23,000-square-foot grocery store coming to downtown Sarasota

Sprouts Farmers Market is opening a store in downtown Sarasota.

The natural and organic food grocer has leased 23,000 square feet at the One Main Plaza development currently under construction. The developer, Belpointe REIT Inc. of Greenwich, Connecticut, says the store will be in Aster & Links, a two-building complex being built on Main Street and Links Avenue.

The Sprouts will be the second natural food and organic grocery store in area, joining Whole Foods Market, which is about a mile away, on First Street.

The grocer, which signed a 10-year lease for the space, is growing in the state with a new Bradenton location scheduled to open June 30 and one in Fort Myers July 21. Of its 39 existing stores in Florida, there is one each in Sarasota and Tampa.

The Aster & Links complex will include 424 units ranging from one- to three-bedroom apartments to four-bedroom town home-style penthouses, Belpointe says in a statement. The high rises will include a seven-story building at the front of the development and a 10-story building in the rear. It will also include 900 parking spaces.

According to marketing material online and previous statements, the development is also expected to include more than 55,000 square feet of ground floor retail.

One Main Plaza is replacing the 259,000-square-foot Main Plaza at the eastern gateway to downtown. It sits next to Regal Cinemas’ Hollywood 11 theater, which has a lease through 2029.

Belpointe is a private equity company formed in 2019 to develop properties in federally designated Opportunity Zones. It acquired 8.6 acres of the roughly 10-acre Main Plaza site in December 2019 — its first acquisition since its creation and initial public offering earlier that year — for $20 million.

Main Plaza dates to 1985, when another Sarasota investment group led by developer Mark Kauffman and attorney David Band revamped the site and brought in new office and retail tenants.

Main Plaza, though, struggled to keep tenants, with several restaurants, including Applebee’s, Ker’s Wing House and a YMCA branch closing.