Sarasota County cancels $18.1M Stickney Point property purchase

Sarasota County will not be buying the colorful commercial condominiums at the gateway to Siesta Key after all.

Sarasota County commissioners voted to terminate the county’s $18.1 million contract to buy the Boatyard property at 1500 Stickney Point Road at their Nov. 4 meeting, after discovering issues with the title to the property. The decision was 3-2, with commissioners Joe Neunder and Mark Smith dissenting.

Commissioners initially authorized the Stickney Point property purchase in February, with plans to turn the 2.04 acres there into a public waterfront park. The vote back then was 4-1 to purchase the property; Commissioner Tom Knight cast the lone vote against the property purchase in February, citing uncertainties about cost. 

The potential purchase, when announced in February, was somewhat controversial due to the high cost Knight talked about, but it also displaced multiple long-standing tenants, from Waves Boat & Social Club and Siesta Key Watersports to A&M Insurance Agency and the Scharf Group, a financial planning firm. All those formerly thriving businesses now sit empty.

The latest situation that led to Wednesday's termination of the deal arose during the due diligence period. There were three issues, according to Director of Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Shawn Yeager.

“Title defects were identified,” Yeager told commissioners, including a federal easement that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers holds, overly broad access easements of record granted to the neighboring condominium association and not recorded utility easements benefiting the residential condo association.

The led Commissioner Teresa Mast to come out strongly against moving forward. 

“For me, it's a very clear business decision from a perspective of these are public dollars, and if we don't have a clear title, then I'm not an interested party,” Mast said. “If the property owner went through the process of clearing the title, I think then we could have a discussion at a different date, whether that's a year from now, five years from now. … But I'm not interested in continuing any further discussions or any further options until there's a clear title.”

Sarasota property investor and restaurant owner Chris Brown, through Big Main Street LLC, owns the Boatyard property.

Reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, Brown expressed disappointment with the decision to terminate the deal.

“It’s really a shame,” Brown said. ”I really wanted the county to have it,” adding he has already spoken with multiple parties interested in buying the Boatyard property.

Brown noted he had been in negotiations with the county for months with no revenue coming in from the property, as the tenants were gone, so he was glad to have resolution. “It had to go in a direction,” Brown said. “I’m glad a direction was at least picked.”

After Brown was granted an extension in July to cure the issues, he was issued a notice of default for failing to cure the title defects Sept. 14 and met with the county attorney Sept. 30. Big Main Street LLC proposed putting $700,000 in escrow toward resolution of the issues. Of that, $200,000 was to go toward a lift station associated with the site and $500,000 was to go toward the federal easement resolution.

“Would that $500,000 be enough to cover the county’s expenses?” Commissioner Mark Smith asked, related to the federal easement.

“I’m not sure if it would be enough,” Yeager replied, adding it had yet to be determined.

County Administrator Jonathan Lewis at the meeting said he would be “hard-pressed to … identify a specific number” associated with the cost because the process with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could take one to five years, and “it's going to be a radically different number” based on how long it takes.

“I don't want to be the one trying to buy something at a price point like this, and then still have uncertainties as to the outcome,” Commission Chair Ron Cutsinger said. “If they had been able to clear [the] title and deal with this, and we were able to buy it without any encumbrances, that would be a different story for me because I'm all about waterfront.”

Mast, Cutsinger and Knight voted to terminate the agreement with the seller.

This article has been updated to include comments from Chris Brown.