Asolo buys building for production center

Asolo buys building for production center

BUYER: Asolo Theatre Inc. (principals: Ron Greenbaum, Susan Buck, Douglas Bradbury, Leslie Glass, Elenor Maxheim and Diana Armbrust), Sarasota

SELLER: Wells Fargo Trade Capital Services Inc. sold to Asolo Theatre Inc.,

PROPERTY: 1009 Tallevast Road, Sarasota

PRICE: $1.65 million

PREVIOUS PRICE: $2.14 million, February

LAW FIRM ON DEED: Sills Cummis & Gross PC, New York City

PLANS, DESCRIPTION: The Asolo Repertory Theatre purchased the 36,963-square-foot former Athco flex building on Tallevast Road north of the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport for $1.65 million.

The purchase price equated to $44 per square foot of building space.

The building is planned as the Asolo's consolidated Robert and Beverly Koski Production Center Campus. Following a renovation, the building will serve as home to the Asolo's Scenic Studio, which builds the sets and costumes for the theatre and other performing arts organizations including the Sarasota Opera, the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Universal Studios and others.

The building will also house the theatre's large costume and prop collection and rehearsal space.

Buying the building will allow the Asolo to no longer need a warehouse building it owns on the airport grounds and a leased 18,000-square-foot scene shop.

“We had a bunch of requirements for the size, location and price of the new facility,” says Vic Meyrich, the theatre's production manager. “It had to be within a 10-minute drive from the theatre. This met all of those needs.”

The theatre plans to air-condition the warehouse space and to build dividing walls to separate the storage, production, rehearsal and office spaces.

“Owning our own Production Center Campus is part of the theatre's long-range strategic plan to secure our future and to protect the theatre from escalating rental costs when the economy recovers,” Producing Artistic Director Michael Donald Edwards says in a statement.

Beverly Koski, Herman and Sharon Frankel and the Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice donated money to the purchase and development of the center.

Kim Rogers of CB Richard Ellis represented the seller, Wells Fargo Trade Capital Services Inc. Barry Seidel of American Property Group of Sarasota Inc. represented the buyer.