What should Sarasota's Main Street look like in 20 years?

What Main Street in downtown Sarasota should look like depends on whom you ask. 

For merchants, it should have convenient parking for customers directly outside their doors. For visitors, walkability may be most important. Or perhaps it should be a part-time pedestrian mall.

Whatever the vision, the public will get its first official look at the developing plan for the city’s Main Street Complete Street project during a planning and design public meeting at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, May 21, at Selby Library in downtown. 

There, according to a city-issued flyer, the public is “invited to shape how Main Street will look, feel and function for years to come.” Participants will have an opportunity to:

• Explore design concepts
• Share their input
• Help shape the future of Main Street

Courtesy image

“We are going to give backgrounds of the visioning exercise from community outreach that we've done so far while also sharing the progress that we've made since the beginning,” said Chief Transportation Planner Corinne Arriaga. “What we are going to present to the public is different concepts of what the look and feel of Main Street would be — really the aesthetics of it — which wasn't covered in the visioning phase. 

“Now we're looking at full thematic concepts of what people really want to see out on Main Street for the next 20 years.”

A complete street concept is a roadway designed to provide safe multimodal transportation options for all users including motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders. From a functional perspective, for Main Street that means wider sidewalks, redesigned street crossings, speed control elements and more. Some of those measures, as emerged from the visioning process, require a reduction of on-street parking on some blocks by converting angle parking to space-saving parallel spaces, perhaps the most controversial aspect of the plan.

Merchants argue that fewer parking spaces closer to their businesses will result in a loss of customers who will choose more convenient options. 

Compete streets also address aesthetics such as pavement materials, landscaping and other human-scale features. The workshop, Arriaga said, will provide opportunity for the public to provide input on the current schemes.

“Everything is really conceptual at this point,” she said. “There are visuals to give people ideas of how we want the hardscaping would look, what the Florida-friendly and Florida-native plant palette is going to be and how the plantings are dispersed through the corridor.”

The Main Street project covers the 1.2-mile stretch between U.S. 41 and School Avenue. The visioning process was completed on Sept. 2. 2025 when the Sarasota City Commission approved by a 4-1 vote advancing the project to the planning and design phase in partnership with land use consulting firm Kimley-Horn. Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch cast the dissenting vote, citing the potential loss of some 100 parking spaces and how that may impact businesses. 

Arriaga is encouraging robust public engagement in the Main Street project.

“It's really important for people to show up and provide their thoughts and feedback on this because the outcome of this will be a final concept that hopefully gets implemented for the next 20 to 30 years,” she said. “This will really reflect the community's desire for the look and feel of Main Street for many years to come, so we hope people get engaged and share their feedback that's constructive so we can develop a final solution that the community loves.”