In a city defined by its coastal charm and modest skyline, a heated battle over a proposed luxury high-rise has dragged on for more than two years — and cost its opponents well over six figures.
The fight centers on the Obsidian, a planned 18-story condo tower that would rise more than 320 feet into the air, making it the tallest building in downtown Sarasota. Its footprint: a small quarter-acre lot surrounded on three sides by the Bay Plaza condo, whose residents say the tower would block views, cast shadows and break with the character of the area.
On Tuesday, the fight reaches a critical juncture when the Sarasota City Commission considers the latest appeal from Bay Plaza. The group of mostly retired residents have spent their own money and countless hours trying to stop or reshape the project.
If the City Commission votes to let the Obsidian proceed, Bay Plaza residents say they’ll take the fight to circuit court — a move that could push their costs far higher and prolong the battle for years.
Across Sarasota County, residents have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into legal and expert fees in similar efforts — not always to stop a project, but simply to force changes or ensure their concerns were formally addressed.
“Whatever money we have spent, it’s been worth it,” said Ron Shapiro, one of the organizers of the opposition and a board member of the Bay Plaza condo association.
Shapiro told Suncoast Searchlight that residents have spent more than $100,000 so far and that, if not for the pro bono work supplied by Bay Plaza residents who happen to be architects, general contractors and engineers, the price tag would be “close to a half a million dollars.”
Bay Plaza isn’t the only community that’s had to spend big to challenge a development plan.
Residents of downtown Sarasota’s Ritz-Carlton Residences at The Quay spent more than $800,000 on attorneys’ fees alone to challenge the original plan for One Park Sarasota, which would have included a section of building stretching over a road shared by all residents in The Quay.
Siesta Key advocate Lourdes Ramirez shelled out close to $300,000 fighting plans for two large hotels on the barrier island that violated Sarasota County’s own growth plan.
“You have to pay for experts. You have to pay for lawyers,” said Ramirez, whose efforts were successful. “None of that is free.”
And since a 2019 change to state law, residents who lose their cases can be forced to pay their opponents’ legal costs too. Ramirez said if she had lost, she could have been on the hook not just for her bills, but for the county’s and the developers’.
“That’s almost a million dollars for someone potentially wanting to challenge a decision,” she said.
Objections more successful if they’re expert-backed
Florida law requires that local development decisions be based on “competent and substantial” evidence. That means public opinion carries little weight, and opposition must be grounded in technical, code-based objections — typically presented by professionals.
Developers arrive with teams of attorneys, engineers, architects and planners. Residents must do the same.
Morgan Bentley, the attorney representing Bay Plaza residents, said developers can absorb opposition costs by factoring them into their budgets. Residents, on the other hand, have no financial return on their investment.
“Protesters have no economic model to make this work,” said Bentley, who confirmed the Ritz-Carlton’s $800,000 figure. “They have no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
Lucia Panica, the city’s director of development services, said that not all residents hire expensive lawyers and technical experts.
“I’ve seen in my time here a lot of different ways that neighborhoods can get involved,” said Panica, who has been with the city since 2013. “So, I’m not sure if the legal bills are that high all the time.”
But R.N. Collins, a retired engineer and development professional who now advises residents fighting development projects, said the system is skewed toward people whose level of technical expertise on the matter is on par with that of the developers and city staff.
Robert K. Lincoln, an attorney for the Obsidian, seemed to agree.
“In a situation where you’ve got complicated regulations and complicated processes, there’s always going to be at least some bias in favor of expertise,” Lincoln said. “It’s not unfair, but it is more difficult — much more difficult — for people who do not have either the time, the money or the ability to develop or access knowledge and expertise about the system.”
Bay Plaza residents have learned those lessons firsthand over the past two years.
Their fight began when plans for the Obsidian were submitted to the city in December of 2022.
Shapiro said he believed the project would be rejected outright for being so out of scale and out of character with the surrounding neighborhood. But once city staff began processing the application, he said he realized the only way to push back would be to spend money.
The Obsidian was initially proposed as a 342-foot tower, which would have made it the tallest in downtown Sarasota. Its 18-story design included what residents described as excessive interstitial space between floors — mechanical space between units — that allowed the building to remain within the city’s maximum floor limit while dramatically exceeding the height of neighboring buildings.
Bay Plaza residents argued the developer was abusing a loophole in the code to maximize height and waterfront views, and that the tower would cast shadows, create a wind tunnel and fundamentally alter the neighborhood.
Developers get the floor. Residents pay to be heard
Their first step was navigating the city’s review process. Most downtown projects begin — and end — with the Development Review Committee, a panel of city staffers who evaluate plans for technical compliance. Residents can attend meetings, but they are not allowed to speak.
Shapiro said citizens tried to flag concerns through written comments, but most of their objections were addressed out of public view in conversations between city staff and the developer.
“We never really had our questions answered,” he said.
Panica said the city takes all comments into account when reviewing a project and that the development team’s responses to those comments are publicly available throughout the duration of the review process.
Lincoln also defended the structure of the review process, noting that while residents may not speak during DRC meetings, they can email city staff with detailed technical objections.
“Anybody who knows the process knows how to get the emails of the DRC members,” he said.
After city staff first rejected the Obsidian’s design, the developer refiled a slightly shorter version — at 327 feet tall. That plan received DRC approval after several administrative adjustments were granted by senior city officials.
Bay Plaza residents filed an appeal, but first had to convince the Planning Board they qualified as an “aggrieved party” — a legal threshold requiring them to prove they would be adversely impacted “to a greater degree than the general public,” according to the city’s zoning codes.
The board voted 3-2 in their favor.
“That was one of the more bizarre and shocking steps in the process,” Shapiro said. “If there was ever the definition of an aggrieved party, it’s us for this project.”
Winning that status allowed residents to present evidence in a public hearing. But it also meant more attorney hours, more expert testimony and more expenses.
Shapiro said he has spent countless hours studying zoning rules and development procedures just to keep up.
The developers “know all these laws and zoning codes inside and out,” he said. “For most of us laypeople, the process is complex. When you’re starting from scratch to try to learn that, it takes a lot of time, and it’s easy to see why other folks just get burned out.”
Meanwhile, he and his cohorts have shown up in force — often donning red shirts to protest the Obsidian at public meetings, waving signs downtown and attending every forum where they might be seen or heard. The shirts became a visual signature of their campaign, even when their voices weren’t allowed at the table.
Matt Kihnke, a founder of MK Equity Partners and the developer of the Obsidian, has previously denied that his proposal “abuses” any city codes.
He declined an interview for this story citing the pending appeal from residents.
“The Planning Board hearing demonstrates how this project meets all applicable codes and standards,” he wrote in a statement sent to Suncoast Searchlight.
Sarasota reviewing the DRC and site plan requirementsPanica said the city is currently reviewing its Development Review Committee process and site plan requirements as part of a broader strategic plan initiative adopted last year by the City Commission.
Sarasota’s development procedures haven’t been thoroughly evaluated in more than a decade, and most current DRC staff weren’t involved in crafting the existing framework, according to a justification about the review included in the city’s 2023-24 adopted financial plan.
The goal, the plan noted, is to create a more streamlined process that reflects public input, works efficiently for staff, and improves how projects are evaluated.
City staff continue to meet with neighborhood groups and developers to gather feedback, with the hope of presenting recommendations to the city manager and ultimately the commission by year’s end, Panica said.
To Shapiro, the development review system may be sound on paper, but in practice, it favors those who have deep pockets, institutional knowledge, or regular experience with the process — typically developers, not residents.
“Not even close. Not at all,” Shapiro said when asked if the process feels fair. He pointed to the sheer cost and complexity of participating, noting that most residents don’t know the right language to use, the right deadlines to meet or how to structure a formal objection that will hold weight.
Collins, the retired development professional who now represents residents, called the current process “tremendously unbalanced.” He argued that development professionals — architects, engineers, land-use attorneys — often work repeatedly with city staff and develop strong ties that can unintentionally skew the process.
“When staff deals all day long with other professionals, they become simpatico with one another,” Collins said.
He cited the redevelopment of the Bath & Racquet Club, as a recent example. The project, located behind the Trader Joe’s on Tamiami Trail, includes more than 200 new condos and a private sports complex surrounded by mostly single-family homes.
Nearby residents opposed the plans and asked Collins to help them fight back. He said he did so as a volunteer, spending four years on the campaign. Despite their efforts, the City Commission approved the project in 2022.
A lawsuit followed, but residents settled out of court with the city and developer after securing more than two dozen concessions. They were not satisfied, but they decided to call it quits, Collins said, because the cost of litigation was too high to continue.
“I do not believe they got the best deal,” he said. “They got the best deal they could afford.”
Lincoln, the attorney for the Obsidian, doesn’t dispute that the process can be difficult for the average person to navigate, but he said the structure itself is necessary. The city must follow state law, he said, which demands development decisions be based on evidence and standards — not public sentiment.
“A lot of people find it frustrating that, bottom line, a lot of developments meet the codes and the standards, and people just don’t like it,” Lincoln said. “Which is a different issue altogether.”
Derek Gilliam is an investigative/watchdog reporter for Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org.
This story was originally published by Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom delivering investigative journalism to Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org.
