A Delray Beach-based company plans to redevelop a resort hotel in Sarasota on Lido Key.
Ocean Properties Hotels Resorts & Affiliates is planning to demolish the Sandcastle Resort at Lido Beach, a 176-room property the company bought in February 2014 for $27.5 million.
Ocean Properties would build a 304-room on the 6.1-acre site of the Sandcastle Resort, built in 1953 at 1540 Benjamin Franklin Drive on Lido key.
Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Associates Inc. is designing the new hotel, a two-building development that would be nine or 10 stories tall.
The new hotel could open in 2019 if Ocean Properties obtains the necessary approvals from the City of Sarasota.
Ocean Properties has requested a pre-application meeting with the city government’s Development Review Committee.
“In order to be competitive, they need to update the hotel and make it a more contemporary beach resort,” Bruce Franklin, president of Land Resource Strategies, told the Business Observer. Land Resource is a consulting firm working with Ocean Properties on the hotel project.
About 1,000 new hotel rooms are planned or under construction in downtown Sarasota, but they won’t compete with Ocean Properties’ hotel because “downtown and Lido Beach are truly two different markets,” Franklin told the Business Observer.
Ocean Properties owns more than 100 hotels in North America, according to its website. The company’s Florida hotels include the Resort at the Longboat Key Club, the Sanibel Island Beach Resort, the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Naples and the Holiday Inn Lido Beach. [Business Observer] – Mike Seemuth