The Lake Sarasota Community Blog

Update: On Nov. 28, 2023,  despite the absence of any traffic study. the Board of Sarasota County Commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the Sarasota Baptist windfall proposal for 87 unaffordable homes on Hand Road.  Six people from the community offered several reasons that a rational judge would consider to be compelling, but not this Board. This commission reads the Comp Plan not as a set of strategies to prevent poor planning, but rather as a mandate to mindlessly approve growth. From the follow-up story in the Sarasota News Leader : The new homes will increase car trips from 66 to 847 daily on crippled Hand Road.  Commissioner Mark Smith noted Transportation staff had provided a chart in the report on the application showing that the daily number of trips on Hand Road linked to the existing zoning, Open Use Estate, was 66. That figure was attributed to data found in the 11th edition of the Institute of Traffic Engineers (ITE) manual, which the Transportation staff use...

Notices about the proposed  80+ luxury home project with two entrances on Hand Road  have been mailed out, but it's unclear how much of the Lake Sarasota community is included in the mailing. Note that this project poses potential safety considerations for our school children as well as parents driving their kids to Lakeview Elementary and Oak Park Schools.  No traffic study has been done. The County Commission Hearing on Nov. 28th will be the final decision on this project. Here's a  link to the official hearing announcement , which indicates a 9 a.m. time, but this could be updated when the official Agenda comes out. - More information about this project and Sarasota Baptist's sale of acreage to David Weekley Homes, is at these links: We spoke at the Planning Commission Hearing . Two commissioners saw the potential hazard of the design and voted against the proposal.  Does this project invite danger? The Planning Commission is an appointed board  of Real...

As seen on Hand Road: Site Plan for 80 homes on Hand Road  The Baptist Church on Hand Rd. plans to sell some 26 acres north of its church and school to a home builder who plans to build 80 single family homes. The layout calls for two entrances/exits onto Hand Rd. from the new cluster, to be built by David Weekly Homes .  The development proposal, which can be found in full here , raises questions. For example, what will be the impacts on traffic on Hand Rd., a narrow two-lane road which has two schools - Lakeview Elementary and Oak Park - that attract large numbers of cars and buses on weekday mornings and afternoons? In addition, Lake Sarasota is currently facing another developer's initiative - a 208-unit condo proposal called West Bridge that would squeeze into the wooded land between Molokai and I-75. This project. would add some 400 cars to Lake Sarasota's internal streets, primarily Jarvis, which leads to Hand Road.  The Sarasota County Planning Commission will re...