Gardens of Ringling Park neighbors seek action

Gardens of Ringling Park residents and small business owners live and work adjacent to an almost-empty shopping center - the Ringling Shopping Center.

Something needs to happen. Now. That’s their message to the City of Sarasota.

“I don’t want to look at this,” says Bill Dehart, who lives with his wife, Michelle, directly across from the shuttered Publix. “It’s not very attractive. The whole shopping center was full. Ideally I’d like to see it go back where it was, all nice stores. I saw the Walmart plan. It was really beautiful. It was nice. We love the neighborhood. It’s a great neighborhood and good neighbors and this is where we want to be. I couldn’t imagine moving again.”

“I’ve had to call the police—which you hate to do—several times, because we’ve had the homeless living here,” Michelle says. “That’s sad. It’s just sad to look at something so empty. It’s like a ghost town over there. It’s been long enough. As far as I’m concerned, it’s been long enough that we’ve waited.”

When asked what he’d like to see built at the shopping center, one of the Deharts’ neighbors, Eugene Robbins, is quick to answer: “Walmart or a grocery store of some sort, some restaurants—anything is better than nothing. But the ones over on the other side of the railroad tracks didn’t want it. We need a grocery store here for the people nearby, something better than an empty parking lot. There are a lot of things that could go in over there. They let a few neighbors say, ‘No, we don’t want it, because it’s going to be noisy.’ When Publix was there, it wasn’t noisy. So Walmart comes in, I don’t think it would be any noisier. Those people on the other side of the railroad tracks couldn’t hear them anyway.”

Giuseppe Prestia purchased his home down the street from the shopping center in part because of the convenience of having the shopping center nearby. “I used to have my own shopping cart to go to Publix and back,” Prestia says. “It was a luxury. I wish that somebody would do something about it. It’s really a shame that it’s totally, completely dead. I would love to see some changes right away, obviously. In my perfect world I would love to see maybe stores, maybe a café down there, reviving the whole thing.”

“I thought it would be nice to have a shopping center there with cheaper prices, and it would be better than what’s there now,” says Diane Ontko, who also lives on the street that borders the shopping center. “I wasn’t sure about whether we would have access; that was one of my concerns, whether we’d have access to the park. I was worried about the trucks, about the noise. But really I thought overall it would be a good thing and a good fit for the neighborhood.”

When businessman Richard Dorfman campaigned for a seat on the City Commission in 2013, he spoke with several neighbors who supported the original plan to build a Walmart in the space. “When I was knocking on the doors in that neighborhood, that was the one main issue they all brought up, and I can say 95 percent of the people I spoke to said they wanted a Walmart there,” Dorfman says. “They were disgusted with the slum and blight of an empty shopping center and the element that was living in there. They were scared to cross across that parking lot to try to get to Payne Park. They were very, very upset with the opposition, which came from out of the neighborhood, to that Walmart being built. If you looked at the people that were directly affected by having a Walmart there, they viewed it as having a positive effect for the neighborhood and they wanted it to happen.”

Local business owners have struggled with an increase in vagrancy since the Publix closed its doors. “When you look at all the development that’s going on in this town, why not here?” wonders Jamie Purmort of Purmort & Martin, an insurance agency whose office sits at the corner of Ringling and Lime. “This is a very vibrant hub and the community could be better if we were to put something in place. There just seems to be this malaise about making anything move forward and that’s the frustration. I talk to these business owners on a day-to-day basis and they just shake their heads. There needs to be a sense of urgency to put something on this pice of property.”

“We need to redevelop this,” agrees Purmort & Martin’s Russ Bobbitt. “It needs to be redeveloped. It’s rundown, it’s an eyesore and it’s hurting the entire area around it. I’d like to see something happen right now. It’s been long enough. We all want to see a more vibrant shopping center over there. It’ll help everybody out. We’re in a city, and in the city there needs to be a lot of business and a lot of development. We need to develop as much as we can in the right way, and codes that are going to handcuff business owners aren’t going to help anybody.”

“It became vacant once Publix moved out, and it seems like the whole building is just rotting down and falling down,” says Chris Neisler, the owner of Ringling Cleaners, which faces the shopping center. “It’s a great piece of property. I’ve got customers from Longboat who come in weekly asking, ‘When are they going to do something with that shopping center? Is Walmart coming?’ There’s an interest. People want it. And it will help keep business down this way. I was in favor of the Walmart, to keep this end of Ringling Boulevard alive. We’re very busy here, but I just think the more businesses, the better, and also I’m a property owner and so it’s going to help the property values, too. I would say if you’ve got somebody interested in the property, I would pursue trying to make a deal with them and make everybody happy. It’s a large piece of property—they could do anything from condos to retail. A Walmart would be great. Just anything that’s going to help it out.”

“I’m not against or for Walmart, but anything would be better than what we have,” says Jackie Hamel, who owns Ringling Barber Shop, right near Neisler’s dry cleaning shop. “It is disgusting across the street. You walk across the street and you don’t feel comfortable. I don’t like being in this area like I used to. At this point, I would be happy with anything except what’s over there.”