A piece of Black history in Sarasota could have a new, revitalized future.
That's after some local visionaries came up with a proposal to buy the century-old Colson Hotel from a developer who wanted to tear it down.
Built in 1926, the Colson was one of the only hotels in Florida where Black people could safely stay during the segregation era.
But now the two-story Mediterranean Revival style building in the rapidly gentrifying Overtown neighborhood of Sarasota is falling apart, with mold and termite damage.
Maximilian Vollmer, the developer who bought the land, said he didn't realize the historic site was there, and experts have told him the damage is so extensive it would cost $2 million to fix.
But people in the business of restoring old buildings told the Sarasota City Commission on Tuesday how it is possible to fix a structure that seems beyond repair.
"I can tell you that we restored properties in much worse shape than the Colson Hotel," said Barry Preston of the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation.
Kristin Kitchen, founder of Sojourn Heritage Accommodations, has restored a historic site on the Underground Railroad in Cincinnati and made it into a bed and breakfast.
Things like razing a site, and stabilizing a structure, "they can be done when you have the passion and the desire and the commitment to save the history of a community and save the history of Black America," Kitchen told commissioners.
Anand Pallegar, the entrepreneur behind the community group Dream Large and CEO of Sarasota Magazine, showed commissioners a drawing of what the reimagined hotel could look like.
"If it could be restored back to its original intent and purpose, that would be a tremendous story to tell for the next 100 years and the next generation ahead of us," Pallegar said.
Pallegar said along with other local stakeholders, they have made a plan to buy the hotel and a rectangle of the surrounding land so it can be elevated, and rebuilt to code.
"The other part that's really important here is that we recognize the significance of African American culture and African American ownership of this site, and so together with partners, what we're doing is trying to negotiate this, to find a way to get to get a viable working site and ultimately bring the community together around it, to envision what could be done with it, and ultimately pass ownership forward in a meaningful way," he said.
The cost, and other details of the deal, were not immediately clear.
The commission voted unanimously to authorize further talks between the city manager's staff and the potential buyer.
The developer says he will go back to the drawing board, and wants to re-envision the townhomes he planned nearby as even more condo units.
