SPAC boosters say the new proposal is less costly and gives the historic ‘Purple Cow’ a more important role.
By Gretchen Cochran
Original Air Date: January 14, 2026
Host: The prospects for a new performing arts center in the Bay Park near downtown Sarasota got a boost. Thursday, the private partner in this public-private project announced the endorsement by the grandchildren of the Van Wezels. In return, the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation changed its plans to give the historic venue that bears the family’s name a key function, thus extending its life. Gretchen Cochran reports.
Gretchen Cochran: We knew when the descendants of the Van Wezel family were said to be supporting Sarasota’s new Performing Arts Center, something had changed. Just a few months ago, the SPAC as it is slangily called, was purportedly going to put the beloved “purple cow” out to pasture. Tony Stone and his sister, Katherine Stone, Van Wezel grandchildren, were incensed.
Tony and Katherine Van Wezel Stone. Photo courtesy SPAF
But then, Tanya Castroverde Moskalenko, CEO of the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation, approached them with some new ideas. She visited with them, describing a new vision of The Bay as a “cultural campus” including the historic buildings preserved there and the Van Wezel itself.
Her staff had listened to the various concerns, she told a public gathering Thursday. The Italian architect, Renzo Piano, and his designers now propose SPAC 2.0. Two parking buildings would be added, wedged between the new center and the present City Auditorium. Together, the garages would accommodate 750 vehicles. The center would still consist of two buildings, but they would be smaller, seating 2,200 seats in one, and 300 in the other. The second smaller building would also include learning labs. And the height restrictions required by the condo owners across Tamiami would be respected.
The Van Wezel seat number would be reduced, maybe to 500, Tony Stone said, perhaps allowing the addition of a center aisle in the auditorium. And the 50-plus-year-old building would achieve historic designation to perhaps open some rehab dollars, he was told.
Tony Stone and his wife, residents of Bradenton, are not pushovers. Sandra Stone was chancellor of USF Sarasota/Manatee and is now a professor of criminology there. Tony is a forensic psychologist, having formed a business providing fitness- for- duty evaluations for police departments and other businesses. Both are semi-retired and lovers of the arts.
WSLR interviewed the Stones after the official presentation at a St. Armands Key restaurant. We apologize for the noisy background. Tony Stone said under the previous proposal, the Van Wezel would have been a white elephant.
The project makeover adds a garage, shrinks the two new performing arts buildings, and gives the Van Wezel a more important role.
Tony Stone: “So what was inevitable was, the Van Wezel would be a white elephant, and it would be eliminated.”
GC: He said all that changed with the new proposal, which he called “magnificent”.
TS: “So it’s a really, very different landscape than what we were dealing with, say, last year. … It’s a magnificent project. It comes off radically different. It would be like [inaudible] in San Diego. It’s just a campus with all sorts of venues. Arts, educational – it would be great.”
GC: Tony says his sister Katherine in New York has met with Tanya as well, via Zoom. “She’s fully on board, too,” he said.
Jennifer Jorgensen, the city’s government relations manager, emphasizes this new SPAC iteration will be less costly than the first one. Estimates for the first version came in at more than $400 million.
Jennifer Jorgensen: “We don’t have a final final number yet. We’ll need to wait until we have schematic design. But, like Tanya said, we are below $300 million in what we’re looking at as far as a total project cost. Not just construction, it’s the total project cost.”
GC: Specific dollars and timing are dependent on finalizing drawings and acceptance of the city commissioners, possibly this Spring, Jorgensen said.
SPAC has agreed to raise half the costs and has already amassed a significant amount of dollars and pledges. More will flow in from a March gala when Edina Menzel will perform for the foundation.
There are many loose ends. The city’s original plan to fund this project was to be getting some buy-in from the county. But a few weeks ago, the county commissioners said at a public meeting they were not interested in providing their share of the tax increment financing (also known as a TIF). But at that same commission meeting, it was stated the issue would be further discussed in April.
Tax Increment Financing creates a district, and from the start date, increased property tax revenues are set aside for specific purposes. As it has happened, the city-county’s designated TIF area has mushroomed in value. But leaders of both governments fear the impact of state-proposed property tax cuts.
Still, Castroverde Moskalenko said at Thursday’s SPAC gathering the county’s withdrawal has never been put in writing. So there is hope the county may change its mind.
Kelly Franklin, long Van Wezel supporter, finds this new SPAC proposal as objectionable as the first. She notes the “resort-type vision” integral to anything involving SPAC and even mentions Jennifer Jorgensen’s previous employment by Disney.
Franklin’s co-created webpage, “Keep the Van Wezel,” captures the saga of the campaign to ward off earlier efforts to allow the building to deteriorate and the shortcomings of the SPAC campaign, including its lack of a business or programming plan.
Kelly Franklin: “It has nothing, and it has had nothing, except an option to present a plan contingent on a business plan. And there’s still no business plan. And a business plan is not, ‘Give me all your money and let me build what I want’. it is, ‘There’s a purpose for this structure, and this purpose is X, Y and Z, and here’s what’s going to happen here that you’re not already getting, and here’s the incremental public benefit’. And none of that’s happened.”
GC: Reporting for WSLR News, Gretchen Cochran.
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