Sarasota City Commissioners move towards rezoning the Marian Anderson site, with a proffer.
By Noah Bookstein
Original Air Date: September 10 2026
Host: With a unanimous vote, the Sarasota City Commission kept alive the Marian Anderson Brownfield development project in Newtown. WSLR News reporter Noah Bookstein has the story.
Noah Bookstein: For more than 80 years, the Marian Anderson Brownfield on MLK Way in Newtown has sat empty and contaminated after being used as a landfill.
On Tuesday, the Sarasota City Commission agreed to extend a deadline to continue negotiating a deal that would let Newtown Gateway buy the land from the city and redevelop the site.
Barron Channer came to the U.S. from Jamaica. He is a Miami-based real estate investor and founder of Woodwater Investments. Channer is leading Newtown Gateway and told WSLR News the company can rehabilitate the sites and bring jobs to the area.
Barron Channer addresses the Sarasota City Commission
Barron Channer: Places like Newtown which have been underinvested are still culturally rich and economically rich places. You just have to marry the uses to the location. For probably 80-some-odd years now, it has been a vacant site. At one point in its early history, for a couple of decades, it was used as an unofficial landfill, and that distinction has translated to the site being environmentally impacted today. All fixable, so a core part of our proposed development, Newtown Gateway, is the environmental rehabilitation of that site.
NB: Channer says they are in the process of getting the necessary approvals from Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection after cleanup. Newtown Gateway plans two projects: medical offices on the northern portion fronting MLK and a warehouse for a logistics operation to the south.
BC: We embrace the idea of building a project that’s responsible to the community. Newtown has a distinguished and laudable history while also being economically viable. We think the combination of healthcare and light industrial of the warehouse variant are great ways to do that.
NB: To make the industrial half possible, the commission would have to approve rezoning nearly 10 acres of the site. That industrial designation technically allows uses such as commercial recycling operations, including crushing concrete that have polluted air and water elsewhere in the city. Ron Kashden, speaking for the Coalition of City Neighborhood Associations, pointed out two past examples to the commissioners.
Ron Kashden: The zoning right now for industrial contains many uses that also have very significant environmental problems. You’ve seen me up here before talking about the facility formerly known as US Recycling. Everyone up here is familiar with the site at Booker High and the concern about that. This is a rezone into one of those zones that have old uses that the city really doesn’t want to have.
NB: Newtown Gateway representatives were adamant they do not intend to engage in or lease the property to commercial recyclers or other polluting businesses. Keith Dubose with Newtown Gateway told the commission he is heavily involved with Booker High School and understands the community’s concerns.
Keith Dubose: We want to be good players. We want to work with the environment. We understand that there are other areas and other properties that are causing environmental concerns. I know about the one at Booker High School. I’m heavily involved in Booker High School, being a Booker High alum and the parent of a Booker High alum, so I’m concerned about that.
NB: Earlier meetings, including with the planning board, had tried to negotiate language precluding the site from commercial materials recycling and other air polluting activities but never landed on the exact wording. This time, commissioners, attorneys and staff spent close to an hour negotiating a restriction tied to the property itself.
Channer agreed to a proffer binding not just Newtown Gateway but any future company using the site from uses primarily involving the processing, crushing or recycling of materials such as concrete.
BC: Today, I’m telling you—just to to make sure it doesn’t get lost—that we’re prepared to say those things that were objectionable, or those things that were identified as not being done in the open air, we are prepared to proffer to add that they also would not be done as commercial businesses on the site.
NB: Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch raised a separate concern. Brownfields are prime targets for data center operators. Data centers are an emerging statewide issue, drawing opposition over environmental impact and surveillance. She sought a guarantee the site would never house a data center.
Jen Ahearn-Koch: My other concern is a relatively new item, but it’s the topic of the day: data centers. Is there a way we can have the conversation about proffering that this not become a data center?
NB: Channer said he would follow whatever regulations the city eventually produces on data centers but said he did not want to get ahead of that larger discussion. Channer reiterated Newtown Gateway’s focus is on developing medical offices and a warehouse, not a data center or recycling facility.
BC: We attach that to the purchase and sale agreement and accepted the requirement that we adhere to the plan we proposed to you all.
NB: The commission voted unanimously—5-0—to approve the rezoning with the proffer on first reading. It’s not final; the item returns for a second reading before the zoning change takes effect.
Reporting for WSLR News, Noah Bookstein.
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