Phase 3 will transform a big parking lot into a park. The SPAC is a moving target within those plans.
By Gretchen Cochran
Original Air Date: May 13, 2026
Host: If you’re wondering about that growing dirt pile near the Van Wezel, we have some answers. It’s not – yet – about building a new performing arts center. Gretchen Cochran reports.
Gretchen Cochran: Sarasota Mayor Debbie Trice declared this the week for hurricane preparedness. Not so coincidentally, Monday, construction will begin on storm defense for the city’s big new downtown park-in-progress surrounding the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. Government people call it “resilience”.
Also pending is the ever-shifting plan for a new Performing Arts Center to be located in the park. Embedded in a drawing to be presented to the city commission May 18 Is an illustration. It shows the once-proposed two parking garages now reduced to one, closer to Tamiami and closer to Van Wezel.
Laura Ansel, communications director for the so-called SPAC, said in an email, “At this stage, the maps and renderings being circulated are conceptual in nature and intended to illustrate the possibilities as the planning process moves forward.” But the plan scheduled for discussion May 18 says approval for the parking garage must be given next month, and the garage is to be constructed in December, 2027.
Queries to the city, responsible for the would-be garage, went unanswered.
The proposal shows the Van Wezel will close in September, 2027, for interior hardening work. Construction is to begin on a new Performing Arts Center in 2030, much sooner than has been previously proposed. Its most recent price estimation was $200 million, not including the garage.
Meanwhile, work begins on securing the Bay Park’s coastline.
Diana Shaheen: So they have to set up the area, put the fence up, do whatever they need to do to prep the site.
GC: That was Diana Shaheen, Chief Operating Officer of the Bay Park, the 52-acre recreation area sprawling from Boulevard of the Arts north to Centennial Park and the boat canal.
Diana Shaheen, chief operating officer of The Bay. | Photo courtesy of The Bay
Shaheen’s been overseeing the project that will ultimately transform that Van Wezel parking lot into a resilient playground, a place that can endure and recover from big storms and flooding. The fence she describes will temporarily enfold about four acres along the seashore. Those devoured 130 parking spots she mentioned will be added elsewhere on the Bay property, before the big garage is built, she said.
The construction contractor, Jon F. Swift, will be implementing a $10 million job taking about five months. It will cover two areas, the one near Van Wezel, and the Centennial Park shoreline bordering the boat channel. Once the pavement and obstructions are removed, 10 truckloads of dirt, rocks and oolite a day will be delivered, raising the Van Wezel-area ground nine feet above sea level. Oolite, by the way, is quarried coral stone, generally coming from south Florida. Oolite blocks will add seating areas along the shores. A rain garden will be added to filter water flowing across the parking lot. Bordering a walkway around the rain garden will be a cluster of palms to act as a windbreak.
Centennial Park – which includes the boat ramp – will get added features such as a stepped oolite wall along the shore where people may sit. It is intended to protect the shoreline from rain and wave-driven erosion.
Ultimately, the Van Wezel parking lot will be gone.
DS: The rain garden is extremely important. This is going to have a three-foot elevation. Okay, it’s only three feet. So that means it’s going to go down. When there’s storm surge, the water will come over the riprap, and go into this garden where it can get filtered. Same thing with some of the parking lot. You know that the parking lot in front of the Van Wezel is the Number One polluter on the site in the Sarasota Bay, because there’s nothing catching [runoff]. That’s part of what we’re trying to do with transforming the parking lot to a park.
GC: In fact, the entire Bay project is being constructed to act as a giant filter, cleaning polluted water from the city before it enters the bay, Shaheen said. But water moves in as well as out. Wind-driven storm water is projected to push flooding above 20 feet as the park ground nears Tamiami Trail. And that is currently the prospective site for the new performing arts center, receiving the city commission’s encouragement but not its formal approval yet. Still, Monday’s prep is just for the first phase of earth-raising with many to follow.
The Bay folks, the city and the Sarasota Performing Arts Center people are attempting to coordinate their plans, Shaheen said.
DS: We are trying to target 2029. We’ve always said it would take eight to 10 years to complete, in four or more phases. This is why we’re working on the design and trying to get funding. We think we can build a majority of the park before the SPAC starts construction. That’s our intent.
For WSLR, this is Gretchen Cochran
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