Bay Plaza residents’ successful appeal puts a stop to the tall tower project.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: May 14, 2025
Host: Round 2 in the battle of the Obsidian went to the opponents. Will there be a Round 3 of what would have been the tallest building in downtown Sarasota? We have the details about the city commission’s surprisingly clear vote to uphold an appeal by well-organized neighbors against the luxury tower. Johannes Werner reports.
Coordinated and prepared, Bay Plaza residents packed the commission chambers.
Johannes Werner: Residents of the neighboring Bay Plaza wore red shirts, and they packed the commission chambers at city hall to the brim. And they scored a rare win against a high-profile development on Tuesday after the Sarasota City Commission voted 4-1 rejecting plans for the 18-story tower at 1260 Palm Avenue.
Ron Shapiro, a Bay Plaza resident and one of the main organizers of the pushback, was elated.
Ron Shapiro: It’s been a long, hard battle for the last almost two and a half years. From day one, we knew the odds were stacked against us. Fortunately, we had a great team, we had excellent support from the community, and we stuck with it. Really grateful and appreciative that the commission—four of the commissioners—did the right thing and supported our side and we got the outcome that we did yesterday.
JW: The vote sends developer Matt Kihnke and his MK Equity Corporation back to start again.
Matt Kihnke, president of MK Equity Corporation.
Kihnke has the option to restart for a third time, after the rejection of the first two iterations of his 14-unit luxury project. He could also sue the City of Sarasota over its rejection. Or he could sue and restart. His biggest challenge from the get-go has been the combination of a relatively small lot size and his desire to have the Obsidian tower above all other buildings.
Ron Shapiro:
RS: The primary [issue] to me, overwhelmingly, was the compatibility. Just the feeling and belief—and, I think, the facts—are that this tall—not just tall but massive—building just didn’t fit in a very small lot.
JW: We tried to reach Kihnke, but we were not successful before the deadline of this report.
Jen Ahearn-Koch puts attention to detail.
The seven-hour marathon meeting on Tuesday came with three rounds of commissioners questioning both sides and staffers. It featured Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch scrutinizing documents with an oversize magnifying glass, and direct exchanges between the lawyers of both sides.
The five commissioners came to an unexpectedly clear conclusion. With the exception of Mayor Liz Alpert, everybody else sided with the neighbors’ appeal.
Even though the city hall chambers were filled with red-shirt wearing opponents, Morgan Bentley, the lawyer hired by the opponents, did not have an easy job.
Here’s how Ron Shapiro describes it.
RS: The city’s processes for these kinds of approvals are so biased in favor of the developer and so much against the residents that what our team had to work through was best illustrated to me towards the end of the meeting when the commissioners were asking questions to the different parties, and it was basically Morgan against seven other people. The developer had two attorneys and two architects at the dais, and then there were the two city staff people, and the city staff were defending their decision to grant approval, so they and the developers are basically one team. Then there was the attorney who was moderating the session, who was clearly on the side of the city and trying to encourage the commissioners to vote against our appeal.
It was Morgan by himself. It was one against seven. And he did a masterful job of pulling that off.
JW: Morgan Bentley not only got across the core message that Kihnke’s design was not compatible with the city’s plans, but his testimony entertained the crowd.
1260 North Palm Residences would have towered over adjacent properties like the Bay Plaza.
Morgan Bentley: Big-picture, I want you to remember that you guys are the clean slate here. You guys get to decide whether you think this project is compatible. And that word—my friend Noah at the planning board was asked a question that said, “Is this compatible?” and his response was, “What do you mean by compatibility?” which I thought just summed up what you guys have to wrestle with all the time. So, what is compatibility? We sit and we twist it and we push and we pull, and the answer is we don’t have to really look that far. You guys spent a lot of money and a lot of time, and the community spent a lot of time and input, coming up with a Sarasota city plan.
Morgan Bentley (right) persuaded and entertained with his testimony.
Before we get started, I’d like to thank everyone—the commission and the city attorney and all my friends behind me for choosing to share my birthday with me. This is really how I envisioned it.
JW: The fact the opponents were able to afford more than $100,000 for their lawyer was one big factor. The size of Bay Plaza, with 100 fairly wealthy owners, helped defray that cost. The other factor was the expertise of many of the Bay Plaza dwellers. Ron Shapiro:
RS: It really was a team effort. We had a core group of folks that put in an incredible amount of time, and some of them—all of us retired folks, but—who had experience and expertise in some key areas, such as being attorneys, architects, construction engineers. We had folks who were highly competent and successful professionals in their fields working this for free because they felt it was the right thing to do. I really don’t think that we would have won without the kind of overall community support and public relations effort we had from not just our particular neighborhood that was most affected but the greater Sarasota community in general. I mean, we had over 4,000 signatures on our petitions and thousands and thousands of emails that people sent to the city commissioners.
JW: Reporting for WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
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