Demolition underway for G.WIZ

SARASOTA — Once a staple of the Sarasota bayfront, the former G.WIZ building is being reduced to a pile of rubble, twisted metal and exposed wires.

Demolition of the beloved science museum continued Monday. It’s the first step of the $300 million redevelopment project called The Bay, which will span 53 acres and take from 10 to 15 years to complete.

Sarasota City Manager Thomas Barwin said the project will convert the bayfront into a more “open, inviting space.”

Phase one of The Bay will include a recreational pier over the south end and a pedestrian bridge over Tamiami Trail, which will cost from $10 to $20 million and could take up to four years to complete.

The first phase will also include a concession stand, open space for events, outdoor movies and art displays, which could cost an additional $4 million and take a year to build.

By the end of June, the G.WIZ property will be completely cleared and restored, which includes laying new sod. The city contracted PAW Demolition, a St. Petersburg-based company, to tear down the building at an estimated cost of $125,000.

The demolition, which began May 6, came as unwelcome news to some Sarasota residents when it was first announced in October 2018. Two residents appealed the decision — both appeals were denied — and an online petition for the museum’s preservation received more than 1,900 signatures.

Sarasota Vice-Mayor Jen Ahearn-Koch was one of the fiercest advocates for exploring other options beside demolition.

“Maybe it would’ve worked, maybe it wouldn’t have worked,” she said. “It saddens me because we never had a proper facility study done.”

The study, she said, would’ve revealed the cost and safety of potentially repurposing the G.WIZ to fit in with the larger vision of the redevelopment project.

“But we don’t have those answers,” she said.

But Barwin said the city did have the answers: It could not afford the $10 million to $15 million required to preserve the structure.

“You have to put everything we do in context of the entire community,” he said.

The City Commission reviewed more than 50,000 comments from the community, Barwin said. Most of them favored the open space on the bayfront.

The building first opened in 1976 as the Selby Public Library. When the library moved in 1998 to its larger, current location on First Street in downtown Sarasota, the building was then designated as the new location for the Gulf Coast Wonder and Imagination Zone, or G.WIZ.

Before the museum opened in 2000, it was renovated by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP. The design featured his “field theory” aesthetic of squares rotated into complex shapes, which defenders of the building called historic.

But experts said otherwise.

“I am absolutely a proponent of historic preservation, but our expert at the city said (the G.WIZ) was not historic anymore,” said Sarasota Mayor Liz Alpert. “It really wasn’t something I thought should be left in place.”

If it’s any consolation, Alpert said, The Bay will honor the G.WIZ through either a commemorative plaque or a shade structure mimicking the shape of the building. She also said the project will find a way to reuse the museum’s donor bricks.

Larry Cornwell, 67, has lived in Sarasota for 40 years. He watched from the driver’s seat of his van on Monday as construction crews ripped into what was left of the G.WIZ.

“I’m sad to see it go,” he said. “But this wasn’t the building to hold onto.”

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