Podcast

Developer Pat Neal got green light from the Venice City Council to build a shopping plaza. But neighbors are pushing back. The North Venice Neighborhood Alliance has raised $15,000 to pay for a lawyer.

A mural was unveiled yesterday honoring the African American roots of the fast-gentrifying Sarasota neighborhood once known as Overtown. Sophia Brown is painting the picture for you.

Living in your community and local politics is not a spectator sport. Engage. Claudia Allers is ready to help you with the Activist Calendar. This is Claudia Allers, bringing you the weekly Activist Calendar for Friday, July 21.

The New College administration reserves the best student housing for athletes and incoming students. Current students are left with a mold-infested dorm and an off-campus hotel, and that has pushed one of them to jump ship and switch to a college in Massachusetts.

A developer who bought several lots at the southern edge of downtown Sarasota has big plans, and they appear to include swallowing an entire city street. At a public workshop yesterday, some residents raised their voice against abandoning a public right-of-way.

Rosa Parks’ life has been reduced to that one moment on a bus in Alabama in which she refused to give up her seat. Her elevation to an icon of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement has obscured the fact that she had a life before and after, and that she was embedded in an organization and a movement.

Last fall, Sarasota County Commissioners allowed the owners of Lakewood Ranch to get around limitations to urban sprawl and pave over 5,000 acres of pastureland in the rural east of the county to build thousands of mostly luxury homes in more cul-de-sacs.

Many Starbucks baristas across the nation want to join a union. So do a handful workers at a Starbucks store on University Parkway and Honore here in suburban Sarasota. On Tuesday, they held a vote that failed to reach majority. Ramon Lopez has that story.

The city of Sarasota Planning Board recommended approval of an affordable housing complex for veterans in the heart of Newtown, Sarasota’s African American neighborhood. Some of the neighbors, including a former city mayor and commissioner, aren’t happy about it. Sophia Brown talked to them.

By 2040, the city of Sarasota will be facing water shortages. That’s what city Utility Chief Bill Riebe told Sarasota City Commissioners during a workshop on Monday.