Where Is The Long Range Public Plan?
If you live in Sarasota east of the Interstate, or if you like to experience the country roads of rural Florida, prepare for the shock of large-scale development. Several super-sized housing tracts are coming to East Sarasota. Four projects alone will add nearly 28,000 housing units on 20,705 acres.
The four largest are Waterside at Lakewood Ranch (Rex Jensen), Hi Hat (Turner), LT Ranch (Turner) and Grand Lakes (Pat Neal). Stretching from University down to 681 near Venice in East Sarasota, these ambitious projects will replace East Sarasota’s rural ranchlands and open space with huge tracts of housing.
And more gated housing projects are coming, including Lindvest, Lakepark Estates, Worthington, Palmer Place, Sylvan Lea, Hidden Creek, Rivo Lakes and more.
While quickly granting concessions to private developers, Sarasota County’s elected Board displays no evident awareness of its civic responsibility to gauge cumulative impacts, nor, as the public steward of the land, to integrate these impacts within a larger vision of intrinsic tradition and commitment to public uses. One looks in vain for a discussion of bringing greenways or waterways into alignment to create walking paths, wildlife corridors, kayakable sloughs and riding trails that could offer the people of Sarasota public recreation North to South, and East to West.
Click HERE [1] for more information.
Information courtesy of Citizens for Sarasota County.
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