Click here to see a photo gallery from the island of Venice
Washington palms along Venice Avenue in downtown Venice, Fla. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 2-8-2012.
What is now the island of Venice, the heart of the city of Venice, was settled in the 1870s by Robert Rickford Roberts. He established a homestead on the bay that now carries his name and marks the northern end of the island. For 50 years, the area was used as farmland for crops, including bananas, sugar cane, potatoes, tobacco and citrus.
It wasn’t until the 1920s that Dr. Fred Albee, a nationally known orthopedic surgeon from New York who bought 112 acres in Nokomis from the Sarasota-Venice Co. in 1917, commissioned John Nolen, a world-renowned urban planner from Boston, to realize his vision of a “model city.”
At the same time, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was looking to cash in on the state’s real estate hysteria. It bought land from Albee and others during a $4 million, 30,000-acre buying spree south of Roberts Bay in the fall of 1925, and retained Nolen to lay out a master plan of streets.
Trees were planted to line the spacious avenues, and homes and commercial buildings were built in the Mediterranean revival style popular at the time. Nolen called it the “master plan of my career.”
The Banyan House, a bed-and-breakfast for 40 years at 519 Harbor Drive S. in Venice, is listed for sale at $ 798,000 thorugh Banyan Realty. Built in 1925, it has six bedrooms and six and a half baths in 4,712 square feet. It is being marketed as a single-family home or could continue to be used as a bed-and-breakfast. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 2-8-2012.
The BLE promoted the city as "The Only West Coast City on a Mainland Beach." A fleet of buses, run by the BLE's Venice Co., brought prospective buyers from out of state, much as developer George Merrick did in Coral Gables with his colorful bus fleet. "Everything in those days was done in the elegant style," said Ann Worthington, wife of the city's first mayor, who was appointed by the BLE. "What was mere money?"
It was something to be lost, that's what. The BLE's investment of railroad employees’ pension funds in Venice real estate turned out to be a classic case of bad timing. By the fall of 1926, as the BLE pouredcapital into the building of roads, commercial structures and houses in Venice, Florida’s extremely speculative real estate market was gasping for air. The September hurricane, which killed hundreds in Miami and brought 100-mph winds to Venice, finished it off.
The market languished until after World War II. Servicemen, some of whom had trained at the Venice Army Air Base from 1943 to 1945, returned to start households, and a new, more sustainable, era of growth began.
In 1963, the construction of the Intracoastal Waterway turned Venice into the island it is today; three bridges provide access to the mainland.
Many of the original parts of the island are now on the National Register of Historic Places, ensuring that the area will retain its boomtime charm. Newer sections with homes built from the 1960s to the 1990s fit well into Nolen’s original street grid.
This walled, gated house at 613 W. Venice Ave. in Venice is listed at $ 21.5 million through Lueanne Wood of Coldwell Banker. Built in 1926 as one of the first large homes in the new city of Venice, the recently updated house has four bedrooms and four and a half baths in 5,055 square feet. The house and the two and a half building lots on which it sits sold for $1.3 million in February 2002. The current seller is marketing the house and an empty lot within the wall for $1.9 million, or the house at $ 1.5 million and the empty lot by itself at $450,000, said Wood. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 2-8-2013.
Anne Keohan of RE/MAX Platinum Realty has lived in Venice since 2004 and loves the island.
“It’s a real estate paradise. It has an aesthetic value that draws people. We have character here,” she said. “Nolen planned it like a European city, with boulevards and parks and housing close to the commercial city center so you could live there and walk to downtown.
“It’s a resort town and a real city, so there’s everything — swimming, boating, tennis courts. And for town life — city and church organizations where you can volunteer, social events, clubs, a theater, a symphony, the public library and arts center.”
Other amenities include an airport that can accommodate private jets, Venice High School, Venice Regional Medical Center and an 18-hole public golf course. Locals and tourists love the two scenic public beaches where one can swim, snorkel and gather shells and sharks’ teeth. One of them, Caspersen Beach Park, has a nature preserve and 9,000 feet of beachfront, the longest in Sarasota County.
The neighborhoods on the island cater to a variety of residents.
Golden Beach has more snowbirds and international clientele than year-around residents. There are some duplexes and condos, but most of the buildings are small, single-family homes. Many of the houses have private, deeded access to the beach, and people can easily walk or bike there.
Venezia Park and Gulf View have a mixture of small and large homes and more full-time residents — doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers and teachers who work on the island.
The Bayshore district on Roberts Bay is perhaps the island’s most beautiful. Originally slated to be a park, it has large oaks and banyan trees, larger lots and million-dollar waterfront homes. It is popular with boaters who enjoy both sheltered anchorage and unobstructed access to the Gulf of Mexico.
A boater on Roberts Bay would have this view of a house at 338 W. Bay Drive on the island of Venice that is for sale at $ 2,195,000 through Premier Sotheby's International Realty. Built in 2001, the house has four bedrooms and five bathrooms in 5,135 square feet. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 2-8-2013.
For those looking for a more contemporary living experience, there is Bellagio, an upscale gated community close to the south bridge, built from 2000 to 2004.
A number of condominiums are close to the beach.
According to Keohan, the European flavor of the city appeals to international buyers. She recently sold properties to people from England, Italy and Ukraine.
Lueanne Wood, a Coldwell Banker agent who has lived on the island for 16 years, has a number of listings on the island, including a walled, 1920s Mediterranean estate on Venice Avenue that is listed at $1.5 million and has an additional lot priced at $450,000.
The mix of historic homes and contemporary housing attracts baby boomers, too.
“You can’t just sell them a house,” Keohan said. “They’re very keen on what the lifestyle would be, which they have already because they’re boaters, kayakers or bicycle enthusiasts.”
Sales have been brisk, with 2012 being the best year since the boom year of 2005. Altogether, 291 residences were sold — 107 homes and 184 condos, villas and townhouses.
Inventory is quite low. Only 149 residences are on the market, with 32 pending sales. The 61 single-family homes range from $182,990 to $2.2 million; the condos list from $56,500 to $895,000.
“And as we all know, new construction is a big sign of recovery in real estate,” said Keohan.
