A Bridge to Somewhere

A Bridge to Somewhere

CONSTRUCTION by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

A developer's response to the collapsing Gulf Coast condo market is to think big by building a two-lane bridge. Innovation, though, doesn't come cheap: The project is costing more than $3 million.

Rob Morris happily woke up one night in 2004 in the middle of a multimillion dollar dream: It was that moment he realized a bridge was the only thing missing from the condo project he and his company were putting together a few miles south of downtown Sarasota, on the edge of the Phillippi River.

Morris dreams big. This would be no mere footbridge to spruce up the grounds, nor would it be an inner-property bridge to connect residents to each other.

Instead, Morris' idea was to build a full-fledged, two-lane car bridge with a center turning lane and space on the sides for walking and biking. It's planned at 152 feet long and 50 feet wide, and will stretch over a creek of the river right into U.S. 41, one of the heaviest traveled roads in Greater Sarasota.

The bridge is no longer just a dream. After three years and hundreds of authorization meetings with more than half-a-dozen government agencies - as well as nearly $500,000 in consulting fees - the bridge is now in the early building stages, with an expected completion date of Thanksgiving. All of the necessary regulatory bodies have signed off on the project.

"We pride ourselves on our innovation," says Morris, an executive vice president of the family-run Sarasota-based Ramar Group and the son of the founder, Robert A. Morris. "I think it will be an impressive front door to the property."

But innovation, as well as patience, isn't cheap. In addition to the half-million dollars the firm's already spent on various consultants, Morris says the actual construction of the bridge will cost another $3 million.

What's more, the bridge represents a unique step in Greater Sarasota building circles, as it's one of the first of its kind in the area; similar projects are more common on Florida's east coast and there are a few smaller ones leading to less traveled roads in the Naples, Fort Myers and Tampa regions.

"At first, it didn't seem like it was feasible, with the current regulatory environment," Morris says. "But the more we looked into it, the more it made sense."

Alphabet city

That governmental regulatory environment was tougher then the normally treacherous Gulf Coast government gauntlet, just by the sheer numbers of agencies angling for a say in the process.

The list of involved government groups is a mix of national, state and local groups, including the DEP and FDOT, Florida's environmental protection and transportation departments; the Southwest Florida Water Management District, affectionately known as 'Swift Mud' for its SWFWMD abbreviation; the Coast Guard; the Army Corp of Engineers; and several Sarasota County planning groups.

The three-year saga to complete the approval process - which Morris understates as "very drawn out" - was one long headache: reports, drawings and plans had to be revised, refined and reconfigured with each step and every meeting.

The final bridge approval came early in 2007 and the construction phase began shortly thereafter. And since the actual building of a bridge comes with several of its own challenges, Morris and the firm's contractor sought out a bridge-building specialist.

They found one in Transportation Structures, a Tampa-based, family-run construction company that has worked on several bridges across Florida over the last 10 years, including one recently in Little Harbor in Ruskin.

Gerald Stanley, who runs the business with his three sons, says the most daunting challenge with the Phillippi Landings bridge is that with few exceptions at the very end, the crews won't have access to U.S. 41. "We couldn't put a crane there," says Stanley, "because we would disturb traffic something terrible if we did."

So the crane was planted on the Phillippi Landings side of the water, and the crews are working from there towards the road. The plan is to build the bridge one swath at a time and then place the crane on the completed portion before building the next section.

A secondary challenge is to preserve a large oak tree on the Phillippi Landings side of the bridge. The plan is to build the road and the gate and guard station around the tree, which Stanley and Morris say is a delicate balance. Transportation Structures has six workers on site for the early stages of the project, a number that will grow, Stanley says, as the roadwork phase increases.

'Working out'

While Phillippi Landings represents one of the Ramar Group's biggest current developments, it's tiny compared to ones the firm was doing in the years after it was founded in 1972. Back then, Ramar was building one out of every three homes in Sarasota County, had a full staff of planners, architects and builders and worked on some commercial projects. Overall, the company has built more than 6,000 homes in Charlotte and Sarasota counties.

What's more, the company built many of the homes in the Landings, a large and popular home community about a mile north of Phillippi Landings.

By the mid '90s, the company was taking on less work, especially when the elder Morris, an architect by trade, retired. At the time, the younger Morris was working for then-U.S. Senator Connie Mack III; that Morris, now 36, soon began working for the development company.

The 2007 version of the Ramar Group farms out a bulk of the construction and building tasks and has significantly less employees than it did 35 years ago. In addition to Phillippi Landings, the Ramar Group is currently working on a few other Gulf Coast developments, including Heritage Oak Park, a 700-condo project in Port Charlotte.

Still, even when combining the firm's current projects with those from its early days, the bridge at Phillippi Landings - with its high costs and high amount of red tape - appears to be one of its gutsiest projects. And that's only compounded in the slumping condo market, where many developers are cutting expenses, not spending $3 million on a bridge.

Ramar executives, though, say they are comfortable with the project's progress.

"It's one of those things that's working out the way it's supposed to," says the younger Morris. "We weren't concerned about the risks, and we're still not."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business. Development

Industry. Residential real estate, construction

Key. Building a bridge is an innovative approach to a condo project, albeit expensive and time-consuming.

A bridge to strong sales

A two-lane bridge connecting Phillippi Landings with U.S. 41 will serve as the new front door to the condo project, its developers say. It will replace the current entry, a winding road that starts at the Kane Furniture parking lot next door and weaves into the back of the property.

And while the project adds a unique dimension to the selling points, overall, the condos have sold well - at least when held up to the scrutiny of the slumping Gulf Coast condo market.

Phillippi Landings was conceived as five towers totaling 100 condos. Construction on the first tower began in 2004 and so far, three have been completed and the last two are in the works. The project was built on land a few miles south of downtown Sarasota that was previously known for its blight, as it was dotted with septic tanks and run-down trailer homes.

Out of the 100 condos, 80 have been sold and closed on, with a small portion of the first ones already occupied. The remaining units range in size from 1,700 square-feet to 3,700 square-feet and in price from the mid $500,000s to $1.9 million.

-Mark Gordon