Sarasota - Facing growing debt brought on by failed downtown redevelopment projects and parking shortages, the owners of the Golden Apple Dinner Theatre have been trying for four years to sell their downtown building to keep the curtain up.

Robert Turoff is now feeling a "wonderful sense of relief" after closing this week on a $1.7 million deal to sell the downtown property and lease it back, allowing him to keep the theater open for at least five more years.

That also will allow the Golden Apple to maintain its status as the longest-running, continuously operating dinner theater in the country.

"This was difficult, but we had to do something to get out of the debt we had," Turoff said, a few hours before the opening night of his latest production, the musical "Avenue Q." "This kind of gives us a fresh start."

The deal closed on Monday for $1.746 million, said John Harshman, a commercial real estate broker and president of Sarasota's Harshman & Co. Inc.

From the silent confines of her high-end rug store on South Palm Avenue, she imagines the aroma of five types of Italian bread and imported coffee roast. She sees the ebb and flow of curious shoppers and savants through the art galleries and hears the cha-ching of cash registers.

Hampshire envisions six well-known Sarasota merchants leading a chorus of commerce on the other side of Main Street, where untouched city-owned real estate could mean a revival for the historic block of the arts, which now resembles a pastel ghost town.

Hampshire, who owns Art to Walk On at the foot of the empty Dolphin Tower, has set her sights on 11,000 square feet of retail space below the Palm Avenue garage, which should be completed in time for Christmas.

There was Crate & Barrel. There was Cheesecake Factory. There was P.F. Chang's China Bistro.

Five years, a horrendous residential real estate collapse and the worst economic recession since World War II later, hopes for high-end furniture and abundant dairy desserts have largely gone.

But P.F. Chang's may be the exception -- and at a somewhat surprising site.

SARASOTA - Staples Inc. intends to open an office supply superstore behind Main Plaza in late 2011, a move that would officially scuttle plans for the $100 million condominium project planned there five years ago.

Staples' proposed store also signals that new residential high-rise construction -- at least in Sarasota's urban core -- could be years away.

In 2005 developer Ruben-Holland Management LLC pitched building a pair of 16-story condo towers containing 118 units for the site, according to city plans.

Premiere at Main Plaza, as the project was called, was supposed to be completed in late 2007, but it became a casualty of the real estate market's decline.

"Unfortunately, the project won't be built in the fashion proposed before, because there's just not sufficient demand for residences," said Wayne Ruben, a Ruben-Holland principal.

"We're very definite that residences will not go there, but we're thrilled that a national retailer will be coming downtown," said Ruben, whose firm submitted plans for Staples to the city this month.

Ruben said the new 17,780-square-foot store, on a parking lot at Links Avenue and Fruitville Road, is the only new Staples outlet slated to open in Florida in 2011, though Staples officials could not confirm that Thursday afternoon.

Real estate market analysts said the Staples plan is solid evidence that the frenzied days of vertical tower proposals for downtown are well over.

"It's clearly indicative of the demand for retail space downtown, relative to the lack of demand for offices, hotel rooms and residences," John Harshman, president of Harshman & Co. Inc., a Sarasota commercial real estate firm, said of Staples.

"But it's very exciting that something like that is happening," Harshman said. "It's an indication of positive movement."

By John B. Harshman

Published: Thursday, May 20, 2010 - Sarasota Herald Tribune

As a 30-year Sarasota commercial real estate professional, my initial reaction upon reading the excellent article, "With commercial defaults, new pain," by Doug Sword and Michael Braga in the May 15 Herald-Tribune, is to point out that the sky is not falling on Sarasota commercial real estate. At least not any farther or faster than it has in the past.

Yes, there have been commercial real estate foreclosures, and there will be more as we work through this recession. The heaviest hit commercial sectors are development land, flexible space office/industrial, and speculative developments.

Foreclosures are painful for both borrower and lender and the domino market impact can be very disruptive, but viewing the market holistically and historically we see that Sarasota's commercial real estate obituary is premature.

Do you remember the recession of the early 1990s and the Resolution Trust Corporation?