Ocean Properties Hotels Resorts & Affiliates has petitioned Sarasota city officials for permission to redevelop the Helmsley Sandcastle Resort. Its plan call for the 1950’s facility to be knocked down and replaced with two towers (9 and 10-storeys) offering a 304-room hotel. The new hotel, on 6.1 acres on Lido Beach, will have 20,000 square feet of meeting, ballroom and restaurant space at 1540 Benjamin Franklin Drive. Ocean Properties acquired the 176-room property in February 2014 for $27.4 million. The new hotel is being designed by Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Associates Inc.
“In order to be competitive, they need to update the hotel and make it a more contemporary beach resort,” says Bruce Franklin, president of Land Resource Strategies, the real estate consulting firm working with Ocean Properties on the proposal. “Downtown and Lido Beach are truly two different markets. The beach is much more tourist-oriented, whereas downtown tends to be more of a business market.”
