Charting community aspirations is much like sailing across open water. If those in and guiding the boat focus their attention exclusively on the choppy waves hitting the side of the boat, they are more likely to become seasick and stray off course. Focusing on the horizon by those at the helm not only assures arrival at the desired destination, but also calms passengers and crew.

In the sailboat we call community, it seems aspirational communities refresh their future visions every 50 years or so. During those times, the voices and energies of inspired, insightful and often can-do citizens come together in anticipation of the winds of change.

100 years ago, the Ringlings and their colleagues instilled Sarasota’s vision to create a community of the arts and business against a backdrop of natural beauty on the Gulf Coast.

Approximately 50 years later in the early 1960s, a broad array of citizens came together to advance several visionary community goals sustaining Sarasota as a high quality of life community as it grew.

For those who may not be aware, Sarasota voters in December 1964 approved a $4.1-million bond issue that authorized:

1. Relocating City Hall from its 1917 location on Main Street on the Bayfront to its current location, cost $750,000.
2. Moving the Public Works Department, shop and municipal storage area from the Bayfront, where the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall is now located, to the current Public Works/Utilities campus on 12^th Street, cost $150,000.
3. The building of a municipal theater auditorium, which became the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, cost $1.35 million.
4. Building a New Recreation Center in Newtown replacing an inadequate, obsolete, WWII USO entertainment barracks, cost $100,000.
5. Building sidewalks to schools for half of the 15,000 school children who walked to neighborhood schools, cost $100,000.
6. The Curved Bayfront Street Improvements along the downtown Bayfront, cost $1.1 million.
7. Lido Beach restoration and pavilion restoration, cost $550,000.

In 1964, with 40,000 full time residents, Sarasota “Freeholders” passed the “Program for Progress” by a wide margin. It is hard to imagine today’s Sarasota without the assets conceived of in the early 1960s.

Now, 50 years after implementation of the ambitious “Program for Progress,” a similar era of inspiration and the refreshing of Sarasota’s future vision appears to once again be underway.

Over recent months, ideas have advanced and sails have been raised toward refreshing our course.  

These initiatives include:

• Updating transportation plans and options, triggered by the City Commission appropriating $500,000 for creative transportation planning to better move people once they get here.
• Master Planning the Historic 324-acre Bobby Jones Golf Course and exploring how to retain the property as a recreational and critical environmental natural asset, in perpetuity.
• Updating the City Zoning Code for the future and responding to and integrating tools to create more affordable housing in the community.
• Completing a permit process to secure federal, state and local funding to stabilize our shorelines for the next 50 years (versus emergency restorations), as the city and region undertake sea level adaptation plans and strategies as sea levels are predicted to rise.
• Completing an oral, pictorial and buildings history of historic Newtown as it begins its 101^st year, as historic economic renewal picks up momentum in Newtown.
• Working with Ringling College, New College, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee and State College of Florida on their C4 initiative as they grow and evolve, expanding Sarasota’s identity to include being a college town/educational/creativity hub.
• Completing the final eight miles of the Legacy Bicycle Trail to Payne Park, thereby connecting Downtown Sarasota to Venice by a protected bicycle trail.
• Modernizing and enhancing the 42-acre Cultural District Bayfront park and amenities as articulated to the City Commission last Monday by the Bayfront 20:20 coalition.

As these initiatives demonstrate, the community is going through another inspirational era that will help define the reality of Sarasota over the next 50 years.  As in the past, it’s a time to set our eyes on the horizon and be guided by clear skies and bright stars between the storms.

Tom Barwin is city manager for the City of Sarasota.