Echelon on Palm – Downtown Sarasota New Construction

Downtown Sarasota’s construction boom will continue well into 2015, the result of newly unveiled plans that include another luxury condominium tower and the first new office building in eight years.

In the larger of the two developments, the Ronto Group of Naples plans to build an 18-story condo tower between Gulf Stream and South Palm avenues, investing at least $20 million to compete in an increasingly crowded market for new residential units.

Veteran local developer Mark Kauffman, meanwhile, is preparing to construct a $4.7 million, four-story office building called Centerplex at Ringling Boulevard and Golf Street.

For Kauffman, whose properties include Courthouse Centre and the Hollywood 20/Main Plaza complex downtown, the offices become the latest in a series of new projects in or around downtown.

He already is building Payne Park Plaza, a $1.5 million office and retail development on South Washington Boulevard, near Morrill Street.

The three projects join a post-recession resurgence in downtown construction, with condos, hotels and retail space sprouting from the business district to the bayfront. Ronto Group plans 17 units on a one-third-acre site called Echelon on Palm, executive vice president and co-owner Anthony Solomon said Tuesday.

While a number of new condos are coming online downtown and on nearby barrier islands, Solomon says demand is sufficient for more. “The economy is doing a lot better,” he said. “People are looking for new design and new product, and it’s a good time to launch something.”

The company has purchased a parcel at 624 S. Palm, site of the La Palme Royale bed-and-breakfast, and in March will acquire another parcel at 621 Gulf Stream Ave.

Sixteen floors of the modern design building will contain a single unit, Solomon said, with just over 4,000 square feet of living area. One of the units will be a two-level townhouse on the first and second floors. Parking will be located on the first two floors.

Prices will range from $2.2 million to $4 million, he said, with an average of $3 million. Its penthouse will be the priciest of the units.

The company wants to pre sell at least half the residences before starting construction next summer. Build-out is scheduled to take about 16 months. A sales office will open at the site next month.

This is the first venture in Sarasota for Ronto, founded in 1967 by Jack Solomon and now co-managed with his son. The company has completed more than 10,000 high-rise units, 2,000 single-family homes, several shopping plazas and a hotel, according to its website.

“What attracted us to Sarasota is that it is very similar to Naples in demographics,” Anthony Solomon said. “The site and its views are amazing, and the location is incredible.”

But Echelon on Palm will join a growing field of new projects underway or planned around downtown. Among them: the $120 million Vue on the bayfront, with 141 condos and a 255 hotel rooms; the $31 million mixed-use One Palm Avenue, with 130 hotel rooms and 139 apartments; the $19 million Jewel on Main Street, with 18 units; and the $6 million “Q,” which contains 39 condos on Ringling Boulevard.

Kauffman has filed plans with the city for 30,000 square feet of office space at Ringling and Golf, which would become the first free-standing office project to open downtown since the Great Recession.

“They wanted new, and the locations are pretty incredible for both of them,” said Kauffman, who also developed the P.F. Chang’s China Bistro on Osprey Avenue downtown and redeveloped an office building at U.S. 41 and Siesta Drive housing Fleming’s Steakhouse.

The planned buildings come, however, as the market for new Class A office space remains soft and financing for new office projects remains elusive. During the third quarter, for example, the 2.5 million square feet of existing office space in downtown Sarasota had a 12 percent vacancy. In all of 2013, too, there was net absorption of just 17,532 square feet of office space downtown, according to figures compiled by the Economic Development Corp. of Sarasota County.

Commercial brokers say downtown landlords are now asking about $25 to $27 per square foot in gross rents. “The numbers don’t make sense yet,” said local commercial real estate broker Ian Black. “The market has to turn so that demand will exceed supply.”

Both the Echelon and the Centerplex projects are scheduled to go before Sarasota’s Development Review Committee Wednesday 12/17.

Payne Park Plaza on South Washington Boulevard would contain 8,300 square feet of office and retail space, as well, according to plans. Both commercial projects will be developed on a build-to-suit basis, with a bank occupying two floors in the Centerplex development and a financial firm committing to Payne Park Plaza.

HeraldTribune 12/16/2014