Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/235968
Sarasota News Leader January 3, 2014 Page 92 downtown. The Sarasota city commissioners care about the form," and struggles to explain voted in July to install brick pavers at the four some of the planning jargon, audience memcrosswalks at that intersection. bers grow restive. "It is unfortunate we had representatives at the meeting who had no experience in land use or zoning regulations," On Saturday, Sept. 6, a pair of planners brings says CCNA regular attendee Kafi Benz. "I the newest thinking in urban rule making to think Karin was talking to the choir, to people the Sarasota City Neighborhood Association who already had some basis of understand(CCNA) meeting and pitches it way over ing." "The 1974 zoning code is now just a audience members' heads. Karin Murphy and pile of stuff," adds Avondale representative Andrew Georgiadis have been hired by the and former Mayor Mollie Cardamone. "In my city to establish an "Urban Design Studio" in opinion, we're asking this group to write a the Federal Building at Orange Avenue and new zoning code for the entire city." Ringling Boulevard. Inside, they will begin to fabricate new zoning regulations for the city based on something called "form-based People eager to see the reopening of Warm codes." "Community comfort is a critical com- Mineral Springs will have to wait just a bit ponent," says Murphy. But when she adds, longer, so more extensive background checks "We don't care about the style of building, we can be undertaken on the principals of the firm A team working on a new form-based zoning code for the city has made itself at home in a studio in the downtown Federal Building. Photo by Norman Schimmel