KEY PEOPLE

None of this would be possible without a core group of people behind The Bay, an All-Star list of Sarasota’s business, civic and philanthropic leaders. (In full disclosure, Emily Walsh, Key Life publisher and Observer Media Group president, joined the BPC board in 2019 and was named secretary earlier in 2023.) A partial list includes:

JENNIE COMPTON

An attorney and managing partner of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, Compton was asked to join an early planning group for The Bay. After initially demurring, she drove by one day during lunch, in 2014. The Sarasota native recalled how as a kid she would take a yellow school bus to the “purple building” (the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall) and have lunch while sitting on the orange curbs. She drove up that afternoon and found the same thing: students arriving in a yellow school bus for a field trip and lunch on the orange curbs. “You look at all this and you see all this,” Compton says, referring to the water and views and location, “and you think ‘we can do better.’” Compton thought she would be involved for at most two years. A decade later she’s still there. “I firmly believe this will greatly impact our community over the next 50 to 100 years,” she says.

A.G. LAFLEY

The founding CEO of the BPC, Lafley is the person multiple people involved in the Bay site as the project’s quarterback. The former president and CEO of Procter & Gamble, Lafley worked on a massive waterfront redevelopment project in Cincinnati, P&G’s headquarters. Sizing up The Bay opportunity, Lafley quickly realized, he says, that the group needed two things: talent and money. The talent side was taken care of with the board and others, including design, planning and construction firms like Sasaki, Haskell and Jon F. Swift Construction. The money? Roughly 100 people gave at least $5,000, he says, in addition to the region’s five core community foundations, which, in total, gave more than $1 million. “If you have all the foundations,” says Lafley, “then you have a critical mass.” (Lafley will soon step away as founding CEO. In a move BPC officials announced March 24, the new CEO will be Stephanie Crockatt, who was previously executive director of Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy in upstate New York.)

CATHY LAYTON

A retired commercial real estate broker who has been

on numerous nonprofit and civic boards, Layton, like Compton, was hesitant to join The Bay early on. But also like Compton, Layton, while not a native, moved to town with her family in 1970 and saw what it was and what that site could be. With phase one complete, Layton, chair emeritus of the BPC, has spent multiple afternoons in the park, watching and seeing how people use it. Seeing The Bay principles in action is a reflective and proud moment for Layton, thinking back to the early days. “We really started on a wing and a prayer,” she says. “There was no map to guide us. There was no staff. There wasn’t even any furniture.”

MICHAEL KLAUBER

Klauber was relentless in the early going, say several others closely connected to the park, with one core message: What are people going to say 50 years from now about the opportunities we have and the decisions we are making? In fact, Klauber is so invested in The Bay he will soon live there. Or almost. He and his wife, Terri, are selling their downtown Sarasota condo and plan to buy a condo in One Park, an 18-story building going up on the corner of Tamiami Trail and Boulevard of the Arts. “I want to be able to open up the front door, walk into the park and watch it grow and have an opportunity to be outside and be around the park all night,” Klauber says. “Heck, yeah, that’s what I want. I want to spend my next 30 years here.”