Sarasota News Leader

04/11/2014

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"piledriving" effect on the structures, he con tinued. "We need to plan for and be able to respond to those kinds of issues." In the second slide, Wreford noted one the few houses that remained standing. The story goes that the owner used "a special experimental technique" when he constructed it, Wreford added. "Word [also] is that he watched the storm from inside the house …" Wreford then showed the audience slides pro jecting how far inland storm surge could flow in Sarasota County as a result of hurricanes rated Category 1 through Category 5. Those graphics, he said, underscore "how vulnerable we are." SKA member Bob Luckner, who said he used to live in Texas, noted that the storm surge from Ike stopped more than 20 miles inland, a distance greater than Lakewood Ranch is from Siesta Key. With the potential for devastation, many ques tions have arisen about how redevelopment would be handled on the county's barrier islands, Wreford acknowledged. He com mended representatives of the Barrier Island League of Sarasota County, which incorpo rates Casey, Manasota and Siesta keys, for their work on the housing chapter of the PDRP. Catherine Luckner, vice president of the SKA, and Dennis Doughty, president of the Casey Key Association, both were inte gral in that process, he said. The PDRP will include a scenario matrix to try to help homeowners enjoy as much certainty as possible about what they will be able to do in terms of rebuilding, based on a number of factors relative to their houses, such as the level of damage, its location and its elevation, Wreford explained. Referring to the Florida Building Code, he continued, "That trumps our PDRP. … We can not override or dictate to the Florida Building Code what it says." The county's Building Department is expected to complete that matrix "very soon," Wreford added. "I think that that's going to be, in itself, a big benefit to the community." When resident Diane Erne asked whether the PDRP would address condominium complexes as well as singlefamily homes, Wreford replied that it would. "Siesta is fairly unique," he said, in that it has many of those complexes as well as commercial enterprises, distinguishing it from other barrier islands in the county. One of the primary goals of the PDRP, he continued, will be to lay out guidelines for redevelopment so it "will be done in a more sustainable fashion, more resilient, so as to try to avoid repetitive loss." THE HARD QUESTIONS "There are two or three really kind of knotty policy questions," Commissioner Nora Patterson, a guest at the meeting, pointed out. First, she said she believed that, based on the current county code, if someone were to demolish some of the bigger condominium complexes existing today, those structures could not be rebuilt with the same density and height. "Correct," Wreford responded. "If a storm came and essentially necessi tated scraping [remains of structures to the Sarasota News Leader April 11, 2014 Page 65

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