Ramirez addresses board about initiative begun with letter from attorney who represented developer of one of proposed hotels
The Siesta Key resident who won two legal challenges against the county a couple of years ago, which stopped the construction plans for two high-rise hotels on the barrier island, has called on the Sarasota County Commission to intervene in a matter that could facilitate a renewed effort to build tall hotels on Siesta.
During the Open to the Public portion of the commission’s regular meeting on Oct. 8, Lourdes Ramirez pointed out that the county’s new zoning administrator, James Ehrmann, provided a determination in a May 6 letter to Sarasota attorney William Merrill III, of the Icard Merrill firm, that hotels and condominium units rented as short-term accommodations — referred to as “condo hotels” — “are commercial in nature and should be treated as such for the purposes of use, land-use, land-use classification, use categories, and development standards …”
(Ramirez has noted in communications this month to members and supporters of a nonprofit she serves as president — Protect Siesta Key — that condo hotels “exist only in Siesta Key’s residential multifamily [zoning] districts.”)…