Development Review Committee concerns expressed in May also addressed
On July 11, almost exactly two months after they last addressed the City of Sarasota’s Development Review Committee (DRC), the members of the project team behind the proposed 327-foot-tall condominium tower identified as the 1260 N. Palm Residences finally submitted responses to DRC concerns raised earlier this year about the team’s revised plans.
Moreover, in the same document, the team — led by consultant Joel Freedman, whose eponymous firm is located in Sarasota — included amended adjustments that it is seeking from city staff.
Freedman cited the Florida Building Code, the city Zoning Code and the city’s Engineering Design Criteria Manual as the reason for the latest changes.
Among the responses to DRC concerns, the project team addressed a request to “explore additional methods to further activate the 2nd Floor Retail and Resident Access Lobby on the first floor.”
The reply was, “The lobby areas will have additional display areas at the windows, which will activate the façade from the street.”
In his May 13 correspondence with the project team, Noah Fossick, acting chief planner for the city, had acknowledged that greater activation “could negatively affect the request for a reduction in retail frontage.”
During the May 15 DRC meeting, Alison Christie, general manager of the city’s Development Services Department, engaged in an exchange with George Scarfe, associate principal of Hoyt Architects in Sarasota and a member of the project team, in regard to that issue.
She pointed out that Fossick was unable to attend that May 15 session.
The DRC comprises the members of city staff who review land-use applications to ensure that new development will comply with all the applicable city policies and regulations. A Sarasota County Fire Department representative participates in the process, as well.
Moreover, Fossick had suggested in his May 13 letter to the project team that “the width of the access from N. Palm Avenue could be further reduced, which would lessen the requested adjustments to parallel façade coverage, habitable space, and required retail frontage.”
The July 11 response to that comment says, “[T]he team has explored sight lines and believes that pedestrian safety would be diminished if the opening in the façade were reduced. Sight lines for pedestrians and for exiting vehicles is [sic] the best means to ensure maneuvering to avoid conflicts.”
As for the adjustments: Freedman’s July 11 letter to Fossick proposes the following, the first of which is unchanged from his request in the revised application submitted to city staff in February:
- A 19.9% reduction in the façade coverage on the ground floor, parallel to North Palm Avenue, from 133.34 feet to 106.81. feet, to provide Florida Power & Light Co. transformer access and to allow for a driveway and utility access.
- An adjustment of 6.5% for habitable space on the ground floor, from 105.87 feet to 99.2 feet, “to provide pedestrian access to the parking garage directly from a frontage line,” as required by the City Code. That adjustment is up from 5.5%, which was cited in the February application.
- A 7.9% reduction in habitable space on the second floor, from 146.62 feet to 135 feet, “to provide a fire command center in a location approved by the Fire [Marshal].” This request, too, has changed. In the February application, the figure cited was 7.4% for the second floor, from 146.65 feet to 135.83 feet.
The July 11 document explains that those second-floor changes are necessary to comply with the Florida Building Code, which “requires that access by way of stairs be provided from a frontage street. Palm Avenue is the only street adjacent to the site,” the document points out. Nonetheless, the document says, “The proposed ground level meets the intent of the regulation by providing greater depth of retail/sales/office space on the ground level … The FBC [Florida Building Code],” it adds, “takes precedence over the Zoning Code, so the Owner cannot be penalized for complying with the FBC.”
- A 9.3% adjustment in the retail, service or office frontage on the ground level, from 106.81 feet to 96.9 feet, “to accommodate required stairs to the second level and required garage entrance.”
The adjustment for the retail frontage alone is 20.5%, the document adds. That is necessary to accommodate a “stair exit passageway” that will be 4 feet wide, it points out, in accord with the Florida Building Code. However, the document says, “It should also be noted that the retail on the ground floor has been dramatically increased from 640 [square feet] in the 2023 plan to a total of 6,124 [square feet in this plan].”
Moreover, the document references complaints of residents of the adjacent Bay Plaza regarding how close the new building would stand to their complex. “As a matter of fact,” the July 11 project team document points out, “the Echelon and 624 Palm condominiums on Palm Avenue are closer together than the proposed [1260 N. Palm Residences] will be to Bay Plaza. Yet condominiums in [those other two complexes] have appreciated greatly since construction and are currently selling for [$4 million to $6 million]. Close proximity is expected in an urban area and does not negatively affect value,” the July 11 document adds.
As city Development Services reports point out, the 1260 N. Palm Residences would be 18 stories tall, with 14 condominium units in a “mixed-use building with 6,350 square feet of nonresidential space on a 12,377 square foot parcel” on North Palm Avenue.
The building’s original height was 342 feet.
The property comprises seven parcels where multiple retail establishments stand, partly across from the Art Ovation Hotel.
Which name is the right one?
Among other issues that arose during the May 15 DRC meeting, architect Scarfe of the project team pointed out, “One thing I do want to clarify” is that while the name Obsidian has “been put out in the public quite often,” the original application used the same name as the revised, February application: the 1260 N. Palm Residences.
“Understood,” Christie of the Development Services Department, replied.
Nonetheless, area residents have continued to call the building the Obsidian. The News Leader confirmed this week that at least four websites — one that appears to have been created in collaboration with the developer; the second, representing Realtor Michael Saunders & Co.; the third, the Sarasota Homes website; and the fourth, the PS Design Workshop website, still call the project the Obsidian. (Sarasota Homes does note on its webpages, however, that the building was constructed in 2023. Still, details about “the Obsidian Residences” are readily available on those pages.)
City attorney addresses administrative review issue
City regulations allow the project team for the 1260 N. Palm Residences to seek what is called “administrative approval” for the development. That means that as long as the city’s Development Services staff members believe that the design of the structure complies with city regulations and policies, the staff members can sign off on the construction without any need for a city Planning Board hearing or a City Commission hearing.
In fact, in her July 19 update to City Manager Marlon Brown regarding the status of applications that have been submitted to the city, Development Services Director Lucia Panica pointed out that, following the May 15 meeting, the 1260 N. Palm Residences project team had achieved “partial sign-off.”
Nonetheless, members of the public keep appearing at Sarasota City Commission meetings to protest the plans for the building.
During the July 15 commission meeting, in response to comments made by Commissioner Debbie Trice, City Attorney Robert Fournier noted the specific circumstances that would lead to the commission’s having to take a vote on the project.
- 1. Panica has to decide whether the application, with adjustments made by the project team, can be approved.
- 2. Someone who qualifies as an “aggrieved person” has to appeal her decision.
- 3. The appeal would be heard by the city Planning Board members, who would make their own decision.
- 4. Again, an individual qualifying as an “aggrieved person” would have to appeal the Planning Board decision.
- 5. The City Commission would conduct what is called a “quasi-judicial public hearing,” after which the members would make their decision on the basis of evidence and testimony, akin to the process during a court hearing.
Mayor Liz Alpert stressed that the decision following a quasi-judicial hearing cannot be based on commissioners’ personal opinions. “It’s based on competent, substantial evidence,” Alpert pointed out, using the phrase routinely used in reference to quasi-judicial proceedings.
Fournier did add that public comments made during such hearings can be taken into account.
In response to the original application for the condominium complex — filed in October 2022 — Development Services Director Panica denied one requested adjustment and told the project team that a second one would have to be considered by the city Planning Board.
During a Jan. 10 hearing, the Planning Board members denied the request to modify the façade of the building. Instead of filing an appeal with the City Commission, as consultant Freedman explained in the February application, the decision to file a new site plan “has given [the developer, Michael Kihnke, president of MK Equity] the opportunity to complete the staff review previously cut short [by the hearing] and to carefully consider all the comments received during the hearing.”
Freedman added, “The result is a much improved site plan and reduced adjustments,” he pointed out, “all of which may now be approved administratively under the Zoning Code.”
The DRC deemed the second application incomplete on Feb. 16, a day after it was submitted, Panica’s July 19 update to City Manager Brown pointed out.
On March 1, the project team submitted its response to the initial DRC comments. However, in early April, the DRC ended up requiring another resubmittal of materials; that information was submitted on April 8, Panica has noted.
‘Habitable space’ clarifications
Yet another issue that Acting Chief Planner Fossick had raised — which Development Services General Manager Christie raised during the May 15 DRC meeting — was the fact the “trash room[s] located on the first and second floors [do] not meet the definition of habitable space.”
Architect Scarfe told Christie that the trash rooms are habitable spaces, adding, “We can explain it further.”
However, this is the response in the July 11 document: “The trash chute has been relocated from the 1st two stories. The trash shall be deposited in the chute on upper floors and collected at the 2.5 level. Each day building staff shall [collect the] solid waste and deposit it in the ground level 95 gal. containers, located in the refuge & Recycling storage room. Adjustment to the habitable depth is no longer requested. The area noted is now the non-residential vestibule serving as access from the [Americans with Disabilities Act] and non-residential parking spaces to the non-residential lobbies.”
Yet another issue Christie addressed on Fossick’s behalf on May 15 regarded clarification about how non-residential clients and the public would access the assigned non-residential parking spaces for the complex.
The response to that in the July 11 document is thus: “Owners and tenants of the non-residential parking spaces will be provided with access control to access the garages. This is consistent with the access provided to the non-residential art studio and office/music studios located at the Jewel.”
Solid waste collection issues
Prior to the May 15 DRC meeting, Fossick also had questioned the plans for the solid waste collections from the new complex.
Section VII-1401(c)(7) of the City Code requires that solid waste “be placed on the premises for removal,” as Fossick had written in his May 13 comments to the project team. “To request removal of solid waste outside the premises due to a hardship, you must submit a request in writing to the city manager and explain the basis for the request,” he had added.
During the May 15 DRC meeting, architect Scarfe told Development Service Manger Christie, “We’re working on that now.”
In the July 11 document, the project team says that it is requesting that city staff stage the pick-up of seven 95-gallon containers. “Currently,” the document points out, “developments stage solid waste pick-up … along the alley.”
Then the team notes that six of the residential 95-gallon containers “are to be staged in accordance with [Section] 16-34 of the City of Sarasota Code of Ordinances.” The team wants to be able to place the seventh 95-gallon container “outside the premises,” in the alley, which — it asserts — “is consistent” with the placement of dumpsters belonging to The Jewel condominium complex in downtown Sarasota and Café Epicure on Palm Avenue.
Further, the July 11 document points out, “Commercial solid waste dumpsters and 95 gal. containers from Bay Plaza [are] picked up at alley,” while “Residential solid waste dumpsters from Bay Plaza [are] picked up at Palm Ave curb.”
Finally, the document notes, “City of Sarasota Palm Ave Garage commercial dumpsters [are] staged and picked up at alley.”
Further, Fossick had pointed out in his May 13 letter to the project team, regarding his review of the engineering plans for the building, that “to be classified as habitable space on the first and second floors, Stair 1 must be directly accessed from the residential and retail lobby. Habitable space is defined in [Section 11-201 of the City Code] as ‘Building space whose use involves human presence with direct view of the streets or open space.’ ”
Fossick had added, “Please revise the access to Stair 1 on the first and second floors or add to the adjustment requests [on one engineering sheet] that the depth of habitable space is reduced to accommodate Stair 1.”
The July 11 response from the project team was “Direct access from the lobby to the stairs has been provided. While the applicant believes this is not consistent with other habitable space interpretations, such access has been provided.”
Then the team included what it characterized as “snip from the Jewel where the stair was included in habitable space.”
Further, Fossick had asked for clarification of the height of the ground-floor retail space. He added, “Particularly, note the height of the space where the garage ramp travels above the ceiling.”
The response said that an engineering sheet included as part of the July 11 materials depicted the ceiling height at the ramp as 8 feet, “similar to existing retail ceilings.”