The Sarasota Experience

- [Announcer 1] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- [Announcer 2] Funding for "The Sarasota Experience" provided by the Charles and Margery Barancik Foundation with additional support from Sharon Carole, Kilwins of Siesta Key, Visit Sarasota, Gail and Skip Sack, Global Public Speaking, Gould Family Trust Foundation at Gulf Coast Community Foundation.

One Stop Housing, Robert S. Russell, and Zen Foundation.

(mystical orchestral music) (camera clicking) - [Director] And action!

(people chattering) (mystical music continues) (opera singer singing) - [Interviewee 1] My wife's favorite saying when I complained about the changes that were going on in Sarasota was the one thing constant in Sarasota has been change.

She was born here.

She has seen it grow from a village to a town, to a city, to a growing city.

- [Vickie] Sarasota is a young adult trying to figure out its identity.

- [Deborah] Sarasota holds its own to much, much bigger towns.

- [Interviewee 2] A lot of folks, even those who just got here yesterday, don't like to see change.

They think they wanna see Sarasota remain just as it was the day they arrived here, but over time they come to understand that change is really part of a living organism.

If you don't change, you'll die.

(mystical music continues) - [Anand] I think Sarasota's the greatest city on earth.

Truthfully.

You truly have the ability to help shape the fabric of this community by getting engaged and being passionate about what you care about here.

- [Interviewee 3] Everybody plays a role in creating a thriving community and nobody can be left out.

- [Uzi] Our generation has tremendous responsibilities to ensure that this land will be a place that can provide success and wellbeing for future generations.

- [Interviewee 4] It's our responsibility to leave this place better than we found it.

(music increases) - [Hope] Hello, folks.

We are having a wonderful time.

I will, for once, have a nice tan, and Joe too.

We're going to the beach every day and laying in the sun.

This salt air is surely cleansing my head up too.

Wish you were here to enjoy it with us.

Love, Hope.

- People have lived in what's now Sarasota County at least 20,000 years by gathering and hunting, moving around the landscape, and going to where there's abundance and pleasant weather.

The ancestors of the Seminole Miccosukee people were really adaptive to this environment.

They were successful.

It was a way of life that lasted generation after generation after generation.

And there was change, there was history, but the most massive change came about 500 years ago.

1539 when Hernando de Soto lands at Tampa Bay with 400 men, horses, war dogs, that starts a process that really shifts the trajectory for this region.

And so we see archeologically the evidence of people being cut down by Spanish swords and hundreds dying of European diseases.

So the devastation is both that immediate violence and a longer term disease born destruction of people's lives.

In the mid to late 19th century, there was a series of military campaigns to push the Seminoles away, to send them on the trail of tears.

But the Seminoles resisted.

Whether it's the first Seminole war, the second Seminole war, the third Seminole war, it was massive efforts to capture and take away people from their homeland.

This is a place of dispossession.

This was the homeland for the Seminole Miccosukee people and their ancestors, and they were pushed out of their land.

- In 1842, a gentleman named William Whitaker was looking for a new place to call home, and he and his half brother Hamlin Snell sailed along the coast of Florida and they came into Sarasota Bay and they saw this beautiful cliff-like setting that was called Yellow Bluffs, and he looked around and they decided this is where he would build his home.

He married Mary Wyatt who lived in Manatee, and they say that the first road from Sarasota to Manatee was the trail that William Whitaker made going back and forth to court her.

Some of them, the Wyatts and Whitakers, are still in the area in fact.

In the 1880s, a young man named AB Edwards was hunting with his father around what today is Five Points.

They came across this surveying company and the main surveyor saw them and said, "From this hub, I'm gonna lay out the town of Sarasota."

This was a Scottish land syndicate, and if you look at an old plat map, you'll see the streets are named after fruits, orange, lime, lemon, pineapple, and that was to sell their countrymen on the idea that they could become farmers in Sarasota.

And so they painted Sarasota to be something that it was not.

They had a rather harrowing journey, and they sailed from Scotland to New York and then they went to Cedar Key.

And in Cedar Key, they got word that everything wasn't in Sarasota as it was painted to be.

- The natural environment of Sarasota was very inhospitable.

We have bugs, wildlife of all types, many of which would gladly eat you to a level that really made living here at certain times of the year very difficult.

- The Scot colony expected to find a little Scotland here in Sarasota, and they were totally ill prepared for what was actually here.

They had no real idea of how to deal with life in the wilderness.

If you look at old time photographs of the settlers, you can see the hardship etched on their faces.

So probably within a couple of months they were gone.

When the Scot colony started leaving, the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company still had about 50,000 acres of land to sell, so they sent the president's son, John Hamilton Gillespie over to put in the place the infrastructure that should've been here before the colony arrived.

He grubbed out the streets.

He built the first hotel in Sarasota, the DeSoto Hotel.

It opened in 1887 right on Sarasota Bay, and he also introduced golf to Florida.

When he came from Scotland, he brought his clubs with him and he laid out a two hole practice course.

- John Hamilton Gillespie felt that all he needed to do was attract more people here.

At the time, Sarasota was a fishing village and made its living out of the bays and the Gulf.

It still remained the beautiful pristine bay and the town grew along that main street and started to expand during that period of time.

- Sarasota in the early years, a very difficult place to reach.

Some of 'em came by ox cart, some of 'em came on horseback, but the easiest way was to take a steam ship to Sarasota Bay.

- My great uncle was in the fishing business and he had a steamboat, and he used to come from Tampa South to pick up fish along the way, but Uncle Johnny being a entrepreneur decided let's leverage the steamboat, which was called the Mistletoe, and let's provide regular transportation from Tampa to Sarasota.

It's those innovators, those creative ideas that help this area grow.

♪ Go tell it on the mountains ♪ - The earliest black settlers came in search freedom.

They were enslaved people in southern states and they came here into Spanish Florida looking for ways to raise their families and practice their traditions.

Lewis Colson was one of those early pioneers in the African American community.

- He was a member of the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company surveying crew, and he struck the first measuring stick down at Five Points.

He ultimately became a reverend and the voice for the Black community.

- Lewis Colson and his wife Irene founded the first Black church built by and for African Americans.

- He was one of the people working and living in what was called Overtown.

- The Overtown community is one of the earliest African American communities in Sarasota.

This is where African Americans settled.

Leonard Reid built his house in 1926 in the Overtown area, and he worked with Colonel John Gillespie in the early years to map out golf courses, and he ran Colonel Gillespie's house.

Sarasota was a growing community, and African Americans were learning about job opportunities and they found work here working in the fields.

Celery was a major crop here.

My aunt talks about picking tomatoes in the field, singing gospel songs, and socializing out there during breaks.

But this area began gentrifying, so now you don't even recognize Overtown as an African American community.

There are only a few remnants that would let you know that a Black community ever existed there.

- Bertha Palmer is really the base persona in Sarasota history.

Most of what we see today flows from actions that she took.

In the relatively brief period of time that she was in Sarasota between 1910 and 1918, the impact she had had a lot to do with who she already was.

Now Bertha became the social leader of Chicago at a time of huge growth of a prosperous middle class, and she played that role very well.

By the time she comes down to Sarasota, attracted by an advertisement for citrus lands in this area, it was akin to ET landing.

I mean, she was an otherworldly figure.

- Bertha Palmer arrived from Chicago in 1910.

Her pronouncements about Sarasota, the beauty of the place, generated a lot of interest among the wealthy of Chicago.

- Owen Burns was one of those people from Chicago that came down in part because Mrs. Palmer blazed the trail.

Burns immediately became one of the most productive citizens in Sarasota history.

- He bought out the holdings of the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company from John Hamilton Gillespie, and for $35,000, he got title to what would be 75% of today's city limits.

- He began to turn it over.

I mean, land was the thing to make money with in a frontier community like this.

- He played a significant role in Sarasota's early development and would play a more significant role in the Roaring Twenties development.

- [Maggie] This isn't where we're staying, but we pass it on our way to and from town.

Bing has been taking a square dancing lesson at the recreational hall.

Can you imagine it?

He's going to the movies with me tonight.

What a change in a man.

He still has trouble keeping his pants from dragging.

Maggie.

- [Jeff] In 1911, John and Charles Ringling came to Sarasota for a place of rest and relaxation from the grinds of the circus, and as with so many other people, just fell in love with the beauty of the place.

- John Ringling, along with Owen Burns, became the most important of early Sarasota developers.

Dwight James Baum, a prominent architect in Chicago, came here at the behest of John Ringling to design his mansion on the bay front.

Ca' d'Zan was based on an Italian palazzo.

It is not truly all Italian.

There is Moorish in it.

There is other forms of architecture, but it fit the grandeur that the circus magnet was looking for at the time.

- The house Ca' d'Zan was the stellar piece because it was going to be the house that people went to to see what Sarasota could become.

And if you go upstairs on the second floor, you could look out the window in John Ringling's office.

Almost everything you see, he owned.

- But the time Ringling was busy buying up all the islands offshore of Sarasota and becoming one of the major developers of the community.

- He built a causeway across Bird Key and then onto St. Armands.

He built it at his own expense in 1925 and he gave it to the city of Sarasota.

- In 1927, John Ringling decided to bring the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus to Sarasota.

He was heavily invested in Sarasota property, so he knew if he brought the circus, that would attract tourists, and indeed it did.

For a long time, the Sarasota Winter Quarters was the number one tourist attraction in the state of Florida.

- [Deborah] It was a Disney before Disney.

It drew thousands, hundreds of thousands of people every season to this town.

- At that time, they had a Sarasota pageant.

Every February for a solid week, we did a production of "The Legend of Sara DeSoto," but I got to play the role of Sara, so that was kinda special.

Ringling Brothers Circus would just join in wholeheartedly into that Sarasota parade for two nights.

And if you have never seen a line of elephants walking along Main Street, you haven't seen anything.

- John Ringling wanted to become an art collector.

He went around Europe and he was collecting paintings of the masters, and he wanted a beautiful place to store these things, and consequently, he designed the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

- As John Ringling said, "Life is short, but art is long."

- The history of the Ringling Museum is really the history of the development of Sarasota from a small fishing village into really what is becoming a dynamic, exciting community.

But Sarasota has benefited particularly in the arts because of the things John set in motion.

- It all happened in the Roaring Twenties.

The morals of the country were changing.

People had automobiles that they could travel from town to town in, and Sarasota came into its own during a handful of those Roaring Twenties years.

AB Edwards, who was the first mayor of the city of Sarasota, said that normally it would've taken between 50 and 100 years for the same amount of infrastructure to be put in place as it did during that handful of years in the twenties.

- That land boom created the modern city of Sarasota.

- The number one thing was always what is gonna bring people to Sarasota, and spring training was one of those things.

- Baseball has been here for nearly a hundred years.

The New York Giants came in the 1920s.

- John Ringling had a lot of New York connections, and one of the connections he had was with John J. McGraw, who managed the New York Giants.

And a Sarasota booster named Calvin Payne helped him get the land for Payne Park.

The New York Giants were followed by the Boston Red Sox, and they stayed for 25 years.

- I had autographed books with Ted Williams and Yogi Berra and Mel Parnell, Mickey Mantle and all those greats, which my mother of course dutifully threw away when I went to college, but now we're blessed to have the Baltimore Orioles here.

We're sitting in the new stadium, which is now 20 years old.

It's really been a lot of fun to enjoy baseball over the years.

- [Helen] Dear Bess, we arrived safely, spending three days on the way.

Sure are enjoying nice warm weather, 80 and above.

Been wading and dunking in the Gulf several times, and sure wish we could bring this weather home.

Love, E and Helen.

- In 1928, the Tamiami Trail that linked Tampa, the Tam, with Miami, Tamiami, was open, and initially, they thought it was an impossible feat.

- It really stressed the boundaries of their technology to be able to build a modern highway across this vast swamp area, and it connected up through these new national road systems all throughout the north.

It was an economic lifeline.

Even to this day, even though we now have interstate system, Route 41, Tamiami Trail, is still an important economic asset.

- Sarasota County's geology is fairly flat.

There's no hills here, but when the settlers came in the 1840s, they found hills.

They were artificial hills made by the ancient people.

Archeologically, we call them mounds and middens, and they were everywhere.

They lined the coast.

But then in the early 20th century, as there's a need for more and more roads, particularly the Tamiami Trail, the shells from those mounds and middens were mined and put down.

And so as people drive downtown on the Tamiami Trail on 41, they might notice the street changes name and becomes Mound Streets.

And it's called Mound Street because before that trail was built, there was a large mound there.

The evidence of large scale architecture by Asian people now gone, only remembered by a street sign.

- Florida was the last frontier, and in the post-war years after World War I, there was a tremendous interest in this possibility of owning a piece of this last American frontier.

And people go crazy.

The roads are jammed, the trains are full of people, chicanery in the banks and in the real estate offices.

Pieces of property were sold three and four times a day.

- In the twenties, real estate agents were called binder boys, and a binder boy was someone who would put 10% down on a piece of property, have 30 days to come up with the rest of the money, and the market was so active, they would flip it, making a handsome profit and then investing in another piece.

- So there were good things and bad things about the boom, but a lot of people lost their shirts.

Yeah, no question about that.

- [Jeff] 1921 was the year that Sarasota finally broke away from Manatee County to become its own entity.

Manatee was more of an agrarian agricultural place.

Sarasota wanted to be an attractive place for snowbirds.

- [Frank] This was a time when we meet another heroin, and that's Rose Wilson.

She was the editor of the Sarasota Times.

- She was a very progressive woman.

She was for the right of women to vote, and she followed whatever causes would make the the community grow.

- She wanted progress and she backed every civic scheme that would improve the city and county of Sarasota.

We would not be a county, I suspect, if it hadn't been Rose Wilson who was at the controls of the newspaper in those critical months of 1921.

She really did a lot to shape public opinion.

- And ultimately the state legislature allowed Sarasota County to be formed.

- [Frank] That night at Five Points, an enormous celebration broke out.

There was an impromptu parade, and so people celebrated into the small hours.

They just enjoyed themselves and they got ready for the next challenge, which was the coming depression.

- [Jeff] Sarasota had a heads up on the Great Depression because in 1926, the hurricane that roared through Miami with such force and devastation put an end to the Florida land boom.

- When the stock market did collapse, things in Sarasota went into a dark period.

- The end of the boom spelled doom, ultimately for John Ringling who would lose everything, he'd lose the circus, he'd lose his estate, and he really wouldn't live all that much longer.

- His passing came at a time when he had left a will that bequeathed the entire estate to the citizens of Florida.

And after 10 years, 1946, we officially opened as the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

- One of the things that really saved Sarasota during the Great Depression was the Works Progress Administration buildings, and one of the major WPA buildings was the Municipal Auditorium.

Mayor EA Smith, who was mayor throughout the depression called it a dream come true when it was built.

- Mayor Smith went to Washington.

He came back with enough WPA money to build the Municipal Auditorium, and that's how we got that wonderful place.

- [Jeff] Another building that was built during the Great Depression was the much storied Lido Casino.

- The Lido Beach Casino designed by Ralph Twitchell, constructed in 1940, an absolute magnificent part moderne collection of multipurpose buildings, including an Olympic-size swimming pool, an auditorium, cabanas, changing rooms, restaurants, bars.

It was what brought people and activity to Lido Beach.

- During the summertime, our favorite thing to do was go and take the bus across to Lido, and this was just marvelous.

We could fly out on the sand in front of the casino, go floating around in the Gulf, or then go swimming in this beautiful Olympic-size swimming pool.

- It is perhaps the most photographed building ever in Sarasota.

Everybody remembers the casino.

It was just a marvelous place.

(water splashing) - I remember it was very early morning.

I was in my little second floor bedroom and I heard my grandmother scream, and so I ran racing down the stairs and I found her sitting by the radio in tears.

She had just heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.

By the next day, war was declared.

- In the 1940s, World War II breaks out, and all of a sudden Sarasota is awash with servicemen training at the Sarasota Army Air Base.

It's hard to believe now, but Longboat Key was a bombing range, and they would tow these targets over Longboat Key, and the fighter planes would have machine gun practice.

- So before we would go to the north end of Longboat, my parents would have to call and find out if there was a bombing practice scheduled for the time we wanted to come from Tampa to Longboat.

- Some of the high school boys that I remember who were older than me had gone up to Tampa one day and enlisted and were soon off to war.

And I know that there were some of those high school boys that did not come back.

So quite a sobering experience.

- In the 1950s, the Sarasota School of Architecture architects designed some of the finest homes and finest schools and finest buildings in the country.

- Sarasota was most associated with architecture through what became known as the Sarasota School of Architects.

Ralph Twitchell came down to supervise construction of the Ca' d'Zan mansion.

It was a building well suited for its function, but not well suited for its environment here in Florida.

Sun and rain are our two most prominent environmental products down here.

Neither the gothic style nor the Mediterranean revival style are suited for our rain and sun.

Mr. Twitchell felt it was necessary to develop a modern style of architecture to work in a subtropic environment.

A young architecture graduate from Alabama named Paul Rudolph came to an intern with him, and together they ultimately formed the beginning of the Sarasota school.

It became very popular on a national basis in architecture magazines.

It was cutting edge.

The Sarasota School of Architecture served as a starting point for integrating regional and local environment and modern architecture.

Architecture reflects its culture, its community, and its environment, and it was the group of architects in Sarasota that really changed the direction of true modern architecture throughout the country and possibly throughout the world.

- [Jim] Sarasota in the 1950s was really reflective of the national environment.

It was the Eisenhower era.

They had recovered from a nasty World War II.

- And in 1950, Ken Thompson was sworn in as city manager, and for the next 38 years, he guided the community.

- [Jim] Ken Thompson was recognized as one of the preeminent city managers in the country.

- And one of the things he did among many was he got the new City Hall built, and that was designed by a Sarasota School of Architect named Jack West.

Ken Thompson wanted it built concave inside because in his view, the people ruled the government, so he wanted the commissioners to look up to the people, not the other way around.

- [Dad Anders] I send you this card to remember me, beautiful flower.

This is the land of sunshine, and the sun did shine every day since I left home.

I felt every day as if I was young.

Dad Anders.

- Growing up in Sarasota, I was either on a water ski, a tennis court, golf course, or a surfboard every day after school.

- But I grew up on the water.

I had a little boat about eight feet long, had a two and a half horsepower engine on it, and I could go anywhere with that boat.

- It wasn't uncommon for the neighborhood kids to run behind the foggers.

I'd say to my mother, "Can I go run out behind the mosquito fogger?"

And she'd say, "Yeah, honey, just take your little sister with you."

But we didn't know that it was DDT or what DDT was gonna do.

To me, Sarasota used to be much more of a community because people seemed to be aiming for the same thing.

In the twenties, they were aiming to become a snowbird paradise.

In the thirties, they were just trying to get through.

In the fifties, they were trying to modernize.

- [Interviewer] We're gonna play you a song.

This song came out in 1952, and I just want your reaction, okay?

- Sure.

♪ I'm having fun in Sarasota ♪ ♪ With the sun and the sand and the sea ♪ ♪ I'm having fun, ain't I a lucky one ♪ ♪ With the sun and the sand and the sea ♪ ♪ Hour after hour, I love it more and more ♪ ♪ I adore that Lido shore ♪ ♪ I'm having fun in Sarasota ♪ ♪ With the sun and the sand and the sea ♪ - [Interviewer] What do you think about that song, "I'm Having Fun in Sarasota"?

What does it make you think of?

- To me, it is the perfect representation of this community.

That was when we were trying to get more people to move here, or at least to come here and leave a bag of money.

- It reminds me of Sarasota in the 1950s, that "Johnny, we can do anything" type melody reminds me of Sarasota in those days.

- That the jingle from the mid 20th century really does tell us a lot of what Sarasota wanted, and we need to face just the reality that it was aiming for a white population to come here and enjoy.

At the time, this was a segregated community and not everyone was invited to come and not everyone was invited to enjoy.

- When I heard that song, I wasn't included in that song.

I wasn't included in that song at all.

- That song is the exact opposite of what African American experienced.

No African American felt comfortable going to Lido Beach in 1952.

- We need to look at that, understand that worldview, understand who it benefited, who it hurts, and think about what are we doing today that encourages and dissuades people to come to this beautiful community.

- I think it was a song that was to draw people here, and it was appropriate as a promotional piece, and I think there's still a need for us to promote ourselves in the right way to continue to draw in the kinda people that we want to live here, which is a diverse group of people from all parts of the country and maybe all parts of the world, and certainly all different socioeconomic strata.

- It would be a mistake to think that because you're successful and you're resilient, that that's all there is to it, because clearly we have not played to the interests of all the people that live in this community, and we are still struggling with how do you really create a community that is equal, equal in rights, equal in opportunity, and we still have to deal with those issues.

- In the fifties, definitely, we had colored and white, colored bathrooms, white bathrooms, colored water fountains, white water fountains.

We were spending our money, but we couldn't drink from the same water fountain.

I can remember that very early and telling my younger brothers, "Uh-uh, not there."

We didn't eat at the same places.

We didn't even go to the same movie theaters.

The hospital was still segregated.

The Lido Casino was off limits to people of color.

We were there cleaning, but not participating.

We were good enough to serve you, why can't we eat here at the same time?

- African Americans built Sarasota's infrastructure, the railroads, the bridges, they cleared land on Siesta Key and Lido Beach and Longboat Key.

My grandfather was one of those people, and so a recognition of the work that these people did would go a long way.

- In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan brought the Morton Brothers Circus to town, and the circus was to help them raise money for the Klavern.

So we had a KKK prevalence here, and the African Americans stuck to their own community in Newtown.

- I grew up in this loving incubator called Newtown.

We had to have our own churches, our own businesses and shops.

- The only streets that were paved in Newtown were the route of the city bus and where the buses picked up the women that went to work.

Then you rode the back of the bus until Sister Rosa Parks came home.

As little boys and little girls, we were talking about change, and here's Rosa Parks who has sat on a bus and brought about change.

- Dr. King's speech in 1963 was I think really a turning point, a galvanizing moment for many that would've been on the bubble and not active.

To define life and treatment of other people the way he did was true and right, to judge people by the content of the character, not the color of their skin.

It was good advice then and it's good advice now to us.

- After the Civil Rights Act passed, Blacks started asserting their rights for equal access to public accommodations.

- There were protests at Lido Beach, Siesta Beach, sit-ins at the Woolworth's lunch counter.

Sarasota went through the same angst as the country did.

- And so it was Mary Emma Jones who recognized that this is not right.

We're paying our tax dollars and we can't enjoy the beach.

Black children would play in dirty ditches on a hot summer day because they wanted to enjoy water.

Mary Emma Jones marched her short and stature self up to the county commission to ask for a colored beach.

County commissioners blew her off.

They did nothing.

Few years later, Neil Humphrey Sr., the first NAACP president, he saw what was happening around the country and he organized wade-ins.

And they started right here in this church.

Typically, these wade-ins would happen on a Sunday after church.

So in the iconic photographs, you'll see people in Sunday best.

They weren't going for a great day at the beach and a picnic.

They were just going to take a stand and send a message.

- As I grew older and I began to live this experience, I learned that Rosa Parks sat so that the Dr. Martin Luther King could walk.

Dr. Martin Luther King walked, so Mr. Barack Obama could run, and we see where we are in this experience today.

- When Fredd Atkins became our first African American city commissioner, there was jubilation.

We realized activism worked.

We had to fight for that.

We had to sue the city of Sarasota to change the way city elections were held.

- Fredd Atkins was part of a lawsuit challenging the representation of the city of Sarasota, and resulted in the settlement that created three districts from which city commissioners could be elected, and two at large districts.

That assured that District 1 included Newtown, where the African Americans had a slight majority, that assured that they would be able to have a representative.

Fredd Atkins was the first commissioner.

And the face of City Hall changed as a result of that.

I mean, you saw more Black faces working in City Hall.

- When he sat in that seat and represented us for the first time, we understood the power of coming together and fighting for something, and we have, since he was elected, always seated an African American on the Sarasota City Commission.

- [Frank] It became pretty apparent in the early sixties that Sarasota was becoming an arts community, an artistic community.

We needed a performing arts hall.

- In January 1970, the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall opened up, and it was very controversial from the beginning.

People were bemoaning the color of it.

It was called the Purple People Cedar, the Purple Cow, but people who had faith in it said it would really help to put Sarasota on the cultural map.

- I arrived in Sarasota at exactly the same time the Van Wezel auditorium did.

From my apartment, I could see the purple paint being applied to what was soon to open as the Van Wezel auditorium.

It has been the center of culture in this town for over 50 years.

It is currently threatened with demolition.

The need for a new performing arts center, that's well beyond me, but what we don't need to do is destroy another Sarasota icon.

- The arts, I think we could trace it back to John Ringling and the Ringling brothers bringing the circus Winter Quarters to Sarasota in the 1920s, which led to artists and performers and all sorts of people coming here.

- Arts represents about 17 to 20% of the employment in Sarasota County and a significant economic impact.

- The arts are great for tourism in Sarasota.

It is what distinguishes Sarasota from every other beachfront community up and down the coast, and it is what draws a lot of people here, because they want that cultural connection.

- I don't think that people understand the breadth of all the different organizations that we have.

We have a wonderful ballet, orchestra, we have an opera, that's rare in a lot of communities.

- [Steven] We have the Ringling Museum and the Ringling College of Art and Design.

- There's the Venice Symphony, and then there's all the theaters, the Oslo Repertory Theater, Florida Studio Theater, the Urbanite Theater in downtown Sarasota, the West Coast Black Theater Troop, and the Players Center for the Performing Arts, which is the oldest performing arts organization in the community, and dozens of other smaller organizations that are just building up their own reputations.

And we're sitting here in this beautiful Sarasota art museum that used to be a Sarasota high school, and here it is, having these amazing touring exhibits, bringing a new life to a building that was such a part of this community, so we can appreciate what it must have been like to go to school here.

- Sarasota holds its own to much, much bigger towns.

- We are the center of the arts in Florida.

- I think that real estate can either shape or corrupt.

I believe real estate has helped shape our community, because the wealthy who have bought here and see this now as their home get involved in the community.

They're the philanthropists like Bertha Palmer and John Ringling, Marie Selby.

- We are so fortunate here in Sarasota to have many philanthropic foundations.

- If you look at our philanthropy per capita, we are one of the top communities in the country as far as giving back goes, and you see that in every, frankly, every corner of Sarasota.

If we have challenges or we have roadblocks, our community gets together and has those conversations.

Philanthropy gets behind it, government gets behind it, we say, how can we fix those problems?

And our community is full of expertise from around the world, and so we can bring diverse viewpoints to help solve problems.

- The day after Hurricane Ian, you saw all of our foundation step up and show how they could really just change these lives that had been devastated within a day.

- I'm very grateful to live in such a generous community as Sarasota.

During the pandemic, we learned that many families had lost their jobs and it was amazing the number of people from all walks of life, everybody came together to help these individuals who did not qualify for financial assistance from other sources.

That really show what an amazing community we can be.

- I think one of the things that we all need to work on is that Sarasota is a tale of two cities.

There're the very wealthy and then the very disadvantaged.

- Personally, I think the opportunity is here for all of our people to thrive and prosper.

The important thing is to be sure the channels of opportunity remain open.

There's still bias and prejudice here as there is candidly everywhere.

- We're being polarized, we're being almost pulling apart, where we were a tight-knit community, where we knew one another, we saw each other, we could acknowledge one another.

But that's shifting because we're so disconnected.

- In Sarasota, we're seeing a lot of similar trends that we're seeing across the country when it comes to increase in hate crimes, increase in anti-Semitism, anti-Asian hate, anti-Black hate, transphobia, and everything else that we are seeing on a daily basis in our own community and around the world.

We saw that recently in Sarasota where there were a ton of homes that had anti-Semitic paraphernalia and different letters distributed to their houses, and we saw the community come together and try to stand up against that.

- My highest hopes for the future of Sarasota is to be inclusive, to be a part of Sarasota, and not talk down to, but talk to.

- We need to be good listeners.

We need to hear what our neighbors are saying.

- I also think there needs to be room for everybody here and we need more diversity, and I think we're getting more diversity.

I think you hear different languages spoken on the street here that you never heard before.

We have a large population in South Sarasota County of Ukrainian people.

We have an enormous population of Latino people, and they make a tremendous contribution to our community.

- One thing that I would like Sarasota to know about the Latinx community here is that we are here to contribute, to add, to integrate.

I feel that we are bringing a lot of wonderful things to the table, and I really hope that we continue to get those opportunities to show the community that we are here with our best intentions, to be a part of the beautiful place that Sarasota is.

- Diversity to me means that everyone has a place at the table, that we have folks from all over the world that have different backgrounds, have different experiences.

The LGBTQ+ community in Sarasota is thriving and growing, and I think that is an opportunity for the community to inspire and educate one another.

For LGBTQ+ youth in schools right now, bullying is always a thing that's always gonna exist, unfortunately, but when older folks are implementing legislation that is specifically targeting them, it has left them to feel alienated and confused and conflicted with who they are when otherwise they would've never.

All we've ever really wanted was for our youth to feel safe and supported and to feel like they have someone that they can talk to.

Are we a little unique?

Sure, everyone is, right?

But, you know, it's about that human experience and not being told we can't have it because we're different.

- Education is often the reason that people come to a community, and really it's a reflection of the place that you live.

In years past, school districts had much greater latitude in terms of their policies, their curriculum, and some of that was good and some of it wasn't, because there wasn't consistency.

Our goal is that all students should achieve the same quality of education, but in reality that's very difficult to achieve.

Lower socioeconomic schools usually end up with our least experienced teachers.

You have higher socioeconomic schools that have parent organizations that raise a tremendous amount of extra money to enhance those schools and to provide those students with things that your lower socioeconomic schools don't have.

So it would be very difficult to say that they're getting an equal education.

We often talk about equality and equity as if they're the same thing, and they're not.

Equality is giving all students the same thing, so that it's equal, but kids are not all the same and they don't all need the same thing.

So equity is giving each child what they need to be successful, and that's the difference.

It's leveling the playing field so that those children can have an equal opportunity to be successful.

- So the more we can do to work, to provide services and help to those to raise them up and to become a city that is one city and not a tale of two cities.

- One of the things that our community really needs to focus on and is a really huge challenge right now is affordable housing.

My children and many other people's children, they're moving away because they can't afford to live here.

- One of our goals is always trying to get our high school students to actually return to Sarasota after they graduate college, and it's really challenging when prices are so high, when you're not able to rent or buy a home here in our community because you just can't afford it.

- We want young people to be able to live here to support our incredible hospitality industry and our growing arts community.

- There're teachers, nurses, who need a place that is affordable to live, raise their family, and be close to their place of employment.

- We're seeing costs of living rising, and so in order to combat that and make sure that we maintain a diversity of housing options, we've gotta be thoughtful.

- What we really need to do is try to figure out how to build smaller, more efficient units that allow younger people the ability to afford and ultimately participate in the equity growth that comes from owning real estate.

When you mix different economic values as it relates to housing, you create a lot more diversity and ultimately a lot more vibrancy in terms of the community that's cultivated around it.

- What Sarasota can do to be a better community is helping the homeless find affordable housing programs that can get them off the street.

I was homeless for 10 years, and during that 10 years I was arrested 45 times.

I was in a tough spot.

That's when a jail diversion group called Second Heart Homes showed up at my cell.

They offered me housing, they offered me sobriety.

They said, "All you gotta do to be in this program is stay sober, go to your court dates and do what we ask of you."

I've been in this program for going on five years.

I went from doing drugs every day to going to work with people, to going to the ballet.

It's a big difference.

- When a community seeks out unique solutions, that's when it thrives, and so that's why the Mental Health Jail Diversion program is so important in these other problem solving courts.

Today, the Sarasota community is more positioned to help individuals who find themselves homeless than ever by really investing in long-term solutions.

There's a lot of short-term things we can do.

We can give someone a meal on the street, that's very nice and well-intentioned, but if we wanna have long-term systemic impact, we need to think about who's on the front lines and how to support them.

- As an archeologist, I think about time, and I think about time, not just in terms of days and weeks, but centuries and millennia, and that archeological perspective really stresses the need for good stewardship of the land.

Our generation has tremendous responsibilities to ensure that this land, this place, will be a place that can provide success and wellbeing for future generations.

- We are about a small segment, a small blip in the line of time, of history.

We respond to things that are far greater than our time here on earth.

We are the result of things that happened before us, and we are the cause of things that will follow us.

Sarasota's been very fortunate in that for the greatest part of its history, we've been able to balance the built environment, the natural environment, and the culture of the community.

I think we are going to be aware of the potential of rising sea levels, temperature changes, climatological changes.

I've seen them myself within the 50 years I've lived here.

- It's very possible in a hundred years, if nothing is done, there won't be a Sarasota to talk about.

- You just have to look at our coastline and you have to look at what we're doing from an environmental factor.

Florida is in a whole heap of trouble, and I just don't think people realize how quickly it's coming.

And as a coastline city in Florida, we're the front line of it.

We will swim first.

- We've had significant storms come through.

The storms are stronger.

We're working on a 50 year schedule of preparing the museum to be able to deal with these issues by providing better water removal, by not building closer to the bay, by building higher and by building stronger.

- What we can do to adapt to it is where the significance would come in to the built environment and architecture.

I think we need to look at the problem with the same eyes that it was looked at by those of the Sarasota School of Architecture.

How can we make this work?

- I think Sarasota's the greatest city on earth, truthfully, and I think that because you truly have the ability to help shape the fabric of this community by getting engaged and being passionate about what you care about here.

We have a responsibility to ensure, like the decisions that we're making today positively impact the generation tomorrow.

And I think about that a lot as a father.

I think about what's the future of this community and what's the likelihood that this is a community that tomorrow's generation can thrive and do the things that they aspire to do right here in Sarasota.

- As a woman in business in Sarasota, as a woman that's about to be a first time mother to a little girl, I hope that she grows up in a Sarasota that makes her feel welcome and a part of the community.

And I hope that she gets to experience Sarasota in the same way that we get to experience Sarasota.

- As a student of history, I heard over and over again, "Those who fail to respect their history are doomed to repeat it."

- You do stand on the shoulders of those who went before you.

They came, they faced challenges, and for better or for worse, they overcame those challenges and the community moved on.

- There's work to do, and it is your job to do the work that has to be done.

We need you.

We're the future.

We are tomorrow.

- I want future generations to know the sacrifices that my ancestors endured in order that they could enjoy a beautiful Sarasota.

I am so grateful.

I get misty when I think about what they did, and I am committed to share these stories.

- A thriving community doesn't have to be one where everybody is the same or have the same ways of thinking or political ideas.

We all bring something, we all add, and we can all make our place better with whatever we are bringing to share with others.

- If I could wish one thing for Sarasota, I wish we could be more civil to each other, I wish we could engage in lively conversations with civility, care, and respect.

- If you don't think like me, that's perfectly fine.

Disagreeing is okay, but I wanna show you things that we can agree on.

- My hope for Sarasota is that we can freely learn how to treat one another with kindness and respect, that we can make this a community where everyone has a voice, and we can all come together to make it a better place for everyone.

- We have been so fortunate to have all the musicians, artists, and writers that left their little contribution.

One writer in particular, John D. MacDonald, he wrote something that has to do with Sarasota.

He wrote, "In geological time, the waters will again cover the peninsula and again recede, only to return again.

So let us cherish this moment of paradise, relish these years of sun and beauty, and do what we can to keep it pristine."

And I really believe that, keep it pristine if we possibly can.

♪ It's magical throughout if you believe ♪ ♪ It's hidden gem, it's mystical in need ♪ ♪ From Lido and Longboat through South Siesta Key ♪ ♪ Sarasota is unique ♪ ♪ Her beauty stands alone among the rest ♪ ♪ The novelty, she's never second best ♪ ♪ Though her future is unknown, she'll never stand alone ♪ ♪ Sarasota is my home ♪ ♪ But most of all, I wanna sing it loud ♪ (upbeat piano music)