A festival on St. Armands Circle is the right idea - at the wrong place | SEIDMAN SAYS
On Oct. 3, the Sarasota city commissioners voted 4-1 to authorize the city manager to issue a usage permit for a “winter festival” to take place on St. Armands Circle Nov.18 through Jan. 3.
The festival, which would be held inside the Circle roundabout, will feature an artificial skating rink, a trackless train, a carousel, a performance stage and other child-friendly activities like face-painting and a giant globe with swirling “snow” (foam).
In presenting his vision for this “inaugural” event, Tom Leonard, owner of Shore and chair of the St. Armands Business Improvement District, said he was inspired by childhood memories of holidays up north, as well as a defunct tradition started by Jacob Powell 36 years ago that included a children’s train, carousel and Christmas tree lighting on the Circle.
Wielding a petition with signatures from dozens of Circle storeowners, Leonard predicted the event would boost merchant sales and city parking income while treating local residents to a special celebration, kicked off by the lighting of a 60-foot Christmas tree (recently paid for, to the tune of $286,000, through a city grant) on the first festival evening.
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On the surface it’s a feel-good proposal – a special holiday gift for residents and an economic boon to merchants caught in an inflationary post-pandemic slump. Who can resist images of gleeful children frolicking in the (fake) snow, listening to carols, waving to their parents from a tiny train or bobbing up and down on carousel animals?
Ah, but the Grinch is in the dubious details – and there are enough of those to warrant looking beneath the shiny, foil wrapping.
Foremost is the fact that all of this activity is proposed to take place inside the Circle, a relatively small, uneven, tree-filled plot of ground entirely encircled by a roundabout that experiences steady (and often grid-locked) traffic as the only vehicle access to and from the city for Lido and Longboat Key residents.
The planned train would run along half of a 12-foot-wide sidewalk inside the circle; the other half would be devoted to pedestrians, which is another pairing with accident potential. The thought of hundreds of excited children darting in and out of traffic does not exactly fill my heart with holiday cheer.
Moreover, although Sarasota has long claimed St. Armands Circle as a city park, the city does not in fact hold title to the land, which is bordered by a state highway and could be considered a public right of way (thus under the purview of the Florida Department of Transportation).
Does the city even have the right to curtail a public right of way for seven weeks? And would FDOT, which has previously expressed concern about driver distraction from public art statues in the center of roundabouts, approve of this mobile distraction? (At deadline, FDOT had yet to weigh in.)
While the project’s promoters – Leonard and Jeff Koffman of Ride Entertainment, a private, for-profit enterprise – have touted its “free” events, other than a temporary stage showcasing local performing groups, there will be a charge for all activities – somewhere between $9.99 and $19.99, Leonard suggested.
These fees are necessary, he maintained, for crowd control, which will require participants to purchase tickets through an app with specified participation time slots.
A number of circle merchants spoke in favor of the proposal, but Rachel Burns, executive director of the St. Armands Circle Association, said many who signed the “incomplete” petition were not aware of what the event would entail; both merchants and residents previously voted down the idea of a permanent carousel on the Circle.
Burns said her association was not included in the festival planning, even after her inquiries at a previous commission meeting in August, and that granting the usage would bump two previously scheduled events – a car show and the traditional lighting of the St. Armands’ tree on Dec. 2.
The Rev. Kenneth Blythe, pastor of the nearby St. Armands Key Lutheran Church, which annually invests thousands of dollars to host a “living nativity” with real animals in conjunction with the tree lighting, agreed with Burns’ characterization of the festival as “a for-profit event piggybacking on a St. Armands tradition.”
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City attorney Robert Fournier said he didn’t believe allowing a for-profit usage for the length of time in question was a legal problem, as long as the festival was deemed to have “a valid, municipal purpose.” Commissioner Jen Ahern-Koch proposed postponing the festival for a year to clear up all the concerns, but ultimately became the sole dissenting vote.
Just to be clear: I am not one of the “angry, miserable people” former Sarasota City Commission candidate Jerry Wells accused of trying to defeat this idea. I love Christmas. I love the Circle. And most of all, I love children. But I don’t love the idea of a for-profit, fee-based (and thus, exclusionary) festival for children held in the middle of one of the city’s most notorious traffic choke spots.
I propose moving it to Ken Thompson Park on City Island, a mile away, where there is a vast open green space that could easily accommodate the activities and protect the participants. Use the Bay Runner trolley to shuttle residents to and from downtown and St. Armands – where they can eat and shop before and after the festival. And tap our generous philanthropic community to underwrite the cost so all children could participate for free.
Now there’s a winter festival even a Grinch could embrace.
Contact Carrie Seidman at carrie.seidman@gmail.com or 505-238-0392.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Holding a winter fest in the St. Armands Circle roundabout? Ho-ho-no!
