'Good stuff' coming to site of Bee Ridge Denny's, developer says

A 1.59-acre Sarasota restaurant site has sold. The recently closed Denny’s at 3701 Bee Ridge Road changed hands this week for $4.25 million, according to Brian Seidel and Tyler Sluman of American Property Group, who brokered the deal.

The seller is Julian Parry. The buyer in the off-market sale is Rich Global, an investment and development company in West Palm Beach, led by investor Nathan Rich.

Denny’s last operated on Bee Ridge Road on Aug. 2, and the sale closed Aug. 4, according to Sluman, who estimates he has collaborated with Rich on $40 million to $50 million in deals over the last four years. He describes Rich as a “deal maker” who is “involved in everything.”

Next, the plan is to renovate the 6,200-square-foot building.

“We will not be knocking down Denny's,” Sluman says. “We'll be renovating Denny's and making it two or three storefronts.”

The multi-tenant building will likely include one storefront with a drive-thru. While leases have not yet been signed, so he can't name names, Sluman says the tenants will be “a couple of brands that aren't in Sarasota yet." He adds: “Good stuff is coming.”

Photo by Elizabeth King

Even though the property was not on the market, there had been interest in it over the last decade, according to Seidel.

“Denny’s is kind of a unicorn site in Sarasota,” Seidel says.

The site includes 290 feet of frontage on Bee Ridge Road, a 6,200-square-foot building and 100 parking spaces, a combination that Sluman says is “impossible to find.”

A site with those components was attractive to Rich, who has a “long vision for what these projects should be to improve the areas in which they’re located,” Seidel says. “We know that when we bring him the buy box that he wants, he works with us to get the deals complete.”

Rich and Sluman are “actively on the hunt for other opportunities like this,” Seidel adds. “If you have other Denny's anywhere in Southwest Florida, we'd love to look at them.”

As someone who grew up in Sarasota, Seidel says he has his own memories of the Bee Ridge Denny’s over the years but also sees a different future for the site.

“It was just the end of the lease and time to be reimagined as something else,” Seidel says. “It's the end of an era.”

A version of this article originally appeared on sister site BusinessObserver.com.