BOOM EXPANDS TOWARD EAST MAIN STREET.(B SECTION)

Byline: Gordon Russell STAFF WRITER

Until recently, the shopworn advice of newspaperman Horace Greeley - "Go west, young man" - might well have applied to development in Sarasota.

After all, the Gulf of Mexico is to the west, and so are the views. So is the heart of downtown, lower Main Street.

But these days, the hot spot for development has migrated east. Within a few blocks of Main Street and U.S. 301, about a dozen planned office buildings of all sizes are in various stages of completion.

The developments to the east are perhaps less grandiose individually than a number of larger projects to the west, such as the proposed Ritz-Carlton hotel and the massive retail-and-condominium Renaissance complex. But the sum total …