Walkable Urbanism Tour of Sarasota

Last week, the Florida Chapter of APA, the Myakka Branch of the Florida Green Building Council and the Florida House (I am a Board member of the latter two organizations) sponsored a walk tour of two local projects, Citrus Square and Janie’s Garden.   Both have won awards for design and are wonderful examples of architecturally excellent, mixed use projects.

First, here is a digital booklet of the trip.  The tour provided the 30 participants a chance to critique the project designs for aspects of walkable tourism.  We used several checklists, including LEED for Neighborhood Design, to look at the various aspects of site design and location.

Citrus Square

I’ve written about Citrus Square before (see here).  It is a privately financed project with 20 residential units above first floor retail.  The details on the tour that garnered the most attention were:

• Financing – HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have caps on gross square feet of commercial space allowed in a mixed use project (from 15-25%).  The taller the building, the less the effect.  However, with two and three story buildings like Citrus Square, these caps make first floor retail in vertically mixed-use project difficult if not impossible.  The Congress for the New Urbanism has a task force called Live/Work/Walk to address this barrier to better redevelopment. 
• Parking – Parking is distributed throughout the site, both on-street and on-site. 
• Unit size – the size of the units are small, with the smallest units (550 ft2) among the most popular.
• Cost – the cost of the highly detailed molding added about 10% to the project costs, lower than typically assumed.

Janie’s Garden

First, we were joined by Vice Mayor Willie Shaw, who happened to be biking by (at the top of every walk tour leader’s wish list when showing off walkable, bikable communities) Janie’s Garden is a multi-phase, Hope VI mixed use project.  Bill Russell, head of the Sarasota Housing Authority led the tour, and the following points were highlights

• Financing – the financing was different from Citrus Square, instead using tax credits, which are a common mechanism for financing affordable housing.   The developer and manager of Janie’s Garden is the Michael’s Company, a national leader in affordable housing development. 
• Use mix – The first business, is now open in The Market Place in Phase 2 of Janie’s Garden along Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. 
• Transportation – The route for Sarasota’s bus rapid transit project is currently planned to serve this area, with a stop at Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Lemon Street.  There is some discussion on moving the route three blocks west to US 41, given the existing business and infrastructure there and new rules from the Federal Transit Administration that now favor economic development over speed.   No matter where the route eventually runs, Janie’s gardens would benefit from better links to US 41 via infrastructure, commercial activity and interaction with institutions along US 41.  For example, the retail and housing at Janie’s Garden could help support artists in the area.

Two conversations emerged that will be further explored in any future tour:

• Building Articulation – This may seem like an oddball term to non-architects.  The best way to think about articulation is the opposite: continuity.  Next time you are at a big box store, the flat walls flush doorways and lack of ornamentation are continuous design which gives the impression of large blank walls and canyons.  Walkable urbanism thrives on the opposite, where molding, windows, doors awnings and the like break up the buildings visually while still maintaining a sense of a coherent built environment. 
• The Underside of Balconies - One of the unexpected focal points from both tours was the attention to the undersides of balconies. Pedestrians are always looking around, including up.  The undersides of balconies are just one more opportunity to make the walk that much more interesting.

This was not so much new attention to balconies, but rather an important lesson in designing for slower speeds.  At 50 or 60 miles an hour, there is little need for detail.  However those who are walking and driving slowly will need to be engaged, even delighted, with what they encounter.  Quality materials, quality and interesting detail are critical not just the grist of design manuals, but your transporation and economic plans as well.

A New Kind of Tourism

This is Dave Brook from Portland.  Dave found himself in Sarasota like many other tourists: visiting a retired relative.  While Dave had a chance to visit the Ringling Museum and St. Armand's Circle, he contacted me because he heard Sarasota has some neat transportation innovation underway.  Dave, you see, started the first car-share company in Portland, that later morphed into FlexCar, and then merged with Zipcar.  Dave is a transportation rock star (his blog is here), and now goes around the world consulting on how to start vehicle share programs.   Dave had seen enough Rococo art, and was ready for some solar-electric battery tourism.

I took Dave to CruiseCar, where the folks there rolled out the red carpet for a visit.  Now, as Dave circles the globe, he will be talking about the mind-blowing things going on here with an entirely new type of electric vehicle production.

All of this happened by a lark.  But is there a way to make this less of happenstance and more of an integral part of how we approach tourism?  Not the sunbathing, golfing, umbrella in the drink, Tiki Hut kind (not that there's anything wrong with that), but brainy, show-offy, bragging rights tourism.  At any given time, we have people who are tops in fields like engineering, architecture, foreign affairs, and the like.  They get bored, tired of relatives, or encounter rainy days.  What if we had a mobile GWIZ for grown-ups?

What could we do?  There are two types - (1) passive self-directed tours, and (2) tours led by local volunteers or businesses.  Examples might be:

1) Topical - Last month the Director of EPA's water program came to see what Sarasota was doing for water.  She toured the Celery Fields and other projects.  We also have loads of Low Impact and water conservation projects, LEED certified buildings and the Dearborn Street retrofit project in Englewood.  While this may not float your boat (so to speak), these types of projects are catching on like wildfire across the country.  People pay big money for mobile tours at national trade conferences to see local projects.  Because Sarasota is not on the larger conference circuit, we need to figure out a different way to display local ingenuity.

2)  Neighborhoods - Arlington Virginia sponsors Walkabouts, which are self-guided tours featuring historic properties and information on local parks to name a few topics.  Laurel Park would be perfect for architecture buffs seeking older Florida styles, Low Impact Design, older alleyways, and even some of the older houses built to house circus performers. 

3)  Buildings - As you know, I love Citrus Square.  One of the merchants, who also loves the building, mentioned a desire to have a little brochure on the building and its design.  There are certainly other buildings and building types which have local champions, such as the Sarasota School of Architecture.

4) Business-Led - I am a design person, so I would leave it up to the community to brainstorm other types of tours and things to see business wise. 

 Thoughts?