Several upcoming decisions could make or break Sarasota’s Purple Cow.
Gretchen Cochran
Original Air Date: Feb. 26, 2025
Host: Next month, City of Sarasota commissioners are expected to take key decisions regarding the future of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. One of them is whether to seek a historic designation. Gretchen Cochran reports.
The Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. Photo by Maciek Lulko.
Gretchen Cochran: The Purple Cow may be hanging by a thread. In the next few weeks, Suncoast arts lovers will hear much about their beloved Van Wezel Performing Arts Center. Deadlines are approaching for monetary awards and governmental decisions, so various bodies are all aflutter.
By the end of March, the City of Sarasota must give the nod one way or another if it wishes to continue the ever-increasing cost pursuit of the construction of the would-be mega-arts-center at the opposite side of the Van Wezel parking lot. By June, the city’s Purple Ribbon Van Wezel study committee is to present its recommendations regarding the center’s future.
Scale model of the proposed performing arts center.
March 1, Sarasota’s Coalition of Neighborhood Associations will hear from the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation about how the Van Wezel could be saved. Also on the program is the group speaking for the potential new performing arts center.
Even the Florida legislature is getting into the act. Rep. James Buchanan is sponsoring a bill in the upcoming session that could yield $3 and a half million for Van Wezel’s flood defense.
Appearing before all those local groups will be preservationist Lorrie Muldowney. Monday, she is expected to address the city commission, requesting time before the city’s ad hoc Purple Ribbon Committee which until now has not been scheduled.
We asked Ron Kashden, Sarasota resident and finance specialist, particularly of performing arts centers, what seems to be the impediment. The former city commission candidate also happens to be the husband of Kelly Franklin, one of the foremost defenders of the Purple Cow. Here’s what he had to say:
Ron Kashden: The genesis of the resistance that some on the Purple Ribbon Committee as well as in city hall have regarding historic designation goes back to the non-compete that’s in the preliminary agreement the foundation and the city signed whereby the Van Wezel would not compete in any way with the performance hall. Some, I think incorrectly, view historic designation as some type of obstacle and restriction on what the city can do. But, indeed, it’s just the opposite. It opens up economic benefits and economic opportunities for funding and other sources that the city wouldn’t have if the hall wasn’t officially historically designated. I applaud the Alliance for taking the initiative.
Lorrie Muldowney.
GC: We sat down with Muldowney in a rather noisy café to learn a bit about her and some of the myths surrounding historic preservation. Muldowney knows this city well. Now semi-retired and working as a consultant, she spent nearly her entire career in Sarasota, first as a senior planner for the city, focusing on downtown redevelopment and historic preservation, reflecting her master’s degree. Name a few renowned urban designers or architects, and she has probably worked with them. She once worked with Andres Duany, Sarasota’s master plan guider decades ago.
For the last decade she has served on the board of directors of the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation. The Alliance, with a group of concerned citizens including members of the Van Wezel family, is assisting the city with an application for the National Register of Historic Places. While listing has few restrictions—in fact, a building on the National Register can be demolished—there are dollar incentives from the state and federal governments.
Here are a few preservation grants received here in earlier years: The Sarasota Opera House got $208,000 in 1989 and in 1999 the county got $300,000 for work on the courthouse; Selby Botanical Gardens got nearly $400,000 for the Selby House restoration; St.Paul Lutheran Church took in nearly $210,000 to rehab its education building. All were listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
In some cases, the dollars really add up. New College of Florida has received over $3 million for campus projects.
Even though the funds are attractive, people fear what they perceive as strings. Muldowney says there is no need.
Lorrie Muldowney: The City of Sarasota has a local historic designation program, and Sarasota County has a local historic designation program. They are very similar to one another, and they are quite similar to programs across the country. They both utilize a document called the Secretary of the Interior Standards for Historical Rehabilitation. The standards are ten guiding principles that talk about things like a building should be retained in its original use if possible.
It’s a highly competitive process. In order to evaluate an application, you have to know what’s important about a building. If you have nothing, you got nothing.
GC: The Van Wezel is in the floodplain and will most definitely draw attention from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its so-called 50% rule. But if a building is determined eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, then it is exempted from the 50% limitation.
This is a complex subject but an important one. Muldowney will be teaching about it March 1, 9 a.m. at the Bayfront Community Center to the Coalition of City Neighborhood Associations.
This has been Gretchen Cochran, reporting for WSLR News.
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