Welcome to the School Avenue Charrette website
UPDATE Here is the EDAW Charrette Report
I appreciate your attending and participating in the School Avenue charrette last week. The charrette was an extremely valuable experience, as a cross-section of representatives from the City and the greater community were actively communicating and working together with neighbors from around Payne Park to build consensus. The charrette demonstrated that more than 180 individuals (estimated charrette attendance) could reach a substantial level of agreement about the type of development that is appropriate for School Avenue. Eighty to ninety percent of the participants were in general agreement on many issues posed by the charrette leaders. Even conversations on a table-by-table basis were remarkably similar in each of the sessions. When Mayor Palmer and Commissioner Kirschner requested that we isolate responses from participants who self-identified as neighborhood residents, the visual preferences of the neighborhoods immediately surrounding Payne Park were similar to those of the wider community. At that point, it became abundantly clear that the majority of citizens share a common vision for the community.
I am extremely pleased that the charrette process enabled us to reach consensus in terms of the vision and scope of the development. I look forward to the next step in the approval process with the meeting before the Planning Commission on March 12, where the EDAW report will be presented – based on the shared goals and vision - reached during the charrette. Hopefully this charrette will also serve as a future solution for resolving issues where opinions appear to differ or where consensus is needed.
Once EDAW delivers the final charrette report, we will transmit it to the City and post it on www.schoolavenuecharrette.com. Please plan to attend the Sarasota Planning Commission meeting March 12 and the City Commission meeting April 21, when the charrette results will be publicly discussed.
Once again, thank you for your participation in the charrette and I look forward to keeping our lines of communication open as additional information becomes available.
Sincerely yours,
Ronald H. Burks
QUINCY INVESTMENTS
2151 Main Street
Sarasota, Florida 34237
