In late April, city’s Development Services Department provided full sign-off on rezoning plan
With Benderson Development Co. having received full sign-off on April 22 from the City of Sarasota’s Development Services Department regarding its application for rezoning part of the property located at 1660 Ringing Blvd., the company has been notified that a public hearing on its plans tentatively has been scheduled for the city’s Planning Board meeting on July 8.
That news came in an April 27 letter from city Development Review Planner Devynn Glanz to Philip DiMaria, a planner with the Kimley-Horn consulting firm in Sarasota, who is working as an agent for Benderson.
The City Commission will have final say on the proposal, city staff has pointed out in documents that The Sarasota News Leader received through a public records request. Those include a proposed amendment to what is called the City Plan, which is the municipality’s comprehensive plan, used to guide growth in the community. The amendment calls for changing the future land use designation of 1 acre of the 1660 Ringling Blvd. site from Downtown Core and Urban Edge to Downtown Core.
The April 22 Certificate of Concurrency that Lucia Panica, director of the city’s Development Services Department, sent to DiMaria indicated that Benderson had satisfied all of that department’s questions regarding the plan to rezone the southern portion of the Ringling Boulevard parcel from Downtown Edge to Downtown Core. The latter zoning district allows for structures up to 10 feet in height. Downtown Edge zoning limits height to five stories.
The company is planning on “adaptive reuse” of the former Sarasota County Administration Center building, which comprises six floors on the site. DiMaria has explained in a June 8 package he submitted to the Office of the City Auditor and Clerk that receiving final approval of the company’s application “would permit the redevelopment of the [structure] either within its existing footprint or with modest expansion …”
The Ringling Boulevard property is the former site of the Sarasota County Government operations in Sarasota. Benderson bought that parcel and two adjoining properties from the county in late 2021 for $25 million. The company had allowed county personnel to continue to use the facilities through the end of 2025, with rent of $1 million per year. Formally, a Benderson affiliate, CCB Associates 1 LLC, is the owner of the 1660 Ringling Blvd property. It shares the company address of 7978 Cooper Creek Blvd. in University Park, off University Parkway.
The County Commission that approved the sale of the land had anticipated that a new North County Administration Center would be complete off Fruitville Road, near to the Celery Fields, by the end of last year. However, as commissioners have noted during meetings, problems related to construction of that facility have delayed the county government staff from being able to occupy it thus far.
The June update on the undertaking, prepared by county Capital Projects Department staff, says the construction will be complete early this summer.
Plans in progress
In the documents that DiMaria of Kimly-Horn submitted to the Office of the City Auditor and Clerk on June 8, he noted that the Ringling Boulevard parcel comprises 2.88 acres, split between the city’s Downtown Core and Downtown Edge zoning districts.
A Proffer Statement in the June 8 materials, which city staff and DiMaria signed on Nov. 19, 2025, stipulates that the plans for the property will include no more than 38,000 square feet of retail space.
A narrative in one of the documents explains that Benderson staff members originally envisioned a project comprising three parcels. However, the decision was made to limit it just to the 1660 Ringling Blvd. property. As DiMaria described the change, “The proposal is limited to the area north of Morrill Street. As a result, the existing transition from DTC [Downtown Core] to DTE [Downtown Edge] and the adjacent [residential parcel, zoned for both single- and multiple-family dwellings] south of Morrill Street and the existing parking lot will be preserved.”
Further, he explained, “The proposed Future Land Use and Zoning [comprehensive plan] Amendment supports the principles of New Urbanism and aligns with the goals established within the Sarasota City Plan. The Applicant intends to embark on a redevelopment that promotes a vibrant, walkable environment along Ringling Boulevard, complementing the recent Complete Street improvements. This amendment enables the adaptive reuse of the existing building, allowing vertical expansion while utilizing existing infrastructure. By emphasizing upward expansion rather than outward, the project reduces environmental impact and construction waste while preserving the building’s structural integrity. The adaptive reuse will activate the streetscape, support multimodal transportation, and enhance nearby public spaces like Charles Ringling Park, furthering the City’s vision for a connected, livable urban corridor on Ringling Blvd. Additionally there will be economic development benefits of attracting employees and supporting a diversity of land uses downtown.”
A Dec. 18 2025 a summary of a community workshop that representatives of Benderson conducted on Dec. 17, 2025, which was included among the June 8 materials provided to the Office of the City Auditor and Clerk said that the renovations to the solitary acre of the site may include “an on-site parking garage.”
It further noted, “We are going to take the building up in height if we are approved to do that, but we are going to make sense of how we do it. That top floor office tenant space will want some outdoor patio space facing the Bay, etc.”
The summary also pointed out that one of the attendees asked whether the potential exists for a small hotel on the site of the existing parking lot west of the existing building. The answer follows: “We are not far enough along in terms of the hotel question, but it is a possibility. What is different between now and two years ago is that we are very certain that there is office demand downtown that needs to be accommodated. We want to put offices in that building. In terms of retail, because it would be on the ground floor of the existing building, the likelihood of making a very large restaurant functional and feasible is low. It is probably a smaller footprint. For retail, they will probably be smaller boutique type spaces because a lot of the space is common space needed to get up to the upper floors. We want to activate the street-facing retail because it will add vibrancy to the building and suit the office use well. [A] second building could be residential, hotel or other use that has not yet been determined.”
Further, the summary said, “We are not proposing any changes between the front of the building and Ringling Blvd. There is a lot of real estate there, and in my mind there is room for a really nice patio for a restaurant.”
In the formal rezoning application submitted to city staff on Feb. 25, DiMaria pointed out that when the company held an initial Community Workshop on Aug. 1, 2023, to receive comments “from neighborhood residents on the original proposal for redevelopment of the Property … [n]eighbors expressed concerns regarding design, traffic, and the impact of … proposed [Comprehensive Plan] amendments.”
As a result, he continued, Benderson partnered with Torti Gallas + Partners to “[engage] with the [adjacent] Laurel Park community through a 3-day charrette” that was conducted Oct. 3-5, 2023. DiMaria added, “The Charrette provided valuable feedback to shape a development plan for the Property and to study alternative means of redevelopment on the site.”