Developer hopes to build 109 affordable units near downtown Sarasota.
By Florence Fahringer
Original Air Date: Jan. 3, 2024
Host: Planning for the Sarasota Station workforce housing project began two decades ago, when financial entrepreneur Harvey Vengroff was still alive. Now, his son Mark is carrying the torch. His affordable-housing development outfit has been more active lately in Manatee County, but now Mark Vengroff has just taken the Sarasota Station project closer to groundbreaking.
Mark Vengroff: We are the largest workforce housing provider in Manatee and Sarasota counties. We’ve expanded into Orlando, Kissimmee, and Memphis, Tennessee, recently. And we’re looking into Jacksonville and Pensacola and trying to expand it from there.
Mark Vengroff
Florence Fahringer: That’s Mark Vengroff, CEO of One Stop Housing. Yesterday, he and the One Stop Housing team met with the City of Sarasota’s Development Review Committee to iron out a few more kinks in their upcoming Sarasota development, Sarasota Station.
One Stop Housing is known for their affordable housing projects. The majority of them are located in Sarasota and Bradenton, and mostly consist of efficiencies, one- and two- bedroom apartments with monthly rents from just under a thousand dollars to just under two thousand. Testimonials from their website give an idea of One Stop’s clientele.
Sue: I’ve never been any place that I’m happier than where I am, that felt as good and secure as I do where I’m at. So that means a lot to senior citizens to have that security around.
Missy: We love where we live. We love Robin’s apartments and we love One Stop. So thank you for giving us the hand that we needed.
Jason: Well, I was living with a significant other … things go well at certain times and certain times they don’t. So I kind of was in a crisis, a time crunch, I needed a place. And some people told me about these “for rent” signs that were along the side of the road at certain properties. And within less than a week, I had a place, with utilities included. And the transition was super easy. Usually, you get a lot of worry leaving the last place, A lot of judgment and stuff; and here, it wasn’t.
FF: Sarasota Station has been in the works for nearly twenty years now, but last year it took a big step towards becoming a reality, meeting with the Development Review Committee for the first time. The land on which Sarasota Station is located is near the intersection of Fruitville and Washington. It currently hosts the novelty restaurant Bob’s Train — a restaurant inside an antique Sarasota Suncoast Railroad train car — which will be relocated to somewhere else on the site. Sarasota Station will consist of two six-story apartment buildings, sixty-nine townhouses, as well as parking lots and various amenities.
One Stop Housing rendering of the main building.
Though a plurality of their properties are located in Sarasota, Sarasota Station will be one of One Stop Housing Development’s first forays into actually building a property in Sarasota — they’ve successfully built and currently manage properties in other parts of Florida, as well as two in Memphis, Tennessee, but construction in Sarasota will be a first. A big part of this construction leans on the Live Local Act, the new state law which is seeing a number of housing developments pop up across Sarasota which include a few attainable units.
The Live Local Act opened the door for developers to build taller and denser, so long as a fraction of the units within those housing projects could be deemed affordable. The term affordable is defined by an area median income — AMI, for short. In the case of Sarasota Station, the land on which One Stop Housing wishes to develop is currently zoned as “Industrial Light Warehouse” and “Downtown Edge,” but the Live Local Act allows for developers to construct mixed-use residential buildings in non-residential zones, so long as forty percent of the units constructed can be deemed affordable. Sarasota Station will consist of two hundred and seventy-one units in all, and one hundred and nine (forty percent)
of those units will be affordable, meaning that they will be priced AT or BELOW one hundred twenty percent of the area median income. Per a news release from the City of Sarasota dated July twenty twenty-four, one hundred and twenty percent AMI means a yearly income of around seventy-six thousand dollars, and an individual could expect to pay just shy of two thousand dollars a month in rent.
Since their last meeting with the Development Review Committee, some minor changes have been made to the project. They’ve reduced the amount of townhouses from seventy-two to sixty-nine, and they’ve also cut the number of affordable units down to one hundred and nine, from one hundred and ten. This was all in order to preserve a grand tree on the site. Their requests for the committee mostly had to do with lowering the minimum requirements for certain spaces, such as habitable space, lot size, and the requirement for townhouses to have a private yard. There weren’t too many substantial changes to the plans for the development requested by the Development Review Committee, as the only big hitch came from a Zvonko Smlatic, on behalf of city utilities, water, and wastewater management.
It was a quick discussion, and in about ten minutes it was over. Right as things were wrapping up, One Stop Housing representative Macaire King had one last question for the committee.
Committee Member: Alright, do you have any other questions for any of us?
Macaire King: Just — I take it we’re receiving partial?
Committee Member: Yes.
Macaire King: Partial sign-off, but I still need to work out with Zvonko on those.
Committee Member: Yeah, so I am passing the sheet around for partial sign-off today, so you’ll just work with us to satisfy the remaining comments for the reviewers.
Macaire King: Okay, thank you.
FF: With a partial sign-off, Sarasota Station successfully cleared another bureaucratic hurdle, inching its way towards breaking ground on construction, and bringing one hundred and nine affordable apartment units to Sarasota.
This is Florence Fahringer, reporting for WSLR News.
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