Posts Tagged "Sarasota Herald Tribune"
Villa am Meer, Chapter 13
University Commons… the beginning of the end
New here? Start with Chapter 1…
Back in Chapter 1, my very first blog post, I started with a list of questions I wanted to know about “my house” on Longboat Key. Who built it? How long had it been there? Who owned it? And finally, why had it fallen into such a state of disrepair? Over the past several months, I’ve answered all but the last one. Today, I’ll do my best to answer that question as well.
Throughout the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, the Kohl-Benedict family had a good run. They built a family fortune that started with perfume. They ventured into real estate. Dairy farms. Thoroughbred race horses. Tropicana orange juice. Private islands. And something about parrots…? I never did get to the bottom of that one.
Indeed, it was a lavish lifestyle… private schools, country clubs, debutante balls, luxury Manhattan apartments, corporate parties at the Rainbow Room, and beach parties at Villa am Meer (attended by the occasional celebrity).
Things clipped along until 1985, the year Hermann Kohl’s company, Norda, Inc., was acquired by Unilever, a huge Anglo-Dutch food and fragrance company dually-based out of the UK and the Netherlands. If you think you’ve never heard of Unilever, think again. Think Lipton, Hellman’s, Dove, and Axe.
When the deal was done, the question, I’m sure, was what to do with this latest windfall. How could the family invest their wealth to guarantee a sustained income for future generations of “Dukes and Benedicts?”
The answer, it seems, was a Sarasota retirement community offering sequential care for the elderly. Enter University Commons, “a 256-acre nursing/retirement home complex covering 567,800 square feet, with golf course, resort hotel, and office space.”
It was to be built on land purchased by Hermann Kohl in 1931, north of University Parkway, at the intersection of Tuttle Avenue. It was such a large undertaking, the project was deemed a “DRI,” or Development of Regional Impact. After all, as late as 1982, University Parkway was still unpaved, and referred to simply as “County Line Road.”
All that changed by October of 1992, when University Parkway was converted from a two lane road to a six-lane superhighway that connected I-75 with the international airport and two other major U.S. highways (301 and 41) between Sarasota and Bradenton. In all, seven DRIs were planned for the five mile corridor along University Parkway.
It certainly seemed like a good idea. After all, during the 90s, millions of aging baby boomers were busy stuffing money into their IRAs and making plans to move to Florida in droves. Yes, everything would be coming up roses for the Benedicts for a very long time, assuming all went well with the University Commons project.
All did not go well.
I have no idea what went wrong with the project, but the property tax records for 8104 Tuttle Avenue tell some of the story. On August 2, 1994, the University Commons property was sold to Unicom Nursing Care for $900,000. Unicom was another corporation owned by the Benedicts. This company was incorporated on July 31, 1994 in the state of Florida, but was based out of Edison, New Jersey. Two years later, on December 31, 1996, the property was sold for $1 to OIDC, Inc., a land subdivision and real estate credit company based out of Greenwich, Connecticut. One year later, OIDC sold the property for $541,900 to Life Care Health Resources, Inc.
The Life Care Center of Sarasota was completed in February of 2000 with 120 beds and a staff of 180. It was no longer a development owned by the Benedict family, but instead by Life Care Centers of America, a company that operates more than 200 skilled nursing homes, assisted living facilities, retirement living communities, home care services, and Alzheimer’s centers throughout the U.S.
To be sure, the Benedicts must have spent millions of dollars in plans and permits for the University Commons development, only to lose it all in bankruptcy. It appears to have been the beginning of the end for the Benedict fortune. One by one, other properties were foreclosed upon, including Villa am Meer, the Tilly Foster Farm, and eventually, Elena’s home in Purchase, New York.
Sigh. I wish there was a better ending to my story.
Next time… the Florida Master Site File and a few final thoughts.
Sources:
“Growth Traps Homeowners,” Sarasota Herald Tribune, February 21, 1994
“Assisted Living Company Plans 248 Acre Retirement Community,” Sarasota Herald Tribune, December 2, 1997
Manatee County Property Search
Read MoreVilla Am Meer, Chapter 2
A few dead ends lead to an orange juice story
New here? Start with Chapter 1…
First things first. I wanted to know the history of my house, who built it, and who owned it.
So, one day when the rest of the gang had opted to go golfing, I stopped by the Longboat Key Library to check out their local books.
Sidebar.
Longboat Key Library
My question is… why? Not to take anything away from the diligent and wonderful volunteers who run the library, but if a town like Longboat Key can’t get enough taxpayer support to fund a public library, then what’s this world coming to? But… I digress.
End sidebar.
I started combing through a few of their “Local Interest” books, including Calusas to Condominiums by Ralph Hunter, but I couldn’t find any information. I asked the ladies at the library if they knew anything about the property, but they weren’t familiar with it either. They referred me to the Historical Society down in Whitney Beach Plaza.
So, a few days later, on a wet and rainy morning, I convinced my dad to come along with me to the LBK Historical Society to see if they knew anything about my house. When we arrived, no one was there, but we did find a flyer taped to the window with a phone number of the current board president – Tom Mayers. We called and talked briefly with him, but he wasn’t sure which property we were referring to. We went next door to “Steff’s Stuff” and chatted with her a bit, but she didn’t have any information for us either. She did mention though, that Tom Mayers had grown up on Longboat Key and lived at the historic “Land’s End” property, right before the bridge that takes you to Anna Maria Island. I filed that away for future reference and we went on our merry way.
It was at this point we realized an address would be helpful. So, we drove back toward the old ramshackle cottage, slowly passing condo after condo, looking for the street entrance to the old vintage estate. Of course, we knew it right away when we saw it… stone columns, iron gates, inlaid ceramic tiles. A perfect entrance designed to match the architecture of the house. We wrote down the address on the mailbox and headed to the LBK Town Hall.
They were very gracious and willing to help me at the Town Hall. After doing a few lookups on the computer, the woman there gave me the name and number of the current owner (“BBC Key LLC” out of Northbrook, Illinois). I hurried home and dialed the number, anxious to get some answers to my questions. But of course, as luck would have it, the number had been disconnected.
Bummer. Dead end.
Hmm… now, what would Bosley and the Angels do at a moment like this? Well of course. It was time to start Googling.
Sarasota Herald Tribune, 8/14/2006
The story gets really good from here… and a little mysterious. Here’s the full article:
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Lots of local history behind Benedict Estate on Longboat
By Stephen Frater, Sarasota Herald Tribune
August 14, 2006 – Two weeks ago, I reported that the former Benedict Estate on Longboat Key sold for $18 million to Tampa-based developers Statewide Associates.
The developer plans to build up to 30 town homes on the property.
More historical details have been unearthed about the property by Cindy Alegretto, the Herald-Tribune’s news research manager.
The once much-larger property originally was developed as a private estate by a Dr. Kohl in 1935.
In the 1940s, Kohl was said to have been one of the original invetors, along with Italian immigrant Anthony Rossi, in a Manatee County-based citrus business.
Kohl was said to have invested $7,500 for a 49 percent stake in the business, which grew to become one of the largest citrus businesses in the world, Tropicana Products Inc., now a unit of soda giant PepsiCo Inc.
One of Kohl’s daughters, Elena Kohl, married into the Benedict family, which is how the property came to be known as the Benedict estate.
A sharp eyed reader pointed out that the rusted estate’s gate columns still feature the letter “K” in a design motif that outlasted Dr. Kohl’s original Mediterranean villa on the site.
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Stay tuned… you’ll learn more about Dr. Kohl, the Benedicts, and the current status of the “Villas Am Meer” condo project…
Oh, and by the way, here’s a link to a large image of that rusted gate. Try as I might, I couldn’t find any K in the motif, even when I looked in real life. Let me know if you can find anything. Be patient, it’s a 2.32MB file, so it may take a while to load.
Read MoreAbout Me
Join me in my sporadic ramblings as I embrace the curious life. Wife of a turkey farmer. Mother of two teenage boys. Avid ponderer. Treasure seeker. Curator of the written word. I enjoy sparking interest in the mundane and uncovering a compelling backstory.
