A group led by Anand Pallegar aims to save this century-old refuge for black travelers in segregated Sarasota.
By Amaiya-Marie Gaspard
Original Air Date: July 25, 2025
Host: The Colson Hotel is one of the oldest landmarks in Sarasota’s Rosemary District, formerly known as Overtown. During segregation, it was the first hotel for black visitors in Sarasota when other doors were closed to them. Over the years, it fell into disrepair and was almost demolished—until entrepreneur Anand Pallegar along with the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation bought to save it. Amaiya-Marie Gaspard toured the building with Pallegar.
Photo of the historic Colson Hotel.
Amaiya-Marie Gaspard: The Colson Hotel was built in 1925 and opened December 15 of 1926 by Edwin O. Burns for $35,000. Segregation laws prevented Black people from staying in most hotels—especially white-owned ones. The hotel was named after Reverend Lewis Colson. He was an enslaved man who became Sarasota’s first Black minister at Bethlehem Baptist Church and served his community for 16 years. Colson helped Richard Paulson stake out Sarasota’s first layout of streets and properties around Five Points in 1855. His wife, Irene Colson, was a midwife for Black women denied medical care elsewhere.
[Footsteps on grass]
Irene and Lewis Colson
Anand Pallegar: So it’s a little bit overgrown.
[Footsteps on floor]
AMG: Inside the hotel, there’s a dusty smell, broken concrete and lizards. I took notice of some beautiful blue and white tiles that caught my eye, left from 100 years ago.
AMG: I like the tile.
AP: Yeah. It’s pretty crazy. It’s a hundred-year-old building at this point.
AMG: We also encountered spiders and their webs which freaked me and my team out—specifically me.
The Colson Hotel as it appears today.
AP: Watch out. There’s a big spider web there.
AMG: Excuse me.
AP: Against the wall here. Right here.
[Laughter]
AP: Want to make sure you guys can see that.
Team member: Thank you.
AMG: That’s—yeah.
AP: I walked into that by accident once.
AMG: Not my hair. Please, not my hair.
AP: Yeah. This is it.
Rendering of DreamLarge’s plans for the Colson Hotel.
AMG: The shape of the building is a large “U,” 5,000 square feet and two stories. It’s filled with a lot of natural light, but most of the windows are boarded up. There are 28 rooms and one bathroom on each floor. On the way, I walked by a 100-year-old painting of the ocean. Sadly, it was the only one that survived.
AMG: Do you have most of the stuff saved?
PA: No. No, no. This was all.
AMG: After the hotel tour, me and my two companions met Anand back at his office in the Sarasota Magazine building. The Sarasota Magazine building is one of the 4 historic buildings that Pallegar restored. It was the second Black church in Sarasota. He explained that, where he was born, he grew up around historic buildings.
Anand Pallegar
PA: I was born and raised in England, and we have century and thousands-of-year-old buildings. I spent a lot of time in Detroit before I moved to Sarasota, and there was a lot of history and Parisian architectural influences. Coming to Sarasota, what became very evident was that the culture of building here was either Mediterranean revival or these white boxes, particularly when it came to offices and commercial buildings. As a business owner, I was always looking for something unique and authentic, and the only place in town that really had any sort of those historic buildings was the Rosemary District.
Before and after DreamLarge’s restoration of Horne’s Grocery.
AMG: Anand bought Horne’s Grocery around 2010 to 13, the first black grocery store in Overtown. He cleared it out and restored it, making it into an office for DreamLarge. He’s also bought the Ace Theater, the first Black theater, and restored it, turning that into a local coffee shop/wine bar called Project Coffee. DreamLarge has had its eye on the hotel, but after the owner’s passing, they missed the sale to a developer. Eventually, they managed to negotiate the deal with that developer that allowed them ownership of some of the hotel area. Pallegar has an idea of what he wants to turn it into without changing the layout.
Rendering of what the Colson might look like.
PA: We see the opportunity to preserve that exactly how it is and was and turn it into an incubator space to help small businesses and nonprofits ultimately thrive and allow the majority of people to be able to experience what you saw today, because there’s 20-something rooms, 20-something offices that allows the public to engage and understand.
AMG: There is no word from the city regarding whether or not they will help with restoring the Colson, but they are supportive of Pallegar and DreamLarge’s plans. He believes that, if it weren’t for their will and initiative in allowing the changes for preservation, it wouldn’t have happened.
This is Amaiya-Marie Gaspard from WSLR News.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.