When a developer holds a groundbreaking ceremony, complete with red carpet, tent, gold-painted shovels and expensive catering from the Seafood Shack, he can be excused for making bullish comments to the press.
Orange Club developer John Vandyk, left, with architect Mark Sultana. Staff photo / Harold Bubil
So I was surprised to hear John Vandyk, developer of the new Orange Club, take a moderate tone when I caught up with him Thursday after the photos were taken and the hors d’oeuvres consumed.
“I think it is a time to be cautious. There are an abundance of projects being built,” said the Toronto resident as he celebrated the start of the boutique condo project on Orange Avenue near Burns Court in Sarasota. “In light of politics and what is going on, I think everyone is a little more cautious right now.”
I asked him if he thought the market was starting to level out.
“A little too early to tell,” he said. “I am not an economist.”
But so far, the leading indicators look good at his latest project. Orange Club, designed by architect Mark Sultana of DSDG Inc., will have 24 units, and 12 are sold already, priced from the $600,000s to $1.2 million. Site prep is underway.
The Orange Club's midrise building, with architecture by DSDG Inc. The location is the 600 block of South Orange Avenue in Saraosta, near Burns Court and Little Five Points in downtown Sarasota. Courtesy rendering.
“I believe in this market and this geographical area,” Vandyk said. “But to be right downtown at this moment, after a couple of developments have opened, I just want to be cautious. As simple as that. I wouldn’t be as bullish.”
Location and the price of land are the keys, he said. They have to be right before he would press ahead on another project. His goal: Buy underperforming properties and turn them into gold.
In Sarasota, “We work more in infill, boutique, branded developments, as opposed to the large-scale buildings we do in Toronto,” Vandyk said. “I am here because of climate, and the area around Burns Court is absolutely beautiful.”
CFAS hosts lecture, exhibit by Wendy Evans Joseph
A lecture Wendy Evans Joseph, an award-winning New York architect, will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 15, at the Center for Architecture Sarasota’s McCulloch Pavilion. Her exhibit, titled “The Mind Is Its Own Place,” is now on view in the building’s Don Chapell Gallery, 265 S. Orange Ave., Sarasota.
Wendy Evans Joseph, FAIA
The architect will sign copies of three small, custom-made books she created on her work. Register online at cfasrq.org.
“We are proud to have had not one, but two esteemed New York woman architects to lecture and exhibit here this year — Toshiko Mori and Wendy Evans Joseph,” said Cindy Peterson, CFAS board chair. “Ms. Evans Joseph is an exceptional architect with a fascinating and unique portfolio.”
Evans Joseph worked on major projects with, or related to, Frank Lloyd Wright and I.M. Pei. Just after graduating from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, architect Henry N. Cobb hired Evans Joseph at the internationally renowned Pei Cobb Freed & Partners of New York City.
Evans Joseph was involved in several of the firm’s most important projects, including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and other large-scale cultural and institutional projects. Another key project was the renovation of Price Tower, which was designed by Wright in 1956 in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
In 1993, she opened her own practice in New York City. In 2014, she founded Studio Joseph, where she designs commercial, residential and cultural projects with her team of 10 associates.
Museum projects play an important role in Evans Joseph’s career. Her projects include South Street Seaport Museum, Museum of the City of New York, Woman’s Museum in Dallas, Brooklyn Children’s Museum and the Museum of Biblical Art, along with major projects at Columbia University, Yale University and the NYC Parks Department.
McCarty to lecture on Ca’ d’Zan
Ron McCarty, the keeper and curator of Ca’ d’Zan, will lecture on the famed mansion of John and Mable Ringling at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Crocker Church, 1260 12th St., Sarasota.
Ca d'Zan, the mansion of John and Mable Ringling, was designed in 1925 by Dwight James Baum. The mansion, owned by the State of Florida, was among the buildings included by the Center for Architecture Sarasota in its "A Building a Day" online program during the "Archtober" celebration in October 2014. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 6-11-2008.
The event is part of the Historical Society of Sarasota County’s “Conversations at the Crocker” series.
Historical Society members and students are admitted free; while other guests pay $10 at the door.
Cà d’Zan is the 36,000-square-foot Venetian Gothic mansion that was home to John and Mable Ringling during a precious few winters in the late 1920s. Mable died in 1929 and John in 1936.
Designed by Dwight James Baum and completed in 1926 for $1.5 million at the height of the Florida Land Boom, the mansion is worth as much as $100 million today, McCarty told me in a 2012 interview.
“I love putting all my energy into this place,” said McCarty, “keeper” of Cà d’Zan since completion of a six-year, $15 million restoration project in 2002. “It adds such a fabulous aspect to Sarasota’s history. It certainly is considered one of the most important houses in America because of its uniqueness. It is beautiful. A national treasure.”
Ron McCarty displays a photograph of "Ca' d'Zan" under construction in 1924 or 1925. The photograph is important as a visual record of how the John and Mable Ringling Mansion was constructed during the final years of the Gilded Age. Maintaining the state-owned structure is a full-time job for McCarty, "keeper" of the ornate mansion. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 8-31-2012.
Last year more than 400,000 people toured the mansion.
In 2000, Florida State University took over the museum and mansion complex, Maintenance is paid for by tax dollars, donations and admission tickets ($25 each).
“You need about $200,000 a year to keep the mansion up to any standard. And that is not going overboard,” said McCarty.
McCarty is an expert on Ringling history. He gives much of the credit for the mansion to Mable Ringling, calling the structure “Mable’s House,” as she worked closely with Baum in its design.
For his appearance at Conversations at the Crocker, McCarty is expected to share the kind of inside stories that are not told to tourists by docents.
For more information, contact HSOSC site manager Linda Garcia at 941-364-9076.
