Bird Key

City hall and the ARC are both the job

Bird Key is in the City of Sarasota. Canal and bay lots here do not file with the County. Docks, lifts, and seawalls still pick up City, and often additional submerged-land or waterway review. The builder who treats Bird Key like unincorporated County will lose a month on registration and portal alone.

Separately, the Bird Key Homeowners Association has an Architectural Review Committee. Their published guidelines require prior approval for exterior changes, docks, boat lifts, roofs, pools, and fences. The City measures height one way. BKHA measures another: no more than two stories, 37 feet to the highest ridge from the street center line, with a limited allowance for chimneys and cupolas. Front setback from the postal-address street is 30 feet in their rules. We submit to the ARC as if it were a second building department, because on this island it is.

One way on, close houses, sailboat water

The island sits between downtown and St. Armands, reached from the John Ringling Causeway. Whether or not you call the entry a gate, there is one way on and off. Staging, dumpsters, and a noisy roof week are a community problem, not just a schedule. Houses sit close. Your scaffold is someone else's view.

Lots were largely fixed when Arvida platted the island in the late 1950s. New work here is usually a replacement or a serious renovation of a house that already had a life — mid-century, Mediterranean, or a later custom. Canal lots were dredged for sailboat water into Sarasota Bay. The dock is often as important as the kitchen. It is also a separate permit path.

What we will not do

We will not start City drawings that the ARC will reject. We will not run a mainland circus inside a private island. If the center of the work is a kitchen or a bath, start with Remodel. If you are replacing the house, lifting it, or opening the envelope, this is the door.