Planning board backs city-led comp-plan amendment, conditionally approves rezoning for Newtown Gateway site

The Sarasota City Planning Board voted 5-0 to recommend that the City Commission approve a comprehensive-plan amendment and a rezoning request that would enable light-industrial development on the city‑owned Marion Anderson property at 2046 Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

The board found petition 25‑PAO‑02 — which would change the parcel’s future land‑use designation from Community Commercial to Production Intensive Commercial — consistent with the Sarasota City Plan and recommended the change. The board also recommended approval of rezoning petition 25‑REN‑04 from CRD (Commercial Residential District) to IGD (Industrial General District), subject to a proffer described during the hearing as a recorded deed restriction intended to prohibit dust‑producing and other polluting open‑air operations.

Why it matters: The votes clear two steps needed to sell and redevelop roughly nine acres of a larger city‑owned parcel that has been vacant for decades. City staff and the applicant said the change would allow light‑industrial, warehouse and distribution uses the property’s current CRD zoning forbids, and would pave the way for cleanup and redevelopment of a long‑vacant brownfield site.

Applicant and project background Baron Channer, a representative of Newtown Gateway LLC, told the board the rezoning request applies to the southernmost roughly nine acres of a 14‑acre site the city now owns. Channer said Newtown Gateway and the city entered a May 2023 purchase‑and‑sale agreement that anticipates the southern…