The family, once staunchly opposed, supports the SPAC following a redesign.
By Gretchen Cochran
Original Air Date: January 23, 2026
Host: A couple weeks ago, the promoters of a new performing arts center landed a coup when they announced the endorsement of the grandchildren of the family whose name adorns the existing performing arts center. Gretchen Cochran brings us more detail about the design changes that won them over and more reactions from skeptics.
Gretchen Cochran: When the Van Wezel grandchildren announced their endorsement of the new performing arts center in Sarasota’s Bay Park, the city’s former two-time mayor was shocked.
“I was floored when I heard the Van Wezels are now choosing to support the SPAC,” Mollie Cardamone said.
SPAC is the abbreviation for the yet-to-be-built Sarasota Performing Arts Center. In its early iterations, supporters were told the SPAC would replace the historic Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.
Mollie Cardamone
Mollie Cardamone: The possibility of demolishing Van Wezel would just be the saddest thing that could happen in Sarasota.
GC: Tony Stone and his sister, Katherine, Van Wezel grandchildren, had joined Cardamone, Kelly Franklin and a few others a couple of years ago to form a group they called “Save the Van Wezel.”
The siblings had even hired a lawyer to formally inform the SPAC folks to stop using the Van Wezel name in their fundraising materials.
And now, Stone was embracing the concept? What could have happened?
Stone told WSLR that Tania Castroverde Moskalenko, CEO of the foundation that would build the SPAC, had come to call. She told him that over nearly a year, her group had listened to the various people saying the proposed center would be too big, have inadequate parking, obstruct bay views of the neighbors and even deny Van Wezel’s role in the community. So, they had gone back to their design people, the Renzo Piano Studios out of Italy, hired nearly three years ago.
Two weeks ago came their latest iteration when Castroverde Moskalenko presented new sketches to a gathering at a restaurant on St. Armand’s Key.
Stone, 77, and his wife, Sandra, were there in a show of support. We knew they were not pushovers: Tony is a psychologist specializing in job readiness for law enforcement people, and Sandra is a former regional chancellor of University of South Florida.
Anthony Stone and Katherine Van Wezel
Tony Stone: I really trust Tania. I think she has a vision for the bay front that is consistent with what I think would be a lovely thing for Sarasota. In fact I think it’s really exciting. That is a campus.
GC: Castroverde Moskalenko had described the Bay Park as a “cultural campus,” proposing the SPAC would be one of numerous buildings there: the historically preserved Blue Pagoda, the Sarasota Garden Club building, the Chidsey Library and the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center, the one some call “the purple cow” for its distinctive color.
Stone really liked that.
We visited him at his sprawling home on a bayou near the Braden River in Bradenton. There was little exotic about him, except maybe his two Devon Rex cats and a large saltwater aquarium including a Picasso tiger fish. He showed three large Delft pottery bowls crafted in the 1700’s. His grandparents brought them from Amsterdam when their diamond-merchant family came to New York City. Their precious stone business grew, becoming the sole provider of diamonds to Tiffany jewelers among others. It was there then-divorced Van Wezel met Eugenia, a Russian ballerina Stone called a czarina-type. Ultimately, they moved to Sarasota and had a home built on three lots on Lido Key. Before their deaths, they formed a foundation which, in the 1960’s, gave $400,000 to build the Van Wezel performance hall. That donation would be worth nearly $4.5 million today.
Fast forward to 2026: This new performing arts center would seat 2200—not the 2700 formerly mentioned.
Stone continued:
TS: 2200 seats—possibly a smaller adjunct facility right there—which is, again, a decrease of 300 or 400 from the original.I think the budget has been constricted as well. In addition, they have plans for two parking decks which would house 750 plus or minus cars, which is roughly what the current Van Wezel accommodates—that parking lot there that would be made into a park. Then the Van Wezel would remain, and its exact function is to be determined, but the original agreement with the City of Sarasota—I don’t know if you read it, but I’m going to paraphrase a piece of it—was the Van Wezel was constrained from putting on any performing arts shows that could, in theory, conflict with the mission of the performing arts center.
Smaller venues, a garage, and a key role for the Van Wezel: The SPACs redesigned concept.
This is why I was not enthusiastic about SPAC. To me, that meant certain demise of the Van Wezel over time because it’s expensive to maintain it. It’s an old building, and old places are expensive. If it had no capacity or a way to generate revenue, eventually it would be a white elephant.
We just wanted our family’s legacy to survive.
GC: Still, the Save the Van Wezel folks have questions. Molly Cardamone, the former mayor, wondered how a new SPAC could compete with the Sarasota Symphony hall expecting to break ground on Fruitville Road still this year.
MC: The thing that I worry about is Symphony Hall will not have a symphony production every night of the year, and in order to maintain the hall and keep its financial viability, it will have to have shows and programs that most likely would have gone to Van Wezel or SPAC.
GC: Competition will be fierce, Cardamone said.
Meanwhile, Castroverde Moskalenko plows ahead with more informational conversations scheduled. She projects the Sarasota City Commission to approve the SPAC concept design in March, to be followed by a construction timeline.
For WSLR, this is Gretchen Cochran.
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