To help the group tasked with facilitating an updated Sarasota downtown master plan to determine where it is going, it must first learn where it has been.
During its May 28 meeting, the city’s 13-member Downtown Master Plan 2020 Update Committee heard from five witnesses who were here when the adoption of current plan came in the early 2000s. All five played a key role in the plan drafted by Duany-Plater-Zyberk & Company, led by New Urbanism guru, Andres Duany.
“The five presenters are really eyewitnesses to history,” said committee Chairman Howard Davis. “Twenty-five years ago when the current plan was done, everybody here (to present) was in Sarasota and involved in the preparation of the plan, so we’re getting the first-hand information from eyewitnesses to history.”
Each presenter brought a different perspective to the creation of the current plan. They included David Smith, manager of long-range planning for the city of Sarasota, who is the only remaining planning staff member from the time of the written plan.
Smith laid out the history of the city’s downtown plan efforts, which began with its first master plan in 1986 when the City Commission created a Community Redevelopment Agency for downtown. As difficult as it may be for newcomers to imagine, downtown Sarasota was considered blighted.
“A CRA is a public agency created to carry out redevelopment of an area due to blight or slum conditions,” Smith told the panel. “In September of 1986, the City Commission approved a resolution with a finding of slum or blight in the downtown area and created the Community Redevelopment Agency for the purpose of rehabilitating the redevelopment area and eradicating the conditions of slum or blight.”