Now the City of Sarasota has to figure out what to do with Villa Ballada.
By Noah Bookstein
Original Air Date: August 20, 2026
Host: Villa Ballada is the latest luxury condo addition to Sarasota’s fast-gentrifying Rosemary District. Construction has been completed, and the city issued a certificate of occupancy. Its 22 apartments are up for sale, starting at $1 million a pop—and there’s retail space, too, downstairs. But there’s a small problem: It’s been built where it is not supposed to be. WLSR’s Noah Bookstein reports.
Noah Bookstein: In downtown Sarasota’s Rosemary District, down the block from WSLR studios, a five-story condo building called Villa Ballada has been sitting about a foot into public land on Kumquat Court—for over a year—without anyone catching it. Last month, the city commission wanted to know how that happened and who pays for it.
Villa Ballada’s foundation was poured slightly skewed to the west of where it was supposed to be, which pushed the building into the public, city-owned land along Kumquat Court.
At its widest point, the encroachment is just over a foot. At its narrowest, under eight inches. All together, it adds up to about a hundred square feet of public land the building is now sitting on.
At a city commission meeting last month, City Building Official Larry Murphy gave commissioners an explanation of how it happened.
Larry Murphy: Obviously, the contractor of record and the developer at the time didn’t have their control lines, and they missed the layout of the building. It’s not like it hasn’t happened in history. Any time you have humans involved, you can have human error.
NB: Commissioners were stunned at how a mistake of this size happened in the first place and went undetected for a year of construction. Vice Mayor Kathy Kelley Ohlrich said she was “beside herself.”
Kathy Kelley Ohlrich: I have to say that I’m absolutely beside myself about this. I’m so perplexed. I can’t even believe how on Earth something like this could happen.
NB: Murphy said a check called a spot survey, which would have caught the misalignment early, wasn’t actually mandatory at the time. City officials described it as a “passive stop” in the permitting process—meaning inspections could continue even without it.
The encroachment itself is small enough that inspectors reviewing the site as the building went up did not flag it.
The developer also used several different general contractors over the course of construction. City officials said that kind of turnover makes it easier for a detail like this to fall through the cracks between teams.
According to Murphy, the city has already changed its process because of the incident.
LM: What used to be a passive on the spot survey has now become a hard stop. No one can go past that any longer.
NB: Even after the cause was explained, commissioners recognized the agreement in front of them would have let the developer keep using that hundred square feet of public land—permanently—without paying the city anything for it.
The vice mayor’s reaction:
KKO: Who thought that was a good idea?
NB: During the meeting, the commission began asking what the public should get in return for the encroachment.
Debbie Trice: What I want to focus on for right now is: How do we compensate the public for the loss?
NB: Commissioners rejected the agreement and sent it back, directing the city manager and city attorney to negotiate something more equitable.
Negotiations between the city, the Rosemary District Association and the developer have been underway for the past several weeks—largely out of public view.
Emails obtained by WSLR show the city looping in Melissa Laughlin, president of the Rosemary District Association, just over a week after the commission’s vote.
Laughlin had sent city staff a list of neighborhood priorities and the city is still pulling together cost estimates for the developer.
The Rosemary District Association, after consulting local organizations including WSLR and Fogartyville, lists improved lighting along the full block and an extension of lighting Lemon Lane. They are also requesting additional parking, which generated the most emphatic response from nearby businesses, and they are seeking sidewalk repairs, especially the brick section outside Resurrection House.
According to emails, the developer of Villa Ballada originally had roughly five street parking spaces right outside the building—but the city had instructed them to remove those spaces and put in landscaping instead.
The Rosemary District Association declined to comment further for this story, saying negotiations with the city and developer are still ongoing.
The hearing remains open, with no date yet set for it to return to the commission. Villa Ballada is built by Czech developer Karel Dudych of DBD Group. WSLR reached out to the developer for comment, but no response was given by deadline.
When Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch pressed a representative for Dudych, Jacob Pendleton, to say directly who was responsible, he offered a stark admission.
Jen Ahearn-Koch: I’m trying to figure out who is ultimately at fault here. Who is responsible for this error?
Jacob Pendleton: It would be the developer. I mean, it’s us. It’s on our shoulders.
NB: For WSLR News, Noah Bookstein.
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