Approximately 50 people filled Fogartyville Community Media and Arts Center on Tuesday night for a Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association meeting that felt, at times, more like a reckoning. Philip DiMaria of Kimley-Horn & Associates was there to walk neighbors through a proposed apartment development. In the audience were residents, tenants and business owners from the site itself.
The proposal would bring a 324-unit multifamily development on about 3.44 acres to the neighborhood on 22 parcels with addresses on Fourth Street, Gillespie Avenue, Fruitville Road and Osprey Avenue. David Hanchrow, chief investment officer of Bristol Development Group, is listed as the contract purchaser, with DiMaria filing on behalf of the Nashville-based developer.
The property is zoned “downtown edge” and because no rezoning is requested and the site is within a downtown zone district, approval will not include the public process.
The block itself has been assembled over time. It’s owned by Marlene and Alex Lancaster, who, based on Sarasota County property records, acquired parcels there from 1996 through 2018, paying amounts that ranged from $17,500 to $980,000 each, depending on the lot and year. The parcels vary in size, with some about twice the size of smaller ones nearby. None of the structures on the site, representatives for the developer said on Tuesday night, have been found to carry local or national historic designation despite being attributed to once hosting Ringling Circus performers and some of the colorful cottages dating back to the 1920s.
That distinction matters because many of the buildings are old enough to prompt questions about preservation—and because for the people in the room, these are workplaces, restaurants, studios and storefronts that form a small business pocket just north of downtown. Business owners in attendance included people connected to Discover Sarasota Tours, The Breakfast House, The Crystal Stargate, The Artful Giraffe, FAM, Bluebird Salon and others. A handout circulated in connection with the businesses described the property as home to 17 local businesses, 13 of them owned by women, serving more than 20,000 customers a month and more than 200,000 a year. As Wendy Goldberg of The Breakfast House put it later, “We heard [about the proposed development] on the news like everybody else.”
In addition to the 324 units, there would be approximately 433 parking spaces organized around a six-level parking structure integrated into the development. Along Fourth Street, the building would read as four stories, then step up to five stories as it approaches Fruitville Road. The plans call for amenities including a gym, clubhouse and swimming pool. Utilizing the city’s downtown attainable density bonus program, the project would include 36 attainable housing units, split evenly among households earning below 80 percent of area median income (AMI), between 80 percent and 100 percent of AMI, and between 100 percent and 120 percent of AMI…