Petition to keep Selby Gardens a Garden
We Selby GARDENS too! That’s why we don’t want this serene oasis co-opted by commercialization.
- Selby Gardens wants to become a commercial event and "destination" party center, with a high rise garage, and a large elite destination restaurant. This project will forever intrude upon Marie Selby’s lovely garden.
- 111 mature trees, including 5 grand oaks, will be removed to make way for this concrete project. 25% of trees on the East side of the Selby property will be destroyed. Trees take decades to grow, but only minutes to destroy forever.
- The “skygarden” actually is a one-acre 83.5-foot high (equal to 8 stories with 5 parking levels), block-long, paid parking garage. It will serve as a pedestal for a 10,000 square-foot roof top restaurant and event/party space, with an exclusive, long term deal given to Michael Klauber.
- The touted 50 percent increase in garden space actually includes roads, paving, and buildings not open to the public.
- Selby Gardens is requesting a change to the City’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan to the city’s MOST INTENSIVE USE normally reserved for airports, hospitals and sports arenas and a rezoning to a commercial and highly intensive use. This land use category – the Metropolitan Regional Center—is even more intense than downtown Sarasota.
- There are flexible solutions to Selby Garden’s parking needs that don’t require a massive garage. The over-sized parking facility being proposed is large enough to accomodate a 747 jetliner, and it is simply a justification for turning the property into a highly commercial use AND THEY PLAN TO FILL THAT GARAGE EVERY DAY AND NIGHT resulting in massive traffic congestion at Orange Avenue and Mound Street.
- Marie Selby was passionate about gardening, and she left her property of a “public garden for the people of Sarasota"—a public that is going to be priced out of access. Now Marie's good name and her tranquil garden are being used to justify a commercial event and party center.
- Please sign this Petition to say NO to this plan that is incompatible with neighborhoods, traffic, safety and the needs and wants of the people of Sarasota.
- NO to intense urban development imposing upon neighborhoods.
- NO to the concrete garden and decimation of mature trees.
Marie’s love of nature and of gardening was her most consuming passion. She was a charter member of Sarasota’s first garden club. She had a great desire to keep Sarasota a beautiful and green place and was disturbed later in life by the proliferation of high-rise construction
Marie Selby
The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature.
To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.
Alfred Austin
English Poet Laurete