Why Everybody's Talking About The New Downtown

Sometimes you can plan and study and recommend, then study a little more, trying to get everything exactly right. And then, while you’re busy putting the pieces together and trying to make everybody happy, something else happens. Your problem solves itself. Things come together in their highly imperfect and serendipitous way, and somehow, the result just works.

That’s what is happening with downtown Sarasota. For years we’ve been trying to figure out how to fix it, how to get it to reach its full potential. There’s been a Duany Plan, a Vision 2050, an Overlay District, a Downtown Master Plan, and numerous others. We’re still dithering.

But this year is different. There’s a question on everybody’s lips: “Have you been downtown lately?”

Downtown has finally come into its own.

I realized this one Saturday this winter. In Burns Court, right next to our office, hundreds of people had come to the Chalk Festival, where artists draw big, colorful illustrations on the pavement of Pineapple Avenue. A long line waited to buy tickets outside nearby Burns Court Cinema. A few blocks away on Main Street, the annual gay pride event had drawn all sorts of participants and spectators, and as the vendors broke down the Saturday Farmer’s Market at Main and Lemon, people of every age were flooding nearby shops and restaurants. There was barely enough space on the sidewalks to fit us all.

And this was early afternoon—hours from when downtown really sparks into weekend life, as the arts crowd streams into the theaters, restaurants overflow with patrons, and 20-somethings begin planning which downtown bars they’ll hit in the hours ahead.

I realized again that downtown was on a roll a month or so ago, when we gathered some of the town’s top real estate agents to pick Sarasota’s top neighborhood for our Best of 2011 issue. We thought they’d squabble for hours, but within minutes, our judges had unanimously chosen the winner: downtown.

Why is it suddenly downtown Sarasota’s moment?

Some reasons are obvious. The restaurant explosion, the fancy new apartment buildings, the expanded retail. But other, smaller reasons are just as significant. Take those lights on the trees in Five Points Park. Who would have thought that hanging up colored lights would make such a big difference? Those lights with their ever-changing hues and patterns have become an instant landmark, something to show to visitors, and, most important, another reason to love downtown.

And who would have thought that Main Street would be so perfect for sidewalk cafes? The sidewalks are narrow, there’s traffic going by, people parking cars—but once they got up and running, the cafes work like a charm. There are 20 or so of them now, from Epicure, with its fashionable crowd enjoying espresso and Italian classics, to the folks vying for sidewalk seats at C’est La Vie, where the French croissants and waitstaff are equally authentic. Every café is a little different, and together they offer the best people-watching in town. 

Even the new traffic roundabout at Five Points that caused such controversy is a success. Not only does it function perfectly, just like they said it would, but its tiny scale and pretty plantings make it an architectural delight. (Now if they’ll only add that wonderful World War I statue of a fighting doughboy that originally stood there. It’s been relegated down to the park on Gulfstream.)

Experts tell us people like cities for the food, the attractions, the ease of transportation, the architecture. But they love cities for more intangible reasons—small emotional moments and the beauty of an unexpected vignette. Downtown Sarasota has more than its share. And on a balmy evening, with a breeze from the Gulf and live music somewhere in the distance, cool-looking people passing by and the promise of a new bar to check out, there’s a lot to love.

Downtown Sarasota has very definite boundaries, and they are delineated by a perimeter of busy, five- and six-lane streets that can be harder to cross than the Amazon River. It seems simple enough—you just press a button on the corner and the light eventually changes. What happens in reality is you can never figure out when you’re supposed to cross, and the traffic can’t, either. Unless you’re quick on your feet, you have a tendency to give up and stay where you are.

And where are you, exactly?