Plans for Phase 2 of The Bay park and the compatibility of a repurposed Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall took center stage at the Jan. 27 meeting of the city’s Purple Ribbon Committee.

The committee has only five more months before its recommendation of what form the Van Wezel might take should it be replaced by the new Sarasota Performing Arts Center on the opposite corner of the parking lot, with what the Bay Park Conservancy envisions as green space in between, perhaps above surface parking. 

The committee’s purview is to make a suggestion or suggestions of what to do with the Van Wezel, but its members consider how it might interact with the latter stages of The Bay — what former Bay Park Conservancy COO Bill Waddill described as the “doughnut hole” between the first phase along Boulevard of the Arts, the Canal District at 10th Street and the Cultural District along North Tamiami Trail — to be critical to their upcoming deliberations.

Questions posed to BPC Founding CEO AG Lafley included:

• How much parking will be needed on or offsite to hold events at a new SPAC, the Van Wezel, Municipal Auditorium and outdoor events in the park, perhaps all at the same time along with upwards of three waterfront restaurants?
• Where will parking be located?
• How will or will not installing a resilient shoreline next to the Van Wezel impact flood-proofing needs there?
• With the new SPAC moving from its placeholder on the master plan to the designed location along Tamiami Trail, what happens to that space?

With 780 parking spaces currently plus another 200 or so scattered among other lots within The Bay’s boundaries, Lafley said the master plan calls for about 800 spaces on site.

Committee member David Rovine pointed out that at an average of 2.3 people per car with a 2,700-seat primary performance hall, there aren’t enough parking spaces on the grounds even for a single event, let alone simultaneous activity at the other venues.

“We are going to need more parking on the site, given if there’s a new Sarasota Performing Arts Center. The scale and scope of 2,700 seats in the main hall, 800 in the second hall and 300 (in a multipurpose space) that’s more than twice the number of seats,” Lafley said of the 1,741 seats currently in the Van Wezel. “All of the usual suspects will be looked at — parking garages on site, parking garages off site. In the Rosemary District, there is plan that includes a (pedestrian) overpass at Ninth Street.”

The point being, not unlike large performing arts centers in urban areas of other cities, parking will be scattered around the immediate vicinity and not all of it on site. That, he said, is a matter for the City Commission to consider.

Although, as usual, the parking conundrum dominated the conversation of The Bay and the SPAC, committee member Marty Hylton pressed Lafley on how plans for a resilient, soft shoreline for the park will impact options to harden the Van Wezel against future flooding events, the venue having canceled the first half of the 2024-25 performance season in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.

“Our strategy has been soften, make it native and natural, allow it to flood and be resilient,” said Lafley, who has experience in leading the development of the 45-acre Riverfront Park along the Ohio River in Cincinnati. “Those rivers flood regularly, every few years, and they had the seawall approach. We decided to go natural and resilient for a long stretch along the park.”

Meanwhile, Hylton referred to the draft Karins Engineering report the committee received at its Jan. 13 meeting, which included in its $17 million estimate to upgrade certain building systems and protect the structure from future flooding some options for a hardened shoreline along its frontage.

“The proposal with which the budget was based on is one that I feel is not in keeping with the vision of The Bay, and I think that in protecting that building, whether short-term or long-term if it remains our performing arts center, whatever is done there has to be non-incongruous to what you’re trying to achieve.”

Lafley assured the committee that its long-term plans for The Bay — the current parking lot will be part of the final phase perhaps a decade away — or any of the construction in the interim will impact whatever becomes of the Van Wezel.

Coordination between the three interests in that portion of The Bay, he said, will be critical in planning Phase 3 and beyond.

“You have one group studying the Van Wezel as you are in the depths of to come forward with a recommendation, you have another partnership agreement with the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation that is focused exclusively on a new performing arts center, and we’ve been focused on the park one phase at a time,” Lafley said, adding all Phase 2 work poses no impact on the Van Wezel.

“As soon as the decision is made by the city about the location and number of buildings in the campus for the new performing arts center, that will drop into this master plan, and then we will pivot again, we’ll adapt, and not impinge on that,” he said.