Sarasota must reject obnoxious Obsidian skyscraper project. Again.

USA Today

05-02-2025

Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Obsidian still wrong project, wrong place
The Sarasota Planning Board should reject the 1260 North Palm Ave. project.
The board voted 4-1 in January 2024 to reject the 18-story condo tower, also known as Obsidian Sarasota. Despite minor changes, the proposal should be rejected again for the same reasons cited last year.
It still violates Sarasota zoning requirements for:
Full retail frontage.
Habitable space for first and second floors.
Parallel facade coverage.
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And its excessive height − 100 feet taller than other North Palm buildings − still violates the Downtown Master Plan compatibility criteria.
This project also violates Sarasota's zoning requirements for trash handling. It proposes off-premises refuse collection in a nonadjacent alley − from which the city refused to let Cafe Epicure's refuse be collected.
Additional reasons to reject this proposal include:
The blatant use of interstitial space, unsupported by past practice and industry standards, to circumvent the 18-story limit.
Prolonged construction within inches of Bay Plaza condos, threatening its structural integrity as well as area businesses' operations and residents' and pedestrians' safety.
Increased flooding and water drainage problems, already problematic on the 1260 North Palm lot and Gulfstream and Cocoanut avenues.
1260 North Palm remains the wrong development in the wrong place.
Paul T. Hess, JD, Sarasota
In politics, pickles can't be tomatoes
Governors and presidents should attend cooking school. No worthy chef would serve insalata caprese with mozzarella over dill pickles. Even sweet pickles.
Not even a sous chef would ask a pickle to be a tomato.
Why then do we expect lawyers to succeed in operations, lawmakers or news pundits to be government administrators?
Let's return to the pickle. The pickle was originally a cucumber. A cucumber is a fine vegetable. One bite of a fresh cucumber and it's cascading waterfalls through fresh green grass.
We do ask the cucumber to be a pickle. Dill, sweet, bread and butter. A cucumber can be a fine pickle and a pickle can be a fine relish.
We can ask a cucumber to be a pickle and a pickle to be a relish but don't ask a pickle to be a tomato.
So it should be with political appointments. We inadvisably assign staff from technical fields to be directors. Similarly, is it sensible for a political hobbyist or a news pundit to administrate a gigantic government bureaucracy?
The fault is in asking the pickle to be a tomato.
Rodney Romig, University Park
Trump could bring back 'good ole days'
Watching the plans of the current administration I must have been fortunate to have grown up in a community that gave no thought to DEI programs.
That small North Florida town knew intuitively that straight, Anglo-Saxon, Christian males were the best choice to perform any complicated work.
Women could do some jobs if they hadn't found a husband to make a home with.
There were gays? Who knew?
Black residents most likely found work cleaning up or on the many area farms. They knew their place and stayed there, knowing the cost of challenging the power structure.
My grandfather had a small store near the quarters. He was 'Mr. Willie' to his customers. African Americans could buy unopened bottles through a side door at my dad's bar.
Washington started to get in the way of that lifestyle and, over many difficult years, things changed.
My hometown voted overwhelmingly for a president who would allow residents to put a bit of that favored way of living back in place. I'm sure they can hardly wait.
Kyle Quattlebaum, Sarasota
President follows Project 2025 playbook
For those of you who did not read the 900-page Project 2025 manifesto that President Donald Trump had feigned ignorance about during the presidential campaign, below are some of the Executive Actions he has recently taken that were outlined in the plan:
Suspending refugee admissions.
Suspending asylum claims.
Militarizing the southern border
Declaring there are only two genders.
Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.
Withdrawing from the World Health Organization.
Ending protections for federal workers.
Ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Revoking security clearances.
Ending effort to fight misinformation.
The president claimed during the campaign that he had never read Project 2025, but he is following the Heritage Foundation's playbook exactly as outlined.
He also claimed to know nothing about the people involved with it, but has appointed several Cabinet picks who authored chapters, including Russ Vought, the self-proclaimed architect of Project 2025.
If you want to find out where we are heading over the next four years, I suggest you take the time to understand the proposed radical restructuring of the executive branch and reorganizing the federal government agency by agency.
Laurie Ulrop, Punta Gorda
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