SARASOTA DREAMING
SCHIZOID IN SARASOTA
Miami-based architects Duany Plater-Zyberk & Companys 'New Urbanist' Comprehensive Plan (with Sarasota architects Cardinal, Carlson & Parks) to salvage Sarasota, Florida's bayside downtown includes the provocative suggestion that the City sponsor a St. Tropez-style hotel on the waterfront that - at first blush - seemingly contradicts the goals and intentions of the Commissioners and the plan itself, especially given that it would be plunked down in one of the last bits of open public space along the waterfront.* However, a hotel styled on the St. Tropez, Cōte d'Azur model (The Tatler recently called St. Tropez the "millionaires Ibiza, with barking Lamborghinis, thumping nightclubs and disorderly beach bars") might, upon reflection, compensate for the more conservative gestures in zoning and design ordinances to be imposed on the core of the City, while also assuaging the split psyche of Sarasota with its small town ambience and cosmopolitan ambition.** Furthermore, St. Tropez hotels are modest in stature unlike the monstrosities currently under construction in Sarasota.Sarasota is schizophrenic as a result of its heritage clashing with its desire to be a mecca for arts and the trans-Atlantic plutocracy. Its dual self-image is in part conditioned by the St. Armand Key de luxe residential and retail model across the Ringling Causeway, the high-rise luxury condominiums on Sarasota Bay (built in the 1980s), and the quaint retro Main Street with its one-storey texture and stylized storefronts and restaurants. The vacuous zones in-between - Five Points and the Civic Center - add to the collective anxiety about the future of a city once known for its mediterranean style architecture (inclusive of John and Mable Ringling's former residence, the Cą d'Zan, a 1920s Venetian Gothic palace) and the elegant, spare low-rise modern architecture of the Sarasota School of the 40s and 50s (typified by City Hall). Sarasota is a place of contrasts - languor and high energy are both part of its persona - the latter embodied in the annual Suncoast Offshore Grand Prix speedboat races in Sarasota Bay and 'G(r)ucci' 4th of July fireworks. The languor is a result of the seasonal quietude that descends in liquid form and drives off the upper classes - i.e., the well-heeled, mobile portion of the populace.
DPZs plan seeks to intervene between the high-rise edge and the heart of the city by fixing building volumes and types and by specifying aesthetic matters (a design code is not a foregone conclusion) through officially promulgated guidelines and incentives. The shoreline, now dotted with condominium and hotel towers, is to be dragged back to the city by extending the street grid and adding a layer of intermediate texture (faux-mediterranean blocks). Pedestrian and auto traffic is to be renegotiated to favor the former and divert or slow (suppress) the latter. The $100 million Ritz-Carlton complex (270 hotel rooms/130 condos), "a splendid oasis of style and sophistication on Florida's Gulf Coast", now being erected alongside the Intracoastal Waterway at 101 N. Tamiami Trail (a.k.a. 1111 Ritz-Carlton Drive), may not be the last such imposition on this fertile tableau but the heyday of such monolithic objects should be behind Sarasota and its frightened citizenry. As of 2000, $650.3 million worth of commercial and residential development was on the drawing boards or underway in the downtown area. This figure includes the $75-100 million Renaissance tower complex (100 hotel rooms/350 condos, etc.) at 750 N. Tamiami Trail, in the Five Points 'wilderness'. Notably (or ignobly), the so-called New Town portion of Sarasota, where the lower classes live, is not part of the Comprehensive Plan. Situated just north of 10th Street, and the discriminating leading edge of the Plan, New Town will, however, continue to supply inexpensive labor for the "economic miracle" alongside Sarasota Bay.These waterside towers are in themselves stylistically retro, but a sign of 1980s grandiosity nonetheless. The true history of Sarasota is in its horizontality and fecundity, with these erect, tumescent towers a passing flirtation. But the City desires both the largesse of these erections and the recumbent, chaste gentility of its maritime and agricultural past. DPZ wishes to have it both ways, and they are probably as right (or wrong) as Freud when it comes to split personas - given that the origin of desire is somewhere anterior to the pleasure principle but virtually untameable and unnameable. Sarasotas pre-Oedipal, Edenic status is as much mythic as it is historic. DPZ seems to know this and has proposed that the analysand and the analyst make an effort to sublimate the entire question for purposes of reintegrating the collective split persona of the City.
Gavin Keeney (July 2000)
FOOTNOTES
*Sarasota is situated on the southwest Gulf Coast of Florida, the so-called Sun Coast, just south of Tampa and St. Petersburg. Sarasota was settled in the 1700s and has a population of about 51,000. It is billed in travel and tourist literature as a "beach resort and art community".
**For those not steeped in architectural culture (always start with cold, fresh water and bring to a rapid boil), New Urbanism is the phantom vision of an architectural faction opposed to most modern architectures and - more critically - to heterogeneity (the 'barking Lamborghinis') and cultural frisson (the 'thumping nightclubs'). With its roots in retro, traditional and neo-traditional building styles, New Urbanism is quite often a secret means of saving and fixing real estate values in towns and cities on the verge of losing their historic charm. It is also deployed in inner cities to revive desperate city housing projects dating to 1960s urban 'renewal'. In this latter scenario, the anathematized HUD housing towers of urban America are typically replaced by low-rise, "tactful" housing tracts (with front gardens or lawns) that mimic suburbia or gentrified neighborhoods elsewhere in or outside the city. New Urbanism has also been applied to creating New Towns - ex nihilo (as it were) - for corporate clients with deep pockets (e.g., Disney's Celebration, Florida). The paranoid aspect of this latter vision was but one subtext of the Peter Weir film The Truman Show (1998). The film was shot in Seaside, Florida (a DPZ designed New Town). As a footnote to this footnote, The Economist recently reviewed two new books on Celebration - "American Life: Mouse and Garden" (June 10th, 2000) - citing "urban elitism" as the spirit animating most critical "journalistic literature about the town". Never to be overtly partisan, The Economist noted the "Orwellian aspects" of life in Celebration are more "humorous" than threatening. "When the 'pixie dust' starts to wear off" residents realize that the elective nature of the community requires that they bracket their desire to misbehave.POSTSCRIPT
And, in the spirit of free association, Seaside (in The Truman Show) seemed eerily reminiscent of the village/prison in the 1967 British television series The Prisoner. Truman's attempts to escape his staged life were in some respects an homage to this famous TV series starring (and produced by) ex-Secret Agent Patrick McGoohan. As a potential renegade agent imprisoned in a charming but sinister English village surrounded by mountains and sea, McGoohan (Number 6) frequently engaged in botched attempts to escape - usually foiled by a huge, bouncing balloon that rose up out of the sea and routed his carefully crafted excursions. His memorable escape/release, in the final episode of the series, and memory is if anything unreliable, was filmed as a passage through a kaleidoscopic tunnel, to the Beatle's anthem "All You Need is Love" - a tune that opens with a rousing snippet of the "Marseillaise", a theme also incorporated into Peter Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture", for whatever reasons musicologists may care to cite. Freedom and enslavement are the twin peaks of modern subjectivity. The latter often comes in forms, architectural and otherwise, that otherwise liberated souls embrace, which brings us full circle to Sarasota and its imagined old Florida charm. Bring on the 'barking' Lamborghinis!OUTTAKES
The Prisoner Appreciation Society and Map of the Village
Cliquez ici for Andres Duany's somewhat famous rebuttal of Alex Krieger's assault on New Urbanism (at the Seaside Conference, 1998)
For current status of the 2020 Comprehensive Plan, see Long Range Planning Division (City of Sarasota)
For the first big challenge to the Downtown Plan by developers, see Case No.: 02-1016GM - "On March 4, 2002, a petition was filed challenging the determination of compliance that was issued by the Florida Department of Community Affairs regarding this amendment. The petition was filed by the law office of Icard, Merrill, Cullis, Timm, Furen & Ginsberg, P.A. on behalf of the Association of Downtown Commercial Property Owners, Inc.; Argus Foundation, Inc.; Gulf Coast Coast Builders Exchange, Inc.; Remark Sarasota Quay, Inc.; and Wynnton Sarasota II Limited Partnership." (Downtown Master Plan Related Comprehensive Plan Amendment, City of Sarasota)
Visit John and Mable Ringling's Cą d'Zan, now part of the Ringling Center for the Cultural Arts - "Recognized as the Art Museum of the State Of Florida, its campus encompasses an internationally recognized museum of Western European and American art; a Museum of the Circus; Cą d'Zan, the Ringlings' thirty-room mansion; the historic Asolo theater from Venice, and over 60 acres of landscaped grounds and statuary." - Wandering through the Cą d'Zan's art collection, one cannot help form the impression that Mr. Ringling was fleeced by dealers during his art-buying days. He has one of everything - Old Masters included - but notably works of "questionable attribution", or works demoted in recent times to "School of", as in "School of Rembrandt", etc. Perhaps the most bizarre evidence of the "smallness" of this vast collection of stuff is in the landscaped garden, where a neo-classical "Laocoon" - way too small to make an impression - all but vanishes below a large array of shrubs, receding (in a sense) into the vortex of anamorphic nothingness. Better perhaps to take the plunge and drive to The Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg - there superficiality is a virtue and the anamorphic stain is worn with pride.For information on relocating to Sarasota, visit Michael Saunders & Co. ("Licensed Real Estate Broker") who reports: "The new Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota Hotel recently opened its doors to welcome the world to Sarasota. The sophisticated masterpiece of elegance is crowned by 48 incredible residences, which Michael Saunders & Company sold out within 18 days. Construction has begun on the adjacent Tower Residences at The Ritz-Carlton, which offers an additional 80 opportunities to live amidst the legendary service and amenities. The annual Michael Saunders & Company holiday party was one of the first events to be held at the magnificent new hotel." - Preconstruction prices for the second batch of high-profile condominium units start at $660,000 and reservations require a $25,000 refundable deposit. The property is likely to appreciate by 30% in the time between pre-sale and occupancy, and "investors" are expected to scoop up a large percentage of the 80 unbuilt units.
For precise details of Ritz-Carlton facilities, cliquez ici ...
For a virtual visit to St. Tropez, cliquez ici ...
To test drive a Lamborghini, cliquez ici ...
To visit Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, cliquez ici
MISCELLANEOUS LINKAGE
City of Sarasota (About.com)
Cardinal, Carlson & Parks
City Sarasota (Municipal)