developer revives project

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FROM THE GRAVE

by Alex Mahadevan | News Editor

Developer revives project

Taylor Morrison plans to build about 250 homes on 77 acres in Gulf Gate.

Photos by Rachel S. O’Hara

+ A hair ‘do’ Deb Applebee finally went for the big cut Sunday, Oct. 14, during the Team Believe Martinis and Makeovers fundraiser on Siesta Key. Applebee, of Gulf Gate East, had 12 inches of her hair cut in honor of her grandmother, Nanine Hammond, who was an 18-year breast cancer survivor. One year ago, Applebee’s daughter, Ava, 9, had donated eight inches of her hair to Locks of Love, and Applebee was inspired to finally get a new look and donate her hair to the same charity. Applebee was thrilled with her new look, a fashionable bob, which was done by Sassy Hair salon’s Erika Lopatinsky.

The newlyweds and their wedding party visited SKOB Sunday.

+ Wedded bliss David and Ashley Perkins celebrated their one-dayold nuptials Sunday, Oct. 14, at the Siesta Key Oyster Bar in Siesta Key Village. The couple, from Orlando, dated for three years and often visited Sarasota, Longboat Key and Siesta Key for vacations with friends and family. They discovered SKOB and always loved eating their crabs, crawfish and oysters. David and Ashley were married Saturday, Oct. 13, on Lido Key Beach. But, before heading back to Orlando, much of the wedding party made its way to Siesta Key for a meal at SKOB. The newlyweds wore Mickey and Minnie Mouse wedding hats that they were given as wedding presents.

Cows that graze on a pasture tucked behind a Sarasota cemetery may soon have to find a new home to make way for a community planned for Gulf Gate. The details haven’t been fully released, but Taylor Morrison Inc. recently announced plans for a new 77-acre development near the intersection of U.S. 41 and Clark Road, with model homes expected

early next year for the proposed Esplanade by Siesta Key. The long-term vision for the property encompasses 247 home sites, surrounded by more than seven ponds, wetland preserves and pedestrian trails. “There’s not a lot of new homes out there unless you buy a custom home,” said West Florida Division President Steve Kempton. And land

available for infill development, particularly in that location, is scarce, he explained. Taylor Woodrow Homes bought the property between Constitution Boulevard and Stickney Point Road in 2005 to build more than 300 multifamily units. The firm, which has since merged with another firm to form Taylor Mor-

SEE ESPLANADE / 5A

WAX ON, WAX OFF

Courtesy of Taylor Morrison

Taylor Morrison will look to the Esplanade at Lakewood Ranch for the design of a new community in Gulf Gate.

by Alex Mahadevan | News Editor

POINT BREAK

Although much has changed for Siesta surfers who embraced the lifestyle decades ago, they still find time to relive their days of catching waves. It was 1963. Thirteen-year-old Juan Rodriguez and a friend developed a system to rig a coin-flipping game against his classmates, and in a few months, he had raised $45 to buy his first surfboard. “I started surfing because it was cool, underground and sketchy,” he says. “It was not the accepted lifestyle.” Four years later, cars in the Siesta Key Beach public parking lot honked when he hung five, and 10, on the shores of the island — a place where surfing and skateboarding scenes writhed underground until the mainstream finally embraced the extremesports market. The first board Rodriguez bought sparked a life of making custom boards of all types. He has witnessed the ebb and flow of a surf scene in a place that now rarely sees waves taller than four feet. “He was the guru of surfing in Sarasota,” says Jim Judsen, a 53-year-old kitchen designer and carpenter. Judsen was part of the second of three eras of misfits, outsiders and teenage exiles that shredded the asphalt of DavidAlex Mahadevan

SEE SURFERS / PAGE 2A Jim Judsen looks out on a spot on Siesta Key Beach that used to bring surfers together.

INDEX Briefs....................4A Classifieds ........ 10B

Cops Corner....... 14A Crossword............ 9B

Opinion .............. 8A Real Estate.......... 2B

Sports................ 17A Weather............... 9B

Vol. 43, No. 12 | Four sections YourObserver.com

PELICAN PRESS

YourObserver.com

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2012

SURFERS / FROM PAGE 1A son Drugs to train for state skateboarding competitions. When a cold front, tropical storm or hurricane blew through the Gulf of Mexico, they would grab their surfboards and assemble down the road from the drug store at “The Wall,” an iconic mass of poured concrete and construction scrap that once protected a big pink house from sea spray. It was a place where reputations rose and fell for Siesta surfers, and youngsters were baptized into a scene that varied from 20 to 50 people over the years, according to estimates from Judsen and Rodriguez. “If you surfed, you felt you were chosen to surf,” Rodriguez says. “And if you really got into it, you felt special.” Bulldozers have since ripped The Wall from Siesta, and tides have shuffled into place with wide sand bars, which are basically speed bumps for waves. Tropical Storm Debby and Hurricane Isaac this year brought some big-breaking waves, stumpy compared with the break that cold fronts created in the 1970s, Judsen says.

‘The Wall’

“You’re going to make fun of me,” Judsen says in the living room of his house, which is on the mainland, just blocks from the Siesta Key north bridge. He speaks with a cadence still dripping with surfer lingo and casual expletives and wears a grin as he thumbs through old photographs on his iPad. One is of the entrance to a cave in the Bahamas, where he lived for a little while. Another shows a shirtless young Judsen, with blond hair falling down to his chest. He grew up on island and spent his youth immersed in the saltwater, creating artwork for surfboards, playing drums and skateboarding. He opens the door to his son’s room to show off a trophy for winning the 1975 city of Sarasota skateboard competition. His son is in school in Tallahassee, of which Judsen has more to

say about a concrete skate park than the college football atmosphere. Judsen, at times, lived on Canal Road, Avenida De Mayo and Beach Road, the street that once led surfers to the Siesta scene’s place of worship — “The Wall.” It was just a massive concrete structure, but it created a vertical sandbar in front of it that forced the waves to vortex each way — much larger than along the rest of the coast, Judsen recalls. “It was a kind of magnetic spot that that attracted everybody because it had power in its definition,” Rodriguez says. “It was The Wall, man.” Ancient Hawaiian priests, or “kahunas,” would lead spiritual ceremonies before surfers went into the ocean, praying for strength and guidance — or for bigger waves. Rodriguez says some Siesta surfers had their own unofficial ceremony before they paddled out in front of The Wall, which included chatting with people on the shore and sitting on The Wall, analyzing the surf and judging the guys already in the water — there were only a few girls who surfed back then. “It wasn’t just about surfing, it was the tribal interaction,” Rodriguez says. Some surfers leapt out of their cars, dashed down to the shore and jumped in. Others just came to check out the girls hanging near The Wall. Surfers staked their reputation on a run in front of The Wall, Rodriguez says. “It was like you had this peanut gallery critiquing every ride,” he says. “There was a lot of pressure, but it was a lot of fun.” Sarasota County Parks and Recreation has placed shaded picnic tables just north of where The Wall stood until the early 1980s, on the north end of the public beach. Sand dunes and vegetation spread over a row of rocks that used to stretch

southward of The Wall, and the world-famous Siesta sand reaches several hundred feet down to the shoreline. “You need a camel to get out there,” Rodriguez says. “You feel like Lawrence of Arabia trying to get down to the water.” The county is currently seeking a contractor for Turtle Beach renourishment scheduled for 2014; renourishment is something both surfers say contributed to the decline of good surf swells. When Manatee or Sarasota County funnels sand to Lido Key, the grains will naturally drift south to Siesta, and Turtle Beach’s new sand shuffles to Casey Key. Some of the fill remains near the shoreline, and sandbars are born. “The public beach used to be a big surf spot,” Judsen says. “But sandbars just choked the waves.”

The board guru

It’s 4:15 p.m. on a Friday and Rodriguez emerges after a shower at his business’ workshop, where he spends seven days a week making and repairing boards. “Some days I shower two or three times,” he says of his work ethic. Rodriguez takes a more pragmatic look at the comparison between Siesta surf in the ’60s and ’70s and today. Certainly a 5-foot wave looks a lot bigger to an 8-year-old than it does to someone in their 60s. “We were all a little young and all a little inexperienced,” he says. “Was it really better, or do we think it was better?” The 61-year-old has thick white hair and wears octagonal glasses, which he removes while flipping through a photo album filled with pictures of a tan, slim version of himself wearing a thick mustache. He points out members of his surf tribe, including one of his idols, Jim Drawdy,

who have died — some because of the lifestyle of relentless travel and partying. He fully embraced that lifestyle, starting from when he graduated from Riverview High School and hitchhiked to Encinitas, Calif. He moved back to Florida and enrolled at Brevard Community College, after some legal trouble. “I got a degree in skipping class and surfing,” Rodriguez said. “Why do you think I went to that college?” He got married and had a daughter by 20 years old and eventually moved to Maui, Hawaii, where he shaped boards and worked for a bathtub manufacturer — a growing business during a housing boom, he said. All those experiences funneled into his work when he returned to Sarasota. As a “board shaper,” Rodriguez was a pusher who helped fuel the resurgence of surfing on Siesta Key and Sarasota. He did the same for skateboarding in the 1970s by loading his 1950 wood-paneled station wagon with decks, grip tape, bearings, wheels and other skate-swag and posting near Blue Heron Drive, where skaters would fly down one of the only paved hills in the area. His daughter, Roxanne, named after the John Mayall song, would ride her Big Wheel nearby. Now, Rodriguez is immersed in his business, One World Designs, which has grown to supply hundreds of surf shops — which were a rarity in his youth — with boards. His first real job was shaping boards at Economy Tackle. Though the number of surf shops has grown in the U.S. since the 1970s, the number has fallen on Siesta Key, a place Rodriguez and Judsen say they rarely visit to surf these days. And the underground scene that shaped the sport has emerged in the modern world to be featured in movies and commercials. “It’s a shame, because the reason we all started surfing was because it was an antiestablishment sport,” Rodriguez says. “If I grew up in this era, I don’t know if I would be a surfer again.”



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PELICAN PRESS

YourObserver.com

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2012

ESPLANADE / FROM PAGE 1A

CIRCULAR ISSUES

rison, planned to finance part of that through a community development district. Sarasota County commissioners approved the CDD in 2007 — just before the real-estate market crashed. A decreased demand for new homes forced the project into an early grave before any construction could begin. “We went back and moth-balled it,” Kempton said. According to Kempton, there was a fairly low cost to carry the land, so the company kept the vacant land instead of proceeding with the development. The firm tweaked the original concept to include single-family homes to fit the current active market, which includes empty nesters and retirees. Kempton said the community’s proximity to golf courses, tennis courts and downtown makes it attractive to those consumers. And the firm plans to capitalize on Siesta Key’s “No. 1 Beach” ranking, because it is less than five miles away from the main public beach access. Taylor Morrison submitted a permit for the subdivision in July, but Planning and Development staff asked for various corrections so the Esplanade complies with zoning regulations, according to the county permitting website. The developer has about a year to re-submit the plans and is in talks with the Florida Department of Transportation about an entrance on Clark Road, said County Land Development Coordinator Mary Stephens. The firm applied for a two-foot reduction on the regulation requiring 22 feet of width of asphalt on roadways, stating that older and seasonal residents would take fewer trips than forecasted. Taylor Morrison Marketing Manager Katy Walker said the new development draws influence from the Esplanade at Lakewood Ranch, which features the re-barreled roofs of the California-Tuscan style. The firm is about start on the final two LBK -at2010 - I Reserve, a community in phases the Verona Venice. And in August, Taylor Morrison purLBK -about 2010400 - Iacres east of the Lakewood chased Ranch community for expansion. “It has certainly been busy,” Walker said.

by Alex Mahadevan | News Editor

Roundabout challenges ahead Sarasota County Public Works traffic engineering staff asked Sarasota County commissioners Oct. 9 for $10,000 of shrubbery for the roundabout at Jacaranda Boulevard and Venice Avenue, in Venice. The four proposed plants would break up drivers’ views and redirect them to oncoming traffic from the left, staff explained. Public Works staff proposed shrubbery designed to withstand some damage from vehicles and a new irrigation method to handle the load of plant life. County watering trucks sprayed the trees currently standing as they grew to be self-sufficient but asked to build a well to support any new bushes and turf. Commissioners suggested looking into drought-resistant plants. “Obviously, the logic is that we shouldn’t be suggesting plants that we can’t water, because they’re going to die,” Commissioner Joe Barbetta said. The proposed plan calls for grass lining the outer edge of the roundabout island, which would require mowing — a sore spot for county staff and commissioners, who have received criticism for unkempt medians this year. The contractor would also face a dangerous situation while completely surrounded by traffic, Barbetta said. If the county chose to follow the city of Sarasota’s reuse watering option for median landscaping, it would cost about $30,000, traffic engineering staff member Drake Odum said. “We’re trying to encourage the whole world not to water, so that’s why it got the reaction it did,” County Commissioner Nora Patterson said. The maintenance plan was tabled for later discussions, but the issue could surface again as the county begins con-

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Photo courtesy of Sarasota County Public Works

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