Longtime, vocal leader of prominent Sarasota builders group retires

Mary Dougherty welcomes attendees to the Gulf Coast Builders Xchange annual dinner Feb. 1, 2017.  Photo by Niki Kottmann

Bottom line

Key takeaway: Gulf Coast Builders Exchange Executive Director Mary Dougherty retired at the end of 2024. 

Core challenge: The new leader of GCBX, Elizabeth Shore, will have to take the pro-growth, pro-builder mantra from Dougherty during a period of intense debate over infrastructure, resources ands what projects to approve. 

What's next: Dougherty plans to spend more time with her husband and hiking in North Georgia.

One of the more prominent advocates for the commercial building and construction industry in Sarasota-Manatee market, Mary Dougherty, has retired.

Dougherty had been executive director of the Gulf Coast Builders Exchange since 2009. The Lakewood Ranch-based organization, with a presence in Charlotte, Manatee and Sarasota counties, named entrepreneur and former ad executive Elizabeth Shore as its new executive director. Shore’s father is the late R.B. “Chips” Shore, who was Manatee County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller for nearly 40 years; Shore died while in office, having filed to run for a 10th term, in July 2015.

Dougherty, 64, says she approached the GCBX board about succession planning last year, and, even with two years left on her contract, told them “I won’t stand in the way if we find the right person.” Dougherty retired at the end of 2024.

Dougherty and Shore connected through a mutual friend. Both agreed a big part of the success of the job revolves around being a community-minded visible leader who can also articulate the message of the benefits of the building and construction community in front of any audience. “I understand how important it is for the building community to support each other,” says Shore. 

Elizabeth Shore

Shore worked in financial and strategy roles for Tampa area companies, according to her LinkedIn profile, and later worked in North Carolina for ad agency Russell Johns Associates, including a stint as controller. She was also an executive vice president there for three years, leading a reorganization and overseeing some 40 employees, she says in an interview. In 2017 Shore opened a craft brew and live music spot, Bunny and Pirates Bazaar, in the Cortez village area of west Manatee County.

Dougherty, a former deputy county administrator in DeSoto County, joined GCBX amid the 2008-2009 recession that squashed the building sector and, in an interview looking back at her tenure, says getting through that period is one of her proudest accomplishments. An executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Manatee County prior to the GCBX role, Dougherty essentially led GCBX on two different but connected growth tracks in her 15 years at the helm. 

Internally, the membership-based group doubled its membership base during her tenure, to now more than 400 contractors, subcontractors, suppliers and firms from connected industries. The organization, with a small handful of employees, had $906,000 in assets at the end of its 2022 fiscal year, public tax filings show. 

Externally, meanwhile, GCBX under Dougherty has become a leading advocate for the building and contractor industry locally, regionally and in Tallahassee — with even some Washington, D.C. lobbying.

Dougherty blended both parts of the organization as she grew it. She raised the group’s profile, too, leading it from hosting some four events a year to more than 20 today. That includes a see-and-be-seen annual dinner with high-profile speakers who have included Florida Republican Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, Florida Attorney General and now U.S. Republican Sen. Ashley Moody and Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis.

Dougherty says several moments stand out in her tenure at GCBX. One was leading support of a local-first contracting rule in Sarasota County soon after she took the job, which she says became a lifeline for some companies to win public work during a difficult time. More than a decade later, she also advocated for the commercial contracting industry, on a state level, to be included in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ executive order deeming the building industry essential during COVID. 

Another accomplishment, she says, has been fostering programs, like the Construction Rodeo and others, for high school students and teenagers to be aware of and go into the construction trades industry. “That opened opportunities for young people they never knew about before,” she says. 

Dougherty says she will miss interacting with the GCBX members the most in retirement, and the back-and-forth volleying of politics the least. She and her husband, well-known local land planning consultant Marty Black, who is semi-retired, have a second home in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Georgia and they have been spending time there. Dougherty says she’s content doing a lot of hikes and walks and little else for at least a year while figuring out her next chapter. 

She will also be available as a consultant for GCBX and Shore. “I told the board I don’t want (my replacement) to be Mary 2.0. I want it to be Elizabeth 1.0. I can’t wait to see where she takes this organization.”