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FEATURE ARTICLE, MAY 2005
A DIFFERENT MAIN STREET
This fall, Casto Lifestyle Properties’ Main Street at Lakewood Ranch will open in Sarasota, Florida, with remarkably unique retail offerings.
Katie Foxworth
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Chico’s is one of the few national retailers at Main Street at Lakewood Ranch, which caters instead to unique local and regional tenants.
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As suburban mixed-use lifestyle centers go, Main Street at Lakewood Ranch is the antithesis of common or cookie-cutter — from its unique location in the heart of Sarasota, Florida’s, Lakewood Ranch community to its eclectic list of non-mall tenants. No mall has been turned inside out here. In fact, only a handful of tenants, such as Chico’s and Ritz Camera, are national or even known outside the state of Florida. The developer behind this unique project is Sarasota-based Casto Lifestyle Properties, which makes perfecting lifestyle and mixed-use centers its art and its passion.
The 170,000-square-foot Main Street at Lakewood Ranch, which is expected to open the first week of November, is situated in the heart of a 28,000-acre master-planned community called Lakewood Ranch, just north of Sarasota. Lakewood Ranch, which began development approximately 8 years ago, has sold 6,000 residential units and leased 1.8 million square feet of office space so far. At final buildout, the community expects to have 5 million square feet of office space and 15,000 residential units. Lakewood Ranch also features a 110-acre nature preserve, six recreational parks, 400 acres of manmade lakes, six golf courses, and more than 100 miles of sidewalks and trails.
“The unique thing about this is that this project is literally in the heart of Lakewood Ranch,” says Brett Hutchens, president and CEO of Casto Lifestyle Properties. “It’s not on a main thoroughfare, which is Interstate 75 or University Parkway. It’s on the interior north-south artery, Lakewood Ranch Boulevard, which primarily services Lakewood Ranch.”
Two new community developments also are within walking distance: Lakewood Ranch Medical Center & Hospital (120 beds) and Lakewood Ranch Town Hall, a 9,000-square-foot, $1.7 million meeting facility that completed construction in August 2004.
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The 170,000-square-foot project is located in the heart of north Sarasota’s Lakewood Ranch master-planned community.
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In addition to Lakewood Ranch, several residential communities currently are under development adjacent to the northern and eastern boundaries of Lakewood Ranch. “By the end of 2007, there should be about 35,000 homes within the market area of this project, with an average population of about 2.8 people per home and an average annual household income of $95,000,” Hutchens says.
However, Casto Lifestyle Properties wasn’t always so gung-ho on the location. Hutchens says that when Lakewood Ranch Realty Company first approached his company about doing the project, Casto declined the offer. “They just didn’t have the mass,” he recalls. “They waited about 2 years and then they came back.” Lakewood Ranch’s proposed office program of 5 million square feet helped change Hutchens’ mind.
“I think the distinction between Lakewood Ranch and other major master-planned communities is the office component that they have,” Hutchens says. “In order to support this type of project, I personally believe that master-planned communities have to have an office component, which gives you that daytime population. Very few master-planned communities can do it.”
Some office tenants already in the project include Raymond James, Smith Barney, MetLife, Coldwell Banker and Michael Saunders & Company. Casto Lifestyle Properties is not leasing the office space; Lakewood Ranch is handling that itself. Casto is leasing all retail, however.
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Main Street at Lakewood Ranch, developed by Casto Lifestyle Properties, will open in November 2005.
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Main Street at Lakewood Ranch will include its own second-floor office program of 46,000 square feet, also leased by Lakewood Ranch Realty Company. In addition to office space and the 110,000 to 115,000 square feet of planned retail, the project will feature 55 condominiums. Residents can choose between Lofts on Main, which offer a prominent downtown address over ground-floor retail, or The Lakeshore, which offer tucked-away units overlooking Lake Uihlein.
Phase II of the $27 million lifestyle development currently is under construction. It will include a 21,000-square-foot movie theater fronted by 8,000 square feet of small shops. In keeping with the project’s decidedly “non-mall” theme, even the movie theater is not your ordinary multiplex.
“Sarasota Film Society, a [membership-based] art cinema here in Sarasota, has a very successful art cinema downtown, and they have a potential following in Lakewood Ranch, but it’s about 16 miles away,” Hutchens explains. “So they felt it was a really good opportunity to increase their membership. In fact, a lot of their members already live in Lakewood Ranch.”
The theater will be a state-of-the-art facility with five screens and stadium seating. It will show a combination of art films as well as some of the higher-end, more interesting and intellectual first-run Hollywood films.
Just like the movie theater, which will feature both eclectic and high-end offerings, the project’s tenant roster will also reflect a local, eclectic, high-end mix. Tenants include Annabell’s, McCallister’s on the Ranch, Admiral Travel, Serving Spoon, Ritz Camera, Chico’s, C’est Si Bon, Sunglass Express & Optical, Attitudes, AM South Bank, Wish on Main, BayBerry Flooring, The Gem Garden, Cuddlebugs and The Perfect Pair. Natural Discoveries, a well known regional retailer with eight locations, has signed a 2,040-square-foot lease at the center. If visitors are in the mood for some pampering, one of Sarasota’s premier day spas, Ana Molanari Salon & Spa, has signed a 4,452-square-foot lease. The salon has operated locations in downtown Sarasota for over 20 years; this is its fourth location in Florida. Also joining Main Street at Lakewood Ranch is The Russian Tea House, which offers traditional wines and teas. For fine dining, there’s Fred’s Restaurant, an elegant banquet hall and restaurant known locally for its extensive wine list and tasting room. Morton’s Gourmet Market, a long-standing and tremendously successful gourmet grocer native to Sarasota, was the first to join the project in a pad sale.
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A local Sarasota art cinema will anchor Main Street at Lakewood Ranch.
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Many of the retailers and restaurants at Main Street at Lakewood Ranch chose the location based partially on its proximity — 18 miles — to St. Armands Circle, an historic, high-end shopping center located on an island, accessible by bridge, in Sarasota Bay. Like Main Street at Lakewood Ranch, St. Armands Circle’s mix of more than 130 shops and restaurants is unique and high-end. In addition, Casto is familiar with the St. Armands tenancy. It recently converted the former Jacobson’s building on St. Armands to a group of small shops, including Starbucks, Soma, Chico’s, Brighton Collectibles and Lily Pulitzer.
“The spacing between St. Armands and downtown Sarasota and Lakewood Ranch is really good for retailers who have one or two stores already in this market and want to capture the folks who are driving to their stores now but not as frequently because it’s such a long drive,” Hutchens says. “So it’s very good spacing for a lot of the tenants on St. Armands or downtown.”
Stores on St. Armands who have chosen to open second locations in Lakewood Ranch include Chico’s, Cuddlebugs, Natural Discoveries and Sunglass Express. Chico’s, for one, was attracted by Lakewood Ranch’s daytime office population.
Attracting retailers has never been the problem. Attracting investors who would “take a chance” on the project’s non-credit tenant mix was another matter, however.
“The real perceived difficulty in this type of project is it’s more difficult to finance because you don’t have credit tenants and long term leases from nationals, which normally are available,” Hutchens admits. “Education of the lender is the challenge here, but we are confident it will be an attractive product to most lenders when they understand the quality of our tenants and the dynamics of the market.”
Sure, there are easier ways. It would be taking the road well traveled to invite big-name retailers that are found in every mall and lifestyle center in the country — we all know their names — but Casto Lifestyle Properties, in hopes of elevating the lifestyle genre, decided to take the road less traveled. So the company set out to meet the challenges of doing something different and special head on. Hutchens believes their decision has been the right one.
“The community can’t wait,” he says of the project, which is 95 percent pre-leased 6 months before opening. “The groundbreaking ceremony we held [last fall] was well received. The whole community is just abuzz about this project.”
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