65-foot-tall residential towers would loom over single-family homes in Pine Shores Estates
A reconfiguration of the layout of the Siesta Promenade mixed-use project near Siesta Key will necessitate new public hearings before the Sarasota County Planning Commission and the County Commission, The Sarasota News Leaderhas learned.
A revised Binding Development Concept Plan submitted to county Planning and Development Services Department staff on March 9 shows all five of the proposed residential structures — plus a 50-foot-tall building planned to contain a restaurant, as well as retail and office space — in a line bordering the adjacent Pine Shores Estates neighborhood, the News Leader learned through a public records request.
Moreover, three of the five residential structures would stand 65 feet in height, based on the Building Legend that accompanies the Binding Development Concept Plan.
The Binding Development Concept Plan that the County Commission approved on Dec. 12, 2018, showed only three of the residential buildings on the border of the neighborhood. None of them was to exceed 40 feet in height. The 50-foot-tall commercial building with the restaurant and retail and office space appeared to be separated from Pine Shores homes by a wider stretch of landscape buffering, as well.
During the 2018 public hearing, then-Commissioner Charles Hines questioned Todd Mathes, Benderson’s director of development, about the height of the buildings planned next to the neighborhood. Hines said he was struggling with the idea that even the three-story buildings would be compatible with the adjacent single-family homes.
“If I wake up in the morning and get the newspaper [outside], what is the feel of that height [when I look up]?” Hines continued.
The buildings closest to Pine Shores will stand 40 feet, Mathes replied during the hearing. The goal, Mathes explained, was to transition from the residential buildings closer to the neighborhood to the commercial structures adjacent to U.S. 41.
The new plan, as of March 9, also includes parallel parking spaces along Glencoe Avenue, on the perimeter of the development. Glencoe is a primary street in Pine Shores Estates. Those spaces were not featured in the 2018 plan, either.
The revised plans further reflect the fact that two single-family home parcels in Pine Shores, which a Benderson affiliate purchased in 2019, will be made part of the development site.
In response to News Leader questions this week, county Planning and Development staff wrote, “Addition of parcels and incorporation into the Siesta Promenade development requires a rezoning and amendment to the binding development concept plan and a Critical Area Plan amendment.”
When the County Commission approved the Siesta Promenade layout and building details in December 2018, it also approved a Critical Area Plan (CAP) designation for the project. Though a CAP typically encompasses the area around a development site, in an effort to provide coordinated planning for that area, Siesta Promenade is the only element of that 2018 CAP.
In response to a News Leader question about when staff would anticipate the new Planning and County commission hearings to be conducted on the proposal, Planning and Development staff wrote, “Application is currently in Formal review with no public hearings scheduled. Once we have a [Neighborhood Workshop] date and Formal review is complete, the public hearings can be scheduled. Planning Commission would be a minimum of two weeks after [the Neighborhood Workshop].”
County regulations require a developer to host such a workshop for residents and property owners within 750 square feet of a project site, so those individuals can be informed of the plans and have an opportunity to ask questions and receive answers to those questions.
A stop-and-start process
In September 2020, the News Leader reported, Benderson Development Co. — whose affiliate Siesta 41 Associates LLP formally is the developer of Siesta Promenade — submitted an application to county Planning and Development staff, seeking the rezoning of the two single-family parcels it had purchased in Pine Shore Estates so the company could add them to the approximately 24-acre Siesta Promenade site.
Sarasota County Property Appraiser’s Office records show that, in August 2019, Siesta 41 Associates LLP paid $825,000 for the parcel at 6331 Glencoe Ave. The company purchased the adjacent parcel, located at 6339 Glencoe Ave., on the same day — Aug. 14, 2019 — and paid the same amount of money for it, the Property Appraiser’s Office records say.
As of June 2020, according to materials that Mathes, Benderson’s director of development, provided county staff, Benderson was seeking to increase the number of residential units in the Siesta Promenade site plan from 479 to 495. In approving the December 2018 site plan, the County Commission agreed to 414 apartments/condominiums, a 130-room hotel, 133,000 square feet of retail space and 7,000 square feet of office space. Each hotel room counted then as two residential units.
A county Development Review Committee (DRC) document, completed on the basis of a July 16, 2020 review of the preliminary Siesta 41 Associates application, noted that adding the 0.78 acres encompassed by the two new parcels would necessitate applications reflecting a revised Development Concept Plan and revised stipulations for Siesta Promenade.
The DRC comprises representatives of each county department that is involved in land development. Those individuals provide recommendations to applicants about proposals and, routinely, seek more information on specific facets of building plans, to ensure a project will comply with county regulations.
Further, that 2020 DRC document said that Siesta 41 Associates would be required to undertake another traffic impact analysis, to reflect the addition of the two Pine Shores parcels.
However, almost exactly a year later — on July 29, 2021 — a representative of the Kimley-Horn consulting firm in Sarasota, which has worked with Benderson Development on Siesta Promenade plans for years, reported during a Neighborhood Workshop that the company no longer was seeking an increase in the number of residential units within Siesta Promenade.
Philip DiMaria, a project manager in planning, stressed that fact a number of times during the workshop, which was conducted with residents living near the Siesta Promenade site — including many in Pine Shores Estates — so they could discuss potential traffic-calming measures, as the County Commission had required during its December 2018 public hearing.
“There are no [proposed] amendments to increase densities or intensities on the project site” or to modify the development plans the County Commission approved, or the 16 stipulations that were part of those plans, DiMaria told the approximately 10 workshop participants.
“In fact,” he continued, by adding the two new parcels to the site plan, “This essentially decreased the development intensity and density.” The extra lots will allow for “additional open space for the overall project development,” DiMaria said.
Moreover, he pointed out, “I can say that there would not be any additional encroachment of height anticipated along Glencoe Avenue.” He reminded workshop participants that the Binding Development Concept Plan the county commissioners approved called for extra setback space between Siesta Promenade and the Pine Shores homes “along that corridor,” referring to Glencoe Avenue.
“Obviously, you’re not going to build anything higher,” Sura Kochman responded. “That would really not make much sense.”
Kochman is the Pine Shores Estates resident who, for years, led public opposition to the intensity of development that the Siesta Promenade plans posed. She has told the News Leader that, prior to the 2018 County Commission public hearing on Siesta Promenade, she talked on many occasions with Mathes, Benderson’s director of development, to try to persuade company leaders to plan a smaller project on the property.
Following that 2021 Neighborhood Workshop, the News Leader asked Mathes about the change in stance on the use of the extra acreage. Mathes replied in an Aug. 17, 2021 email: “[W]e are not looking to add any density to the project just the land. Everything else will be the same.”
Indeed, the March 9 configuration shows no increase in that density — just the inclusion of the two former single-family home parcels in the site plan and the changes in the placement of buildings next to Pine Shores Estates.
A zoning request
Then, in September 2022, Mathes sent a letter to Donna Thompson, the county’s zoning director, telling her that the company was requesting “confirmation that a planned modification to buildings 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 of Siesta Promenade is minor and may be authorized administratively.” All of those buildings had been planned for commercial uses, as shown on the Building Legend that the County Commission approved, and each of them was to be a single story, except for Building 9, which would contain two floors.
They would be on the eastern side of the property, close to U.S. 41.
He added the following “[h]ighlights of the modified binding Development Concept Plan”:
- “No change to stipulation or conditions;
- “No additional building area or height, and no new building reconfiguration within 100 feet of the project boundary (N, S, E or W);
- “No modifications to the perimeter of the property;
- “No net increase in total building area (total [square footage]);
- “No net decrease of open space or buffer areas;
- “No change in access.”
In a Sept. 20. 2022 letter to Mathes, Zoning Director Thompson concurred that the plans represented only a “minor modification.” Therefore, she added, the new site plan would “become the binding development concept plan associated with [County Commission’s 2018 vote].”
The October 2022 workshop
Subsequently, last year, DiMaria of Kimley-Horn submitted an application to county Planning staff, explaining plans for an Oct. 4, 2022 Neighborhood Workshop regarding the addition of the two single-family home parcels to the Siesta Promenade site.
The event would be conducted via Zoom, the application said.
That workshop was a required county step in Benderson’s plans to rezone the parcels from Medium Density Residential to Commercial Center, as indicated in the application. The goal of that rezoning, the application continued, was “to provide a consistency of zoning designations between the subject properties and the adjacent properties under the same ownership and within the Siesta Promenade CAP.”
The application for that Neighborhood Workshop made no mention of the reconfiguration of buildings as depicted in the March 9 Binding Development Site Plan.
In its questions this week for the county Planning and Development Services staff, the News Leader also asked whether a new Neighborhood Workshop would be necessary, in light of the information contained in the application for the Oct. 4, 2022 event. Staff replied, “Planning Services is requiring a new neighborhood workshop prior to public hearings. Revised Binding Development Concept plan is required to be shown and discussed.”