Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/235968
Sarasota News Leader January 3, 2014 The chairwoman of the Sarasota County School Board says district staff will work with representatives of local architectural firms and preservationists on a way to try to save at least part of the interior of a Paul Rudolphdesigned building at Sarasota High School. Although School Board members said earlier they did not plan to accommodate requests to preserve the interior of the building, designed in 1958 by the world-renowned architect, Jane Goodwin tells the approximately 60 people attending the Jan. 18 Convocation of Governments at Sarasota County Technical Institute that she met on Jan. 15 with Sarasota Architectural Foundation board members and "discussed going back to the drawing board …" As part of a mobility study, the City of Sarasota is considering laying down rails for a streetcar route in and around downtown. On Jan. 22, the Downtown Improvement District members hear consultants say streetcars are more than just a way to get around. The vehicles are Page 12 just one aspect of the study, which includes buses, bicycles, pedestrians and even baby buggies. "It's 20 percent about moving people and 80 percent about economic development," says downtown business owner Forrest Shaw. "Streetcars create transit corridors that attract development that creates a measurable return on investment." Because only one company initially bid on the Siesta Key stormwater project by the due date of Jan. 9, the Sarasota County Procurement Department extended the deadline until Jan. 23 — action that netted three bids, The Sarasota News Leader learns. However, the lowest of those bids was about $4.3 million — almost three times the $1.5 million expense county staff estimated for the construction. The county's chief engineer, James K. Harriott Jr., writes the commissioners in a Jan. 23 email, "I have asked staff to review the estimate work and determine why there was such a large discrepancy" between the bids and the estimate. Preservationists are asking the School Board not to modify the interior of the Paul Rudolph-designed Building 4 on the Sarasota High School campus. Photo by Norman Schimmel