The Golden Apple closes for business

On Monday, Sept. 10, the Golden Apple Dinner Theatre received an eviction notice from its landlord, Toronto-based commercial real-estate company Great Lakes Development Co.

A Sheriff’s Notice was put on the doors of 25 N. Pineapple at 11:10 a.m. stating that the eviction has been completed and the locks have been changed.

“All of this has come on so quickly, that we have not had a moment to think about the (upcoming) season,” Kyle Turoff, artistic director of PLATO, says in an email. “(We’ve focused) more about moving the 41 years of stuff out of a building in what could be only 48 hours.”

The notice stated they must contact the landlord for the removal of the personal property: kitchen equipment, tables and chairs, office documents, and of course costumes and props.

The landlord is Great Lakes Development, which bought the property from the Golden Apple in 2011. The Golden Apple sold the theatre in order to pay its bills. Later that same year, PLATO launched as a non-profit theater production company that would perform at The Golden Apple and help pay the monthly rent.

Currently, the theater owes about $45,000 to Great Lakes.

But the Turoff family isn’t giving up hope on keeping open the theater, which has provided 41 years of dinner-theater productions to Sarasota.

“We hope to find a space to continue, but at the moment, (we’re) trying to organize,” says Turoff.

“I have classes on the books I have had to cancel, with more to come.”