Being heard in city hall and court takes expertise and a lot of dollars.
By Derek Gilliam/Suncoast Searchlight
Original Air Date: May 14, 2025
Host: The cost to fight the Obsidian came in at more than $100,000, representing one of multiple examples in the region. Derek Gilliam with Suncoast Searchlight reports on how the legal cost of fighting development has moved in the zone of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.
Derek Gilliam: Across Sarasota County, residents have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into legal and expert fees in similar efforts—not always to stop a project, but simply to force changes or ensure their concerns were formally addressed.
Bay Plaza Resident Ron Shapiro told Suncoast Searchlight that residents spent more than $100,000 and that, if not for the pro bono work supplied by Bay Plaza residents, the price tag would be even higher.
Bay Plaza isn’t the only community that’s had to spend big to challenge a development plan.
Residents of downtown Sarasota’s Ritz-Carlton Residences at The Quay spent more than $800,000 on attorneys’ fees alone to challenge the original plan for One Park Sarasota, which would have included a section of building stretching over a road shared by all residents in The Quay.
Siesta Key advocate Lourdes Ramirez shelled out close to $300,000 fighting plans for two large hotels on the barrier island that violated Sarasota County’s own growth plan. She was successful.
Lourdes Ramirez: You need an attorney and you need experts. You have to pay for experts. None of that is free.
DG: And since a 2019 change to state law, residents who lose their cases can be forced to pay their opponents’ legal costs, too. Ramirez said if she had lost, she could have been on the hook not just for her bills but for the county’s and the developers’.
LR: That’s almost a million dollars for someone potentially wanting to challenge a decision at this point in time, the way the law is written.
DG: Florida law requires that local development decisions be based on “competent and substantial” evidence. That means public opinion carries little weight, and opposition must be grounded in technical, code-based objections—typically presented by professionals.
Developers arrive with teams of attorneys, engineers, architects and planners. Residents must do the same.
Photo by Derek Gilliam via Suncoast Searchlight
Morgan Bentley, the attorney representing Bay Plaza residents, said developers can absorb opposition costs by factoring them into their budgets. Residents, on the other hand, have no financial return on their investment.
Morgan Bentley: Protesters have no economic model to make this work. They have no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
DG Lucia Panica, the city’s director of development services, has been with the city since 2013. She said that not all residents hire expensive lawyers and technical experts.
R.N. Collins, a retired engineer and development professional, now advises residents fighting development projects. He said the system is skewed toward people whose level of technical expertise on the matter is on par with that of the developers and city staff.
Robert K. Lincoln, an attorney for the Obsidian, seemed to agree.
Robert K. Lincoln: In a situation where you’ve got complicated regulations and complicated processes, there’s always going to be at least some bias in favor of expertise. But that can be spread around. It’s not unfair, but it is more difficult—much more difficult—for people who do not have either the time, the money or the ability to develop or access knowledge and expertise about the system.
Site plan from the City of Sarasota via Suncoast Searchlight.
DG: Bay Plaza residents have learned those lessons firsthand over the past two years.
Their fight began when plans for the Obsidian were submitted to the city in December of 2022.
Shapiro said he believed the project would be rejected outright for being so out of scale and out of character with the surrounding neighborhood. But once city staff began processing the application, he said he realized the only way to push back would be to spend money.
This is Derek Gilliam with Suncoast Searchlight.
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