Pet Luxuries

There are no pins to knock down at the Bayside Pet Resort and Spa, a onetime bowling alley, but Bob Huff still hopes to strike success with the Manatee County business venture.

In the process, Huff, who built up a $70 million nursing home administration company in Ohio, can accomplish a critical feat for the Gulf Coast commercial real estate market: a successful creative reuse of an old, abandoned and shuttered property.

The reuse trick could be complicated, and costly, but commercial real estate agents say it's an integral part of any real estate market rebound. In Huff's case, he turned the former Rip Van Winkle Lanes, a 22,000-square-foot facility on U.S. 41, near the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport, into a high-end kennel. It's scheduled to open in early June, with 25-30 employees.

“This is going to be a state-of-the-art facility,” says Huff, “unlike anything this region has ever seen.”

It's an expensive undertaking. Huff, 65, estimates he has spent $5 million on the project. That goes from the building purchase, which was $2.6 million, to the build-out, to a long list of intricate details.

Huff searched for a location for more than a year, with frontage on U.S. 41 a key element. He chose the old bowling alley over vacant land. He hired Venice-based J.E. Charlotte Construction for the renovation. The building was completely gutted, and now has new floors, plumbing, wiring and walls.

The result is a dog and cat haven. There are 178 kennels, and at least 32 have orthopedic beds. The Parkview suites, the top end of the facility, even have LCD screen TVs, where dogs can watch a dog-centric channel produced by a company in California.

Other features include a cat playroom with an aquarium, an online “doggy cam,” where owners can watch their pets, and specially designed Astroturf outside for the animals. The costs can range from $20 to more than $60 a night, depending on the size of the suite. Huff projects at least 60% occupancy on a nightly basis, and an even busier count during holidays.

“It's a big responsibility to accept someone's pet,” says Huff, who has a mini Australian lab, Bella. “People love them as much as they love their kids.”

That kind of passion drew Huff to the industry after a 30-year career in nursing homes. He had worked for a large nursing home company into his 30s, but decided he wanted to do it on his own. So in 1980, Huff and his wife, Lynne Huff, got a $2,500 loan through a mail-order lending service. The couple bought a 35-bed nursing home in Dayton, Ohio, with $1,000 down.

The Huffs, along with their three young children, moved to Dayton from Cincinnati. The couple worked long hours, but grew the business quickly. “Within six months,” says Huff, “we were making as much money as we made when we were working for other people.”

Huff is now in the process of selling his nursing home business to his three children. But he didn't want to get bored-in-retirement syndrome, so he sought a new line of work.

“I'm not just doing this for the money,” Huff says. “I could have taken my portfolio and done something else. But I wanted to do something I love. I want to create jobs and opportunity.”