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America, we are leaving," Vengroff told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in November 2013. Now he is back, saying the move to Belize is off. "I've never been good with languages," he told The Sarasota News Leader. And the housing project is back, too. He calls it the Ringling Village. The property is zoned Downtown Edge, which allows 25 units per acre. That will produce only one-quarter of the units Vengroff wants to build. "The obstacles are the city's compre- hensive plan and city approval of 100 units per acre," he told the audience at the CCNA meeting. He introduced Eldon Johnson with the Fleet Capital Group as his partner. Rental housing is very tight in the city. As the economy recovers, so have rents. After being off the political map for years, "affordable housing" is back. The people who work Sarasota's low-pay ser- vice jobs can find themselves paying half their monthly incomes for rent and transportation to and from places such as North Port and Palmetto, where rents are cheaper. Vengroff's rental "empire" of approximately 1,400 units is centered in the northern half of Sarasota. "Only about 40 percent of my resi- dents have a car," he told the CCNA. The Stottlemyer site is adjacent to the Seminole Gulf Railroad track, and talk con- tinues to percolate about reviving passenger rail service to Bradenton and Tampa. "The train will come," said Vengroff. "It will link to the Tampa-Orlando-Miami line." Vengroff Any similarity of Vengroff 's design to the Doge's Palace in Venice (pictured) appears purely circumstantial. Photo by gaspa via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons Sarasota News Leader May 9, 2014 Page 10