- March 6, 2026
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Three days after Sarasota County commissioners approved an acquisition of 2.04 acres on Stickney Point Road, tenants at the colorful commercial condominium complex near the Siesta Key bridge received a jarring letter.
Their leases were terminating, the letter said, and tenants had until April 15 to vacate the premises. That gave the tenants, from watersports purveyors to insurance and wealth management firms, two months to find a new space and move.
“We were shocked when we got the note,” says Carissa Dressel, president of Waves Boat & Social Club, which has been a tenant at the Stickney Point property for nearly two decades.
Aaron Dorfman, owner of A&M Insurance Agency and Glen Scharf, who runs the Scharf Group, a financial planning firm, were likewise surprised. The letter came on Friday the 13th (of February), notes Dorfman, who also used the word "shocked." He's been a tenant at the space, known as the Boatyard, since 2009. Scharf has been there for 12 years. Both firms have three employees.
The reason for the forced move? The landlord, Sarasota property and restaurant owner Chris Brown, is selling the property to Sarasota County. The county intends to turn the highly visible property, on the edge of the mainland side of the Stickney Point bridge to Siesta, into a park with more water access for residents.
"This is a gem," says Sarasota County Commission Chair Ron Custinger, echoing several on the commission. The 4-1 vote to purchase the property from Brown, for $18.1 million, was approved Feb. 10. The total approved project cost will rise to $21.36 million, for land acquisition and startup costs, operating impacts and more.
"Opportunities don't come by like this very often," Custinger adds in an interview, "if ever."
The county's opportunity — Custinger says staff had previously been instructed to find more places with water access the county could buy for citizens —comes at a cost. And that's not just the purchase and buildout.
At the Feb. 10 meeting, Siesta Key Watersports owner Shawn Fontana said his business pays more than $100,000 each year in sales taxes, And his company has 20 employees, who serve 45,000 guests annually.
Scharf and Dorfman, in interviews with the Business Observer, both say they are looking for new office space, preferably in the area around Clark and Bee Ridge on US 41. Dorfman was considering leasing 2,000 square feet, which is more than double his current space — and what he needs. But that was the best location he had found. "I love being here," Dorfman said on a recent chilly Thursday morning, the glare of the sun heating up the office. "I wear shorts and flip flops every day."
Brown, whose LLC, Big Main Street, bought the property in 2024, told the Business Observer he sought to help all the tenants financially, including waiving the last two months of rent. "The most unfortunate dynamic of this was telling the tenants they had to leave," Brown says. "That hurt the most."
Dressel at Waves is in a significantly more dire situation than, say Scharf or Dorfman.
Dire with a bit of déjà vu.
That's because Waves Boat & Social Club had a location for years near the Seafood Shack in Cortez Village. Its lease was terminated there after Manatee County bought that waterfront property for $13 million in 2024. The marina there had been storm-damaged, and the site will be used for a public boat ramp.
In addition to Stickney Point, Waves — a membership-based boat rental business with nearly 600 members — currently has three other locations: the Phillippi Harbor Club in Sarasota; Fisherman’s Wharf in Venice; and Cape Haze Marina in Englewood. Another location in Fort Myers, where a boat landed on top of the office in 2022 during Hurricane Ian, has not reopened.
After Hurricane Milton in 2024, the boat club relocated its Manatee County vessels to Venice and Stickney Point.
Moving locations is a major concern because while members have access to boats at all the sites, they are typically interested in the one closest to them.
“Location is the key to a boat club,” Dressel says. “People want to boat near where they live. They also like having some other locations, but fundamentally they will use their home club.”
Dressel says she can’t just pick up and move the fleet of 12 boats she has docked behind her sales office at 1530 Stickney Point Road.
Many of the marinas in the area do not have room, and given the time crunch, finding a spot will be a challenge.
"It would be like if you had a bison farm, and I came and said, 'We're going to need your property because we're going to put a highway through it, so you and your bisons need to be out in 60 days,'" Dressel says. "But there are no bison farms around. There's no land around. There are a few broken-down bison farms that they're asking $20 million for, but then you'd have to spend money to fix up the bison farm. So you and your bisons are out of luck."
She says she would like "a little time'" to "find our footing." Her concern is that the landlord is going to "kick us all out, displace us and then [the property is] going to sit here ... dormant for years."
Still, Dressel says, “We're actively looking" for a site to replace the Stickney Point location.
Part of the beauty of a boat club, Dressel says, is that it reduces boat traffic on local waterways. For every 10 members, her business has one boat. Waves Boat & Social Club has 500 to 600 members, about 25 employees and 50 to 60 vessels.
“There are so many boats on the waterway, it becomes like a highway,” Dressel says. “If all those [members] go and buy boats, you're going to get 10 times as many boats” taking up space on the water and at local boat ramps.
Her location on Stickney Point Road — where she has been for 18 years — also keeps traffic off of Siesta Key, since her members don’t have to cross the bridge.
“There's nothing else like this place anywhere,” Dressel says of the red, orange, yellow, green and blue commercial complex. “This is just a very special place — the buildings and the ease of getting to it without having to go to [Siesta] Key.”
No matter what, Dressel says, her business will find a way forward, as it did after Hurricane Ian in 2022 and Hurricane Milton in 2024.
Waves Boat & Social Club has been around 21 years, and after each obstacle, “We figured it out,” she says.
“We do not give up,” Dressel says. “We will find a new location, and we will continue.”
