New county administrative center emphasizes health, fitness

On Jan. 31, the Sarasota County Fee authorized $28 million in funds enhancement earnings bonds to finance construction of a new county administration center. On Wednesday, commissioners acquired their 1st seem at what the new $75 million creating will look like.

Nonetheless in the style phase, Director of Money Advancement Assignments Carolyn Eastwood showed commissioners exterior renderings of the making that will swap the current county headquarters at 1660 Ringling Blvd. The new setting up will be on county-owned land in Fruitville Farms.

With an emphasis on health and health and fitness — the making will be following to Celery Fields, which provides sufficient exercising chances — amid the architectural options is a glass-enclosed “communicating staircase” protruding from the entrance of the constructing. It is intended to stimulate staff members to climb the stairs instead than trip an elevator, in stark distinction to the present-day administrative centre.

“In this developing correct now we have staircases, but they’re enclosed,” Eastwood explained. “There are genuinely no windows. Employees will not interact. All those who use the elevator never ever see individuals applying the stairs, so that is why we get in touch with it the communicating staircase. The thought is to try to have staff members have additional conversation when they use the stairs and also promote staff members to use the stairs. It really is a brighter ecosystem, and it can be extra inviting.”

The public will have accessibility to the floor flooring exactly where the 3,500-square-foot meeting chamber will be found on the north end of the crescent-shaped creating. A 2,400-sq.-foot  “think tank,” at this time on the third ground, will also be on the very first ground, enabling less complicated and extra protected community accessibility. The flooring will also have meeting rooms, a canteen for team with sights of Celery Fields, and a 4,000-sq.-foot gym.

The south aspect of the new Sarasota County Administration Centre will give views of Celery Fields, a county park, throughout the sidewalk from the constructing.

Courtesy rendering

“I know we are in the starting phases here, but what I genuinely would like to know, in serving the public in areas they’re going to use, is how a lot of seats are in the chamber? How lots of stalls in the bogs? How does that examine to what we currently have?” stated Commissioner Nancy Detert. “A single of the 1st points I ever discovered about coming to this developing is that the bathrooms are so properly situated. They seem very open up to the community and large and they’re just proper there and effortless to obtain. You do not have to go down a hallway. Numbers are heading to be significant to me.”

While these figures have but to be established, the flooring strategy exhibits restrooms found between the assembly chamber and the consider tank, and one more established of restrooms in close proximity to the opposite stop of the developing. 

The county marketed its 170,000-square-foot administration heart in downtown to Benderson Growth Inc. in December 2021, together with two adjoining attributes applied for parking, for $25 million. In April 2022, it executed a land swap with Benderson, buying and selling county-owned land at Nathan Benderson Park for the new internet site on Apex Road. 

Constructed in 1973, county employees approximated the existing constructing would need to have $49 million in repairs above the subsequent 20 several years, and moving the administration heart to an unincorporated area together the interstate would make it greater accessible to far more county inhabitants, specifically as the inhabitants middle moves to the southern element of the county.

The layout for the new creating is because of to be submitted on March 17. From there, the countdown begins to vacating the latest house by the time the lease expires on Dec. 31, 2025.

“After that is the development improvement phase for the building drawings afterwards in the spring,” Eastwood mentioned. “We hope to carry back again an initial assured optimum cost package for acceptance, and that would permit us to get started off early on a website function package as effectively as perhaps some obtain of prolonged guide items. In the slide, we foresee completing our design and allowing and then commencing entire development.”

That leaves two decades to full the developing. 

“And then we have a pair of months in get to move everyone out of below and get them into the new facility.”