Chimera [ chi·mae·ra ] something totally unrealistic or impractical: a wildly unrealistic idea or hope or a completely impractical plan.
Many years have passed since the voters of Longboat approved a referendum to allow rebuilding 250 tourist units on the island. To date not a single unit has been spoken for. How many more years will it take before there is once again a thriving tourist presence on the island. Even the remaining tourist rooms on the island go unfilled much of the time. If you are waiting for tourists to one day return to Longboat to purchase your home, you may be here longer than you intended.
"Governor Rick Scott considers 'destination casinos' for Florida"
Would the Key Club expansion make an attractive and exclusive gaming casino? I do not believe the great majority of Longboat Key residents want to see a gambling casinos in our community. However, gambling will attract all sorts of tourists and day visitors. If Loeb Partners want to build a casino, and Tallahassee mandates "destination casinos", will Longboat residents have a say, since this commission has greatly relaxed our land use codes? Be careful what you wish for.
This week the Longboat commissioners received an invitation from the Sarasota County Economic Development Council to attend the EDC's seminar on How to Market to the Baby Boomers. I have devoted a previous column to the idea that the fastest and most realistic approach to re-vitalizing our island community is to attract the Boomers, to our beautiful exclusive island community, as home buyers. Once again I will emphasize that Longboat Key does not appear in anyone's list of the 100 best places to live or retire in America. We really should be in the top five on every list if we want to attract new residents to our island. I believe this is simply insufficient marketing on our part and that with more effort we can gain high national and international visibility as a very desirable place to live, retire or vacation.
Unless the Sarasota area somehow magically creates a large vibrant business and industrial infrastructure, no one is going to be able to find the high paying career positions they would need to move to Longboat Key as working-age families. Dr. Fishkind has assured us they are on their way if we build the new Key Club. Hopefully they will eventually come to our island. However, I doubt that will be any time soon if they need to work for a living.
We need to see what other communities, that are effectively attracting Baby Boomers, are doing to be successful community marketers. Much of Longboat real estate is priced at a level that has been seriously impacted by the recession. Many Baby Boomers have suffered economic reversals. But there are millions of Boomers who have the money and the mobility to make Longboat their new home. We simply need to attract them, and they will see what we see in our paradisaical community.
Perhaps we need yet another resident committee to do the research and the work to analyze what the Baby Boomers are looking for, and then formulate a path forward for our community for the next decade.
At the end of the day, if no one knows Longboat Key is here, if our marketing message gets lost in the marketing clamor for new residents, our community will most likely recover more slowly than more energetic communities. If one looks at the Anna Maria Island communities one sees a vibrancy that appears to be lacking on our island. There are more things for people to do on Anna Maria. 1000 residents of the Villages play Pickleball. There is a very active Pickleball league on Anna Maria. You may not want to participate in community social activities, but Boomer home-buyers might. http://www.usapa.org/ I personally know numbers of Longboat residents who regularly drive to Anna Maria to use their community center and play Pickleball.
Rather than let the county potion of our community center land lie fallow year after year, perhaps the town could request that Sarasota county use some of our tens of millions in taxes to build a few Boccceball and Pickleball courts. These facilities cost less than $5,000 each to implement and would greatly improve our community image. Longboat has a sizable infrastructure fund we receive from tourist taxes. Perhaps those funds might be used to provide much needed activities on our island. Let's not be "Deadboat Key".
Perhaps we need a whole lot more residential retirement community marketing and a whole lot less energy spent planning for commercial tourism, that may take decades to materialize.
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