- July 29, 2026
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Businesses occupying a collection of colorful bungalows and other office spaces will be notified they have 90 days to vacate sometime after a developer is expected to close on an entire block of Fruitville Road.
Those business owners have been told not to expect that until early 2027, but in reality, it could be any time should current owners Alex and Marlene Lancaster or Bristol Development Group of Franklin, Tennessee, decide to move more quickly.
The developer is planning an apartment building on the block between Gillespie and North Osprey avenues, currently dubbed 1899 Fruitville, that will result in clearing all the bungalows and office buildings, along with an associated parking area, along Fourth Street.
Wendy Goldberg, owner of The Breakfast House — the first entrepreneur who in 2009 saw a brighter future for the property that had become a drug and vagrant den on the edge of downtown — took proactive action to move her restaurant about a mile east on Fruitville Road to a 1-acre site at the corner of North Briggs Avenue.
She has already purchased the property and begun converting the former single-family home there into her new location, doing some of the work herself. The house is now painted the signature yellow of The Breakfast House, a new roof was installed, the interior gutted and the kitchen expanded.
Goldberg has invited four other neighboring businesses to join her with plans to create the Sarasota Bungalow Village with upwards of eight businesses on the property.
The site is currently zoned for a single family home, but is eligible for rezoning to accommodate the planned business use.
She is getting an early start for her move, she said, out of an abundance of caution.
“It could be 90 days from tomorrow,” Goldberg said of the impending notice to vacate. “All of our leases say that the owner or the new owner can give us a 90-day notice to move, so I decided to just push forward and close on the property. I did my due diligence. I know it can be zoned commercial, so now I have an acre property that can fit some bungalows.”
It's bungalows specifically, she said, because in an ideal world the four other businesses in what is envisioned as something of a supportive collective — Siegfried’s German restaurant, The Cookie Cottage, The Artful Giraffe and Discover Sarasota Tours — would like to uproot their small cottages and move them there.
The five businesses essential to the success of the bungalow village are complementary. Their hours vary but overlap in many respects, and they cross-promote.
Goldberg was very specific about who she wanted, because her vision is for each business to bring different customers, said Discover Sarasota Tours owner Tammy Hauser.
“Wendy is Breakfast Cottage," Hauser said. "We have a nice synergistic relationship. People come for breakfast and go on a tour, or go on a tour and then go to lunch. That's the same relationship I have with Siegfried's, which opens at 4:00. People eat dinner there, then they come on my nighttime tours.”
Similarly, Goldberg said groups attending art classes at Artful Giraffe or decorating treats at Cookie Cottage dine at both restaurants. Add an ice cream shop and two more complementary businesses and a village is born. Goldberg envisions the cottages enveloping a park-like central courtyard with a playground and a shared restroom structure to serve all of the businesses.
After seven years in business, Siegfried’s owner Rene Zimmermann said he can’t imagine moving into a strip center or other downtown location. The set-up, he said, is like your own living room.
“It's hard to recreate that feeling,” Zimmermann said. “If we could move the bungalows over there and create our own little village, that would just be the best solution for all of us and also for our guests because they love what we're doing here. And this is why I'm in. If we can do that, I would work day and night on it.”
The bungalows can be moved, according to a company that specializes in the service. On July 20, during the public speaking portion of the City Commission meeting, Hauser said the bungalows may be purchased from Bristol Development.
“(Bristol) has agreed to sell us our current cottages once the development starts, and we are trying to negotiate if they might also consider doing what the other generous developers have done and help us with the costs that are going to cost (the developer) to demolish them,” she said.
Assuming the project — which has received partial Development Review Committee sign-off but still faces Planning Board review — goes forward and Bristol Development closes on the property, Senior Partner and Chief Investment Officer David Hanchrow said the business owners are welcome to buy the bungalows for $1, but after that they are on their own.
“We understand that they want to continue their businesses and we're supportive of that, but we're not in a position to do anything official yet until we become the owner,” Hanchrow said. “At that point, if you want to take your cottage with you, you do so at your own expense and risk.”
The developer would require proof of insurance and indemnifying Bristol in writing should any complications arise.
“We’re not telling them it can’t be done or that it’s easy to be done,” Hanchrow said. "These are the things a prudent owner would require before you let somebody come and bring a giant truck on the site and haul the thing away.”
There are options to moving the cottages, Hauser said. She told commissioners at least one developer has offered a cottage on his property and to help defray relocation costs. Similar offers, she added, are “coming out of the woodwork.”
If all else fails, another possibility is to buy small manufactured homes designed as bungalows to place on the site.
“We have looked at manufactured homes that are 800 to 1,000 square feet but could have that cottage feel,” Hauser said, adding a real estate attorney and regular Breakfast House customer is helping with the project pro bono. “He gave us several interesting options to legally pursue a land lease plus the cottages that are owned collectively. That's really what we're trying to figure out right now if that all could happen, and he felt it could.”
Remaining hurdles are a successful rezone of the new property, which is adjacent to other commercial uses along Fruitville Road and, of course, money. As for-profit businesses, no assistance for the project is available from local foundations that focus on preservation or cultural heritage.
The cottages are historic, Goldberg said, but are not designated as such.
“They're over 100 years old. We know Ringling performers lived in them. We're losing a little piece of Sarasota history, and it's so sad,” she said.
A website has been created by Artful Giraffe owners Tessy and Timothy Craig at sarasotabungalowvillage.com, which includes a fundraising page showing a goal of $250,000 to assist in the cost.
Goldberg said she doesn’t know if enough money can be raised to move the structures. She has secured the future of her restaurant there and hopes the others will be able to complete her vision of a new bungalow village.
“We just want to see it happen. We're really trying,” she said. “If we can get the community involved and help get the funding to be able to do this, we're going to do it. We're going to put everything we can to try to get it happening. That is the goal, and people won't have to be upset about these bungalows being demolished into nothing.”
