Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/100825
Sarasota News Leader December 28, 2012 Page 35 JUNE 12 ���We have discussed a figure of $1,000,��� Reid said. ���That has been done in both Manatee A city review committee has selected a bou- County and also Longboat in the past year.��� tique hotel over a conventional Embassy ��������� Suites to be built adjacent to the Palm Avenue parking garage. Angus Rogers, the head of the The Midnight Pass Society has re-filed a lawwinning Floridays Development Corp., briefs suit in federal court, seeking judicial orders the Downtown Improvement District about requiring the appropriate Sarasota County, the project, saying the 180-room ���lifestyle hoState of Florida and U.S. officials to issue pertel��� will be dedicated to being accessible to mits necessary for the reopening of Midnight the arts. It will feature a two-story-tall lobby Pass between Siesta and Casey keys. The case along Cocoanut Avenue that he says will be a was filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle ���performance and display space,��� adding, ���It District of Florida in Tampa. ���We���re looking will have a restaurant, and we will own it and to get relief,��� Jim Herbert, chairman of the it will be open for breakfast and lunch so we 2,000-member Midnight Pass Society, tells The can control the guest experience.��� Floridays Sarasota News Leader. ���It���s been a long time beat a 200-room Embassy Suites proposal now,��� he adds, noting the pass was closed in fielded by the Bridges-McKibbon team from 1983. The defendants are Sarasota County, the Tampa and Gainesville, GA. The next step for Florida Department of Environmental ProRogers is preparing a ���term sheet��� to present tection, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conserto the Community Redevelopment Agency vation Commission, the U.S. Environmental Advisory Board on June 28. That board���s recProtection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of ommendation will then go to the City ComEngineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Sermission, sitting as the Community Redevelvice. The lawsuit was filed under the citizen opment Agency. suit provisions of the federal Clean Water and Endangered species acts, it says. ��������� After years of declining property tax revenue and budget shortfalls, Sarasota County Administrator Randy Reid delivers some positive news about the county���s economic condition and brings up a rare-in-these-times proposal during a County Commission budget workshop: a lump sum boost to employees��� bottom lines. During his opening comments to the board, Reid floats the possibility of offering ���non-bargaining unit��� ��� i.e. non-union ��� employees a ���lump sum-type payment��� that would be paid out just after the 2013 fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. Reid says many of those employees had not seen a raise in five years. A Sarasota County Geographic Information Systems map shows an aerial view of the location where Midnight Pass once flowed. Plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in June hope it will flow again. Image courtesy Sarasota County