Siesta Key hotel developers convinced Sarasota County planners to reverse key island policy

Siesta Key has for decades avoided the high-rise condos and towering hotels that line the shores of many popular coastal Florida destinations.

That postcard, laid-back beach town charm is why many residents say the beach community is so sought after and admired.

But high-rise hotel and condo developers didn't pass by Siesta Key because they didn't want to be there. Instead, deliberate choices to prevent over development on the barrier island were designed to preserve Siesta Key's character -- crucially by strict adherence to a growth management plan adopted in 1989 that in effect froze the island's land uses and prevented tall structures from being built.

Sarasota news:Fire damages home early Sunday, resident safe

Take a look:Developers make big offers for Bradenton City Hall property, propose high-rise projects

Just look at the largest hotel on Siesta Key: Built in the 1950s, the Siesta Key Beach Resort and Suites has just 55 rooms.

But after meeting with the developers' lawyers last year, Sarasota County planners effectively unleashed the controls, reinterpreting the county's regulations in a way that could pave the way for the more than 500 hotel rooms on Siesta Key — far more than the 26 rooms per acre that the longstanding rules would allow.

Under the new interpretations, hotels would be considered a commercial use, not subject to residential development density limitations. The county staff, court records show, suddenly agreed with arguments presented by hotel developers that going from a max of 26 units to 170 units was not increasing development "density or intensity" on a barrier island — something prohibited by the county's governing document regarding growth.

Despite the dramatic change in longstanding policy, the county staff's coalescence around this new interpretation did not occur after extensive public hearings or debate among Sarasota County's elected leaders. County commissioners took no votes on whether the barrier island policy should shift in that direction, nor were the island residents made aware of the change. Advocates of the previous rules, who had been gearing up to oppose the hotel proposals, weren't provided the opportunity to counter those arguments before the proposal headed to the Sarasota County Planning Commission last August.

Instead, one property owner who owned less than one acre on the island convinced Sarasota County officials that hotels should not be regulated as they had been since at least 1989, paving the way for the bigger hotel proposals to proceed.

Details in how the major Sarasota County growth management policy shift occurred have emerged through a citizen's challenge to the County Commission's approval of two of the Siesta Key hotel proposals last year.

One hotel would include 170 rooms on Calle Miramar, owned by a limited liability company based in New York; the development application has been represented by Robert Anderson, a Sarasota real estate agent.

The other hotel, near Siesta Key's south bridge, is being developed by Gary Kompothecras, a well-known Siesta Key resident famous for his 1-800 ASK Gary commercials and the MTV show Siesta Key. 

In the lawsuits, the hotel developers have been granted status as "interveners," though the defendant is the county. During questioning of county staff in preparation for trial, the developers' lawyers have asked more questions of witnesses more often then the county's own attorneys.

One trial is scheduled for March and the other for June.

"Roll with it"

Siesta Key resident Lourdes Ramirez sued the county in late 2021 over its approval of the 170-room hotel proposal and filed an administrative challenge at the state regarding the change to the development code made for the Siesta Key Village hotel project that also allowed for the approval of a 120-room, hotel project on the south end of the barrier island.

The county has also been sued over the south end hotel project by two condo associations and some private Siesta Key residents, alleging similarly that the county violated its growth plan in approving them.

Both lawsuits accuse the County Commission of violating the comprehensive plan provision saying that "intensity and density of the Barrier Islands of Sarasota shall not exceed that allowed by zoning ordinances and regulations existing as of March 13, 1989."

Since county staff had previously interpreted that limit to be 26 units per acre, a 170-unit hotel on 0.96 acres could not be approved unless the County Commission amended the growth plan by an affirmative vote by four of the five board members.

But county planners staked out new ground during the hotel approval process when they concluded that removing the residential density cap did not violate the growth plan because hotels are not a residential use. 

Michele Norton, assistant director at Planning and Development Services, testified under questioning by Ramirez's lawyer that she had previously taken the county's growth plan "at face value" ... "when I read it, I just thought, okay, the island is somehow frozen in time." 

But after county staff discussion initiated by developers seeking the hotels, Norton said she decided that no change in the county's growth plan was needed because she had come to agree with their arguments on how the plan should be interpreted.

"And again, like I said, when you first read it, it feels like it is frozen," she said of the growth plan's treatment of development on the barrier island. "Then, as I considered it more, what this is doing is trying to thwart and prohibit up-zoning, which is, to me, a large part of that intensification." 

Her testimony is included in depositions filed with the court last month.

Brett Harrington, a county planner who wrote a review of whether the hotel proposal was consistent with the county's growth plan, noted that, historically the county used residential density as the basis for calculating the number of hotel rooms that should be allowed.

But under questioning in the lawsuit, he said that after doing more overall research into the topic and after seeing information supplied by the hotel developers' attorneys, he changed his interpretation.

"And again, we asked them to really dig deep and provide us the information to prove that case, and we felt in our estimation that they did actually provide enough information that we could roll with it," Harrington said according to the deposition.

Ramirez's attorney pressed Harrington on how he came to the conclusion that the development code change was consistent with the county's growth plan, despite the county historically treating density as a limitation on hotels. 

"If we stayed with the same metric (density), it wouldn't be approved, but there's nothing in the comprehensive plan that says you can -- can't use different methods of calculation, you know, as time goes by," Harrington responded.

With the staff determining no change to the growth plan was needed, the County Commission was free to vote on whether to amend the development code so the hotels could go forward. The board did so by a 3-2 vote last fall that removed caps on the number of hotel rooms allowed on a site countywide, and paving the way for hotel development on Siesta Key.

Guiding document

After the County Commission severed density from hotel room count calculations, they did not replace it with any other limitation.

Other areas across the state limit commercial development using a Floor Area Ratio, which limits commercial development based on lot size compared to total building area to be built.

As it stands now, under current regulations there is no limit on hotel rooms in unincorporated Sarasota County beyond what could fit inside a permitted structure based on what would be allowed to be built under the county's zoning codes.

Sarasota attorneys Bill Merrill and Charlie Bailey made the key arguments that led to the staff's new interpretation to view hotels as a commercial use not bound by density regulations dealing with room counts by number of dwelling units per acre, according to testimony.

Barbara Peterson, an advocate for Florida's open records laws and executive director of the Florida Center for Governmental Accountability, expressed concern about unelected county officials changing county policy without public input.

She specifically took issue with the county side-stepping the supermajority requirement for amending the comprehensive plan, given the long history of Sarasota County officials viewing hotel caps based on residential density units.

"That's the kind of policy change that I believe needs to be made by elected officials," she said.

Becky Ayech, an east county resident who's currently embroiled in her own land-use fight with the county as leaders contemplate a growth plan amendment that would increase residential density in Lakewood Ranch, said she feels betrayed by county officials.

In that growth plan amendment case, developers of Lakewood Ranch have argued a transitional zone is needed to bridge the gap between denser suburban development and the traditionally rural east Sarasota County where housing densities are as low as one dwelling unit per 10 acres.

She said the Siesta Key depositions of county planners show that the county ignores the comprehensive plan.

"It's a guiding document that we trust and rely on," she said. "It's amazing to me that they're turning their back on it."

In her fight, she said there's already a transitional zone between denser suburban development and the rural parts of the county, but no developer has decided to use what's already in the county's development regulations. 

Instead, developers have sought ways around what planners, residents and elected representatives agreed to more than 20 years ago.

Tom Matrullo, a member of the good government advocacy group Citizens for Sarasota County, also linked east Sarasota County's fight to maintain the area's rural character and the fight to limit development on Siesta Key. He noted that presumed protections found in the comprehensive plan fell away as soon as developers expressed interest in building.

"One of the things that's a crime in Sarasota County is to remember the past," he said. "It seems the county likes to forget."

Requests for comment on the case made through Sarasota County's public information department did not receive a response. Sarasota County has a policy not to comment on pending litigation.

Ramirez said she's confident that she will prevail in her legal battle. She notes that she's spent a lot already on legal costs, and if she loses, she could also be forced to pay the county's costs for defending the lawsuit.

"I know that's a risk, but I'm so confident. I know we are right," she said. "... It will all be worth it if we win and save Siesta Key."