National construction company grows team, project list in Sarasota

One of the largest builders in the area is excited about the future of Sarasota — despite economic challenges impacting a variety of sectors.

“We're seeing a tremendous opportunity in this market, with the amount of construction anticipated to happen both in downtown Sarasota and the surrounding areas,” says Brian Stathers, project executive for Suffolk Construction in Sarasota.

“Certainly there's been challenges with interest rates that developers have faced,” he adds. But the Federal Reserve’s recent rate cut “will allow developers to move forward with projects more easily over the next year." 

And projects are aplenty.

Stathers says Boston-based Suffolk made its “first big splash into the [Sarasota] market” with Aster & Links, a mixed-use project on Main Street in downtown Sarasota opening in phases. It consists of two separate 10-story towers for 424 total apartments with commercial space on the ground floor. Aster opened over the summer at 1991 Main and Links will follow in the coming months. The towers provide “close to a million square feet right in downtown,” Stathers says. While Suffolk built the commercial areas, another company is handling the leasing of those spots, including where Sprouts opened Sept. 6.

“Many have looked at this project as kind of a proof of concept of what could be on higher-end apartment living in the Sarasota market,” Stathers says. “We've worked with many developers who have been very interested in seeing how this project is going to perform, because it really is setting the standard for a certain level of apartment living in Sarasota, which we project to mean more to come.”

Apartments at Aster range from $3,243 a month for a 1-bedroom, 1-bath unit to $6,448 a month for a 3-bedroom, 3.5-bath townhome-style penthouse that spans two stories.

Image via Aster & Links / Facebook

There is no single target market as far as tenants go, according to Stathers. “There was a time where it would largely be retirees…or potentially jet-setters,” Stathers says. “I think we've seen the shift in the market — families, vacationers, retirees, businesses.”

Adds Stathers: ““What we're seeing now is just a great push to the market as a whole in Sarasota.”

Suffolk Construction began assembling a team in Sarasota over the summer to handle growth in the area. Now it employs 10 to 15 personnel in the Sarasota market with another 10 to 15 contractors, Stathers says.

Suffolk, which does $5.5 billion a year in revenue, has about 2,800 employees total, according to LinkedIn. The company operates Florida offices in Tampa, Miami, Estero and West Palm Beach.

In Sarasota, its presence is growing, in terms of personnel and projects, Stathers says.

“Across all sectors, we see the next 14 months being very positive, with a lot of work coming,” Stathers says. “You can see it with really the amount of projects in Sarasota and otherwise that are poised to break ground in the next year.”

In the pipeline

Currently, Suffolk Construction is working through pre-construction on a few different projects in Sarasota. One is the Siesta Promenade, which will contain a hotel, retail and 414 apartments near the intersection of U.S. 41 and Stickney Point Road — a gateway to Siesta Key. Suffolk is working on the apartment piece in partnership with Bozzuto and Benderson Development.

The apartments at Siesta Promenade will be “very similar to Aster & Links” in that it is a “top-of-market apartment project with a great location,” Stathers says. “It's going to be a fantastic project for the Sarasota and Siesta Key market as a whole.”

Image via Aster & Links / Facebook

Both the Siesta Promenade apartments and Aster & Links will cost “north of $100 million” to build, according to Stathers.

Construction on the Siesta Promenade apartments will likely start in late spring 2025, according to Stathers, who says it will take about two years.

Two major commercial projects are also in the preconstruction phase for Suffolk in Sarasota:

• Two new office buildings for University Town Center Phase 2, in the bustling UTC area. The buildings are “set to be some of the nicest office spaces really in the area,” Stathers says. At the moment, project officials are working through design and pricing with Benderson. Construction will take place sometime in 2025, he says.
• 1660 Ringling Boulevard, site of the former Sarasota County Administration Center. “Our Suffolk design team has been engaged with [owner] Benderson to work through solutions of potential reuse of the building, and are in the early stages of reviewing those design options right now,” Stathers says. 

The company has other projects in the early phases and anticipates more, particularly in education, to meet the needs of the growing population, Stathers says.

Labor, costs steady

Two areas where activity is starting to stabilize include labor and costs, according to Stathers. “What we've started to see in the last, I would say, close to six months to a year is a return to normal," in costs, he says. 

Same for the labor market, in which COVID often left construction companies shorthanded. Population growth and the number of projects has been something of a magnet. 

There is a “draw to this marketplace down here as a great place to live,” Stathers says. At the same time, “the workforce [is] growing substantially to support … the opportunities that are down here.”