Grand vision

Eric Grimes and Marshall Gobuty form an unlikely development partnership.

Grimes is a fifth-generation Manatee County resident, and a sheriff's deputy-turned-businessman who most recently was an executive with a dental laboratory network firm. Gobuty is a Canadian-born global entrepreneur who has overseen everything from an apartment project in Berlin to an energy project in Nigeria to villas in west Bradenton.

The improbable duo, who met late last year through a mutual friend, Bradenton-based First America Bank founder Dan Hager, is now tackling what could be the most unusual project of their career: turning one of the largest undeveloped land parcels in Cortez Village, on the mainland shore of Sarasota Bay in Manatee County, into a luxury RV park.