Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/90018
Sarasota News Leader BY CONTRAST ... Sarasota has nothing like Riverwalk. The multi-use recreational trail (MURT) from downtown to Bird Key is a tour of condomini- ums, commercial and residential areas and a big bridge. Payne Park's promised outdoor performance space was lost to falling sales tax revenues. Sarasota has the famed beaches of Lido Key, but the current pavilion is a far cry from the lost and lamented Lido Casino. While the benches are gone from Sarasota's downtown Five Points Park, more than 50 grace Bradenton's Riverwalk, which runs in front of tony condos, a hotel, a hospital and the new Manatee Players Theater. Manatee County just finished a $2.9 million stem-to-stern rehabilitation of its historic October 26, 2012 Page 16 courthouse, which is open for public inspec- tion and scrutiny after you pass through secu- rity. It is only three blocks from the western end of the linear park. Sarasota County's historic courthouse build- ing was rehabilitated recently, but it is almost impossible to say what it looks like inside. Even if you pass a security screening, you need an escort to go anywhere in the building except to pay a traffic fine or search public records on a computer. Sarasota scores high in the traditional per- forming arts – opera, ballet, symphony and theater. But it is not city residents who sup- port these endeavors. Roughly one-quarter of the tickets sold at what one might call the "middle-brow" Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall are purchased by city residents. Across the street from the skateboard park are the benches and flagpoles of a new veterans memorial. The wars recognized span a century.