

Andrew Warfield is the Sarasota Observer city reporter. He is a four-decade veteran of print media. A Florida native, he has spent most of his career in the Carolinas as a writer and editor, nearly a decade as co-founder and editor of a community newspaper in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.