A long-quiet stretch of South Tamiami Trail is shifting. On an 18.42-acre parcel just west of Palmer Ranch, Arlington Properties and Battery Global Advisors have begun work on a 325-unit apartment community called Tapestry Sarasota. The land at 7914 S. Tamiami Trail sold for $18.42 million, according to county property records. The seller, St. Petersburg developer Jeff Craft, paid $4.6 million for it in 2019 before assembling a broader vision for the site. (Fun fact: the late Chinese scholar Elling O. Eide sold the larger parcel for almost $28 million in 2005; the research center named for him is located nearby at 8000 S. Tamiami Trail.)
For Casey Babb, executive vice president at Colliers, the sale marks the end of a long loop. “For me, it’s a labor of love,” he says. Babb, who runs Colliers’ Florida multifamily practice group, has been tied to the property’s trajectory since 2017. The owners, he says, originally secured the land back in 2007 for a mixed-use project with waterfront condos, only to see it shelved during the recession. They later reacquired the front acreage while retaining the 13.7-acre waterfront portion, then initiated what Babb called an “arduous” rezoning process with Sarasota County. Although it’s been slowing down compared to the feverish post-pandemic draw the area saw, “it’s a growing metro,” Babb says. “Apartments are needed and that will continue, and the population growth is strong.”
Tapestry Sarasota arrives in a part of the county that hasn’t seen new apartments in decades. “If you look at where development has happened, it’s mostly up and down the I-75 corridor five to seven miles away from this site,” Babb says. “There’s not been anything within that three-mile radius in over 25 years.” Downtown Sarasota has added thousands of units, and Palmer Ranch continues to become more dense, but this specific pocket of U.S. 41 has remained largely untouched…