Member-only story
The Cul-de-Sac Was the Good Idea
The quiet you love and the traffic you hate are one design, billed to two different addresses.
On the third of August, the city of Sarasota erased a piece of itself.
The piece is called Osprey Court. It’s a public alley on the block where Ringling Boulevard meets Osprey Avenue, running between two parcels a developer wanted to combine into one. The application to vacate it — to convert public right-of-way into private land — made a case that is difficult to argue with. Osprey Court, it said, “serves only as access to solid waste dumpsters with no sidewalks or connection to any streets.” Waste trucks had chewed up the pavement. There were no trees. It offered, in the application’s words, “no public benefit whatsoever.”
The City Commission voted 4–1 to hand it over. Four thousand one hundred forty-five square feet, conveyed to PFI 721 Development — about the footprint of a large house. On the same block, the same developer is putting up a ten-story, fifty-unit condominium tower.
Mayor Debbie Trice cast the lone no. Her objection was that the city had given away “an extremely valuable…
