Owner of hotel site was appealing Historic Preservation Board decision to deny demolition application
On a unanimous vote this week, the Sarasota City commissioners directed City Manager Marlon Brown to work with city staff “to expeditiously negotiate reasonable variances” from the City Code, to enable the restoration and future financial viability of the historic Colson Hotel standing at 1425 Eighth St.
During a Sept. 3 public hearing, the owner of the hotel, Max Vollmer of JDMAX Developments LLC of Tampa, and Anand Pallegar, founder of DreamLarge in Sarasota, affirmed to the commissioners that they had reached a tentative agreement through which a group that Pallegar represents would purchase the hotel site. That would be split from the part of the property where Vollmer plans a townhouse development.
However, Vollmer made it clear that he would need assurances from city staff that he could obtain variances that would enable his company to deal with garbage collection and parking, to make his project workable.
Pallegar said that his group includes the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation, the Sarasota African American Cultural Coalition, and the Gulf Coast Community Foundation, which is based in Venice.
“We think that we could restore the Colson into something that would be remarkable to the community,” he said, returning it to “its original glory.”
“I think this is probably … one of the, if not the, most important buildings in Sarasota in this moment in time,” Pallegar added.
At City Attorney Robert Fournier’s suggestion, as noted in Commissioner Debbie Trice’s Sept. 3 motion, the proposed variances would be presented to the appropriate city staff to determine whether those deviations from city regulations would be possible. Then, staff’s decision would be conveyed to the City Commission.
As a result, in her motion, Trice also called for a continuance of the Sept. 3 hearing, to await the results of the meeting among staff, Vollmer and his team, and Pallegar.
City Manager Brown told the board members that he would do his best to schedule the staff discussion with Vollmer and Pallegar as soon as possible.
Before Trice made her motion, Vice Mayor Jen Ahearn-Koch asked Vollmer and Pallegar, “Is this a reasonable project?” in reference to the plans Pallegar had shown the board, regarding the renovation of the historic building into a new hotel.
Both responded, “Yes,” with Vollmer adding, “With the help of the community.”
The hearing this week was scheduled for Vollmer’s appeal of an April vote of the city’s Historic Preservation Board to deny Vollmer’s application to demolish the Colson Hotel, which dates to 1926, as noted in city documents.
Clifford Smith, the senior planner with the city who handles historic preservation issues, pointed out to the commissioners on Sept. 3 — as he had during the Historic Preservation Board meeting — that the hotel was the first such structure in Sarasota built for African American guests during the Jim Crow era. “This allowed for people to have a safe and welcoming place to stay in the city,” he pointed out.
The building is nationally designated as an historical structure because it contributes to the Overtown Historic District in Sarasota, Smith noted. Moreover, it is included on the Florida Master Site File, which is the state’s inventory of historical and cultural resources, as the File’s website explains.
It also is eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places and for a local historic designation on an individual basis, Smith told the commissioners. It was constructed with hollow clay tile blocks, and it has a flat, built-up roof, one of Smith’s Sept. 3 slides added.
Lovett provided details of the efforts that the project team had made to try to save the hotel, with structural engineers having reported — after thorough analyses of the building — that it most likely could not be moved without damage.
Lovett also stressed that he and Vollmer had no idea of the hotel’s historic significance when they bought the property. After the purchase, Lovett said, it appeared to be a place for people “to hang out, do drugs,” or find temporary housing.
“The place was full of mold,” he emphasized, and it was unsound.
Vollmer pointed out that termite and water damage had occurred throughout the structure.
“I’m left baffled,” Lovett added, as to why so much time had transpired with no local attempts to maintain the structure or renovate it. “Not even new sod, fresh paint — nothing!”
The development team was seeking $2.3 million from a potential purchaser, Lovett told the commissioners.
Pallegar did not mention the purchase price that his group had discussed with Vollmer and Pallegar.
Whither the demolition application?
“If they come back with a contract” after the discussions with staff, City Attorney Fournier pointed out of Vollmer and Pallegar, the City Commission would not need to vote on the demolition application. City staff would be able to handle the development plans on an administrative basis, he added.
“I think we’re very close to working it out,” Mayor Liz Alpert said, referring to the remarks from Vollmer and Pallegar.
Vollmer also talked of the need for the transfer of development rights from the hotel property — if the sale can be concluded. Those would enable him to include higher residential density and perhaps greater height in the design of a project he is developing on Ninth Street, close to the Eighth Street site of the Colson Hotel.
He would like to construct more than 70 units on Ninth Street, Vollmer told the commissioners.
If that proved possible, he said, he also would like to construct a smaller residential structure next to the hotel, with condominiums instead of the townhomes he has planned.
Senior Planner Smith explained that the Rosemary District — which is where the hotel site is located — already allows for transfers of development rights. In such a situation, a specific amount of residential density and levels of height allowed by right on one piece of property can be transferred to another piece of property. In the case of Vollmer’s Eighth Street project, Smith explained, the potential would exist for another two stories above the zoning provision for five floors.
Yet another facet of Trice’s motion — which Commissioner Kyle Battie seconded — was for Fournier to obtain a transcript of the Historic Preservation Board’s hearing this spring. Fournier had agreed with Ahearn-Koch that it would be useful for the commissioners to have that transcript in the event that the sale of the hotel property to Pallegar’s group could not take place.
Fournier and Ahearn-Koch alluded to the potential of the commission to uphold the denial of the demolition application if Pallegar’s efforts do not prove successful. In that case, they also indicated, they expect JDMAX to file a complaint in court, to try to overturn the denial.
During the Sept. 3 hearing, no commissioner indicated a willingness to approve Vollmer’s application to demolish the hotel.
Historical significance of the hotel
By count of The Sarasota News Leader, 14 people addressed the commissioners during the hearing, with all of them advocating for preservation of the Colson Hotel. A 15th person, Kafi Benz, president of Friends of ‘Seagate’ Inc., had submitted written comments to the board, as well, urging that the structure not be demolished.
Benz explained of the hotel’s namesake, “Lewis Colson was the first free Black American to settle in Sarasota. Employed by the Florida Land Company, Lewis Colson participated in the initial survey of the community. In 1884, he was the surveyor who drove the primary stake that would be used in that process. He and Irene Colson, his wife who was an important community leader as well, donated the land to establish Bethlehem Baptist Church, at which Colson would serve as pastor from 1899 to 1915. This hotel is among the last vestiges of the Black community that thrived as ‘Overtown’ on both sides of Sarasota’s Central Avenue to the north of Fruitville Road. The Colsons are the only black residents of Overtown who are buried in Rosemary Cemetery, another development by Owen O. Burns (whose family is buried there) and another recognition by Burns of the historical significance of the Colsons.”
Among the speakers who were present, Vickie Oldham, president and CEO of the Sarasota African American Cultural Coalition, told the commissioners, “The Colson Hotel has the ability to financially benefit Sarasota while elevating African American history,” allowing the public to hear “the full story” of that history.
The historic Leonard Reid House, which opened eight months ago as an arts and history center, has “welcomed more than 1,400 visitors,” Oldham noted.
In 2019, she told the commissioners, she talked with the owner of the Colson Hotel property, Michael Diffley, about the prospect of the former hotel’s serving as the type of facility that the Leonard Reid House has become. He said he would give the hotel to the city before he died, she added, emphasizing, “I did not hound Mr. Diffley about selling his building to [the Coalition].”
At the time, she noted, Diffley said he was making money by renting rooms in the former hotel.
Years later, Oldham continued, a person who had been one of Diffley’s tenants told her that all of the people renting rooms had been evicted because Diffley had died and his brother had sold the property to JDMAX Developments.
The Sarasota County Property’s Office records show that JDMAX Developments paid $550,000 for the property on March 1, 2023.
During the hearing, Vollmer and Lovett, the managing member of JDMAX, did note that price.
Another speaker, Kristin Kitchen of Miami, introduced herself as the owner of a company called Sojourn Heritage Accommodations. Noting her “passion to save … history,” she talked of creating a boutique, 15-room hotel in Miami that is constructed of the same material as the Colson Hotel. Transforming historical structures for modern uses “can be done when you have the passion and the desire and the commitment to save the history of a community and save the history of Black America,” she pointed out.
Fourth-generation Sarasotan Walter Gilbert told the commissioners he recalled Overtown “when it was Overtown, before it was the Rosemary District.” Gilbert added, “It’s so beautiful to see the diversity of people here today that want to save this building. That speaks a lot to this community and how far it has come.”
“We understand the outcry of the public,” Lovett, Vollmer’s business partner, acknowledged to the commissioners. That was why he and Vollmer had been working to try to find a way to save the hotel, he added. Yet, he pointed out, “We need the ‘Powers that Be’ to make this happen,” referring to the commissioners and city staff.