On the Move

In the middle of the night, three old houses traveled 40 blocks with police escorts.

Developer Steve Bradley had bought the land the houses sat on, where he had plans for a condo project. But he didn't want the houses to be torn down.

The three cottages, which Bradley says are about 100 years old, were in the Rosemary District, just north of downtown Sarasota. It's a neighborhood that's rapidly developing, and Bradley has two other condo projects in the works in the area, including the 28-unit Risdon on 5th development. Bradley says that project will likely be sold out by the end of the year.

To save the Rosemary cottages, he and his team hatched a plan. They would relocate the structures to a different part of Sarasota, renovate the houses and set them up as rental properties.

It wouldn't be the first time the cottages were relocated, Bradley says. Custom home and commercial builder Pat Ball moved them to the Rosemary District site and renovated them years ago. Bradley bought the property with the houses on it from Ball, who has an office in the Rosemary District and specializes in historic restoration. “Pat's an inspiration from coming in early and improving the built environment,” Bradley says.

Most developers, Bradley admits, wouldn't have done what he did to save the cottages. “The simplest, quickest, least expensive way would have been to tear them down to make way for The Risdon,” he says. “That's not what we did.”

Bradley says it would have cost his team about $15,000 to tear down the houses. Meanwhile, he says, just the cost of moving the houses topped $50,000. “If you take that investment over the scope of what we're doing here, it's modest,” he says. “We're more than for-profit developers.”

That cost points to one of the key reasons why developers often chose demolition over moving structures away from construction sites. “It just doesn't happen,” Bradley says. “It's too much effort, too much expense.”

Yet it wasn't as though Risdon Group didn't do the math before taking on the move. “We knew the dollars don't add up,” Bradley says. The firm's approach goes beyond dollars and cents, though, he adds. “There's some value to consider,” he says.

“These structures had a story from another part of the city.”

With that thinking in mind, the decision was clear. “It was the best choice — preserve the history instead of tearing it down,” Bradley says.

It was an 18-month process for Risdon Group, he says, starting with the idea to move the cottages through the actual moving date. That included helping to find new homes for the three men who had been living in the houses, which Bradley describes as a “collective effort.”

It also meant finding suitable lots for each of the houses. They found three lots near The Ringling museum, north of the Rosemary District. Now the houses, ranging in size from 700 to 1,200 square feet, are being renovated and brought up to code to be used as single-family dwellings.

Bradley expects the renovations to be done in the next six months. When the renovations are complete, he'll rent them out. “They will be long-term investments for us,” he says.

In spring 2018, Bradley says Risdon Group will launch marketing and sales for The Risdon. For that project, along with his other developments in the neighborhood, he has a larger goal in mind. “We're building more than condominiums,” he says. “We're building a community.”