Coming soon in downtown Sarasota, Sarasota, FL
SOTA Residences
1703 Main Street, Sarasota
A sixteen storey building of 120 hotel rooms and 35 condominium units, and not one construction permit has ever been issued for it. The 1940 restaurant on the site is still standing, and no inspection has ever been requested here. The whole record is below.
- Address
- 1703 Main Street
- Condominium units
- 35 of 155 doors
- Built so far
- Nothing
- Tax rate
- 14.8815 mills
At a glance
SOTA fast facts
Every figure below is read from the county clerk's recorded instruments, the county appraiser's parcel record and certified rate table, the city permit file retrieved in full including every review track, the federal flood and claim records, or the county's hazard layers, with a control behind each result. Where two official records disagree we print both rather than choosing.
- Record address
- 1703 Main Street, Sarasota, FL 34236
- Filed as
- SOTA Residences, a Condo
- What it actually is
- 120 hotel rooms and 35 condominium units in one building
- Plus
- Ground floor restaurant and a four storey garage
- Storeys
- 16 on two records, 17 on a third
- Timeshare?
- No. Filed as an ordinary residential condominium
- Built?
- Nothing. The 1940 restaurant is still standing
- Construction permits issued
- None, ever
- The $57.5m permit
- Reads foundation only, and has not issued
- Inspections logged
- Zero, on every permit at this address
- Declaration recorded
- No, verified six ways
- Tax rate
- 14.8815 mills, outside the downtown district
- Flood zone
- Outside the mapped hazard area, on 19 to 21 feet
- Evacuation level
- D, a category four zone, 26 foot surge
- Unit sizes, mix, parking, price
- Not published anywhere
Not published yet
Location: see 1703 Main Street on the map. Figures carry the dates shown and are subject to change.
Who is building this, and what is there now
A fifty-seven million dollar permit that authorises a foundation, and has not issued
Start with what the building is, because the name does not say it. This is one structure containing 120 hotel guestrooms and 35 condominium units, over ground floor restaurant retail and a four storey parking garage. That is the city's own description, on three separate permit records filed by two different city divisions. The condominium is about a quarter of the doors. The hotel is the rest.
Now the number everyone quotes, and what it actually authorises. The permit carrying a construction value of $57.5 million opens its own work description with the words foundation only, and it has never been issued. Its status has read pending contractor action for about thirty-nine and a half months. Spread across 155 rooms and units that figure is about $371,000 each, which is not a foundation cost. The dollar amount and the scope on the same document do not describe the same work, and the record does not reconcile them.
Nothing has been started. No construction permit has ever been issued at this address, not one inspection has ever been requested, and the demolition permit expired without being used, so the 1940 restaurant is still standing and still carries an improvement value on the roll. The only permits issued here this decade are two utility permits and an erosion control permit that has since expired.
The review file is worth reading because it says where the hold is. Seven of the foundation permit's eight review tracks are approved, including zoning, engineering, plans, public works and utilities. The administrative track has sat at pending plan review since the month it was filed, and the plans reviewer's own note records an email sent about the application being over 180 days old. That note is now roughly three years old.
Two structured fields disagree and one of them is the building's height. The storey count field says sixteen and the tree permit says sixteen, while the foundation permit's own written description says seventeen. Separately, a building the same permit describes as holding 120 hotel rooms carries no transient lodging occupancy classification anywhere in the city's record. That may simply be because the vertical permit that would classify it has never been applied for, so we report it as an open question.
There is a search trap here that would defeat most people checking this themselves. The city's development application record returns nothing at all when searched by street address, and thirteen applications when searched by parcel. The address side is not a smaller set, it is empty. The entitlement work on this parcel also predates the sponsor's deed by about ten months.
The clerk's index has a matching trap, and it is a new shape. The sponsor's name is indexed two ways, split at a space inside the name itself, returning twenty-two instruments under one rendering and four under the other with zero overlap, and one of the four is the easement the tax roll cites in its own legal description. Search the spelling the state publishes and the roll's own cited instrument comes back as non-existent.
On who the sponsor is, the record gives three addresses and no site history. The state's filing carries a Sarasota office address the sponsor does not own and that is not the site; the permits carry a Kentucky address; the roll carries the building site. The entity owns no other parcel in this county and has no other condominium filing anywhere in the state, despite a roman numeral in its name. None of that is unusual. All of it is worth confirming in writing.
Take these four to the sales office: when the vertical construction permit will be applied for, since the one on file authorises a foundation; what is holding the administrative review track; the unit mix, sizes, parking and amenity programme, none of which appears on any public record; and what the recorded easement and restrictions held by a public hospital district over part of this site actually say.
What this actually costs
Outside the downtown surcharge, and the homestead number nobody puts in a brochure
The rate here is the ordinary city rate, and where the boundary falls is the interesting part. This parcel sits in the plain City of Sarasota code at 14.8815 mills across thirteen levy lines, outside the downtown improvement district, whose flat two mill surcharge sits at the statutory ceiling. That boundary runs down this very street: an address twelve blocks west is inside it at 16.8815 mills and this one is outside at 14.8815. Two codes on one street and nothing in between.
One levy line on that bill is worth noticing for a reason that has nothing to do with money. The public hospital district levies 1.0420 mills here, about seven per cent of the bill. The same public body holds a recorded easement and a recorded restrictive instrument over part of one of the four lots that make up this site, and amended the easement in spring 2026. What those restrictions restrict is in the document images, so their existence and parties are reported and their substance is not.
On the ten per cent cap that limits how fast a non homesteaded assessment can rise, this parcel is a clean demonstration of why it has to be tested. It is worth exactly nothing here. Just, assessed and taxable values are identical, because the assessment actually fell very slightly year over year. A cap protects against a rise, and there was none. At a bayfront site in this same series the same cap is worth about $675,100 a year. It is a feature of a rising assessment, not of a location.
The sponsor's current bill is about $46,900 a year, and the assessed value behind it is lower against the purchase price than anything else we have measured. The parcel is assessed at about 63 per cent of what the sponsor paid for it, four years after a qualified sale, against an established band in this series of roughly 67 to 95 per cent. The reason is that the assessor is valuing a 1940 restaurant while the buyer paid for a development site. Assessed to sale is not only a reassessment lag function; at a redevelopment site it is a use change function and it can sit below the band indefinitely.
Now the finding that will matter most to an actual buyer here, and it is measured rather than asserted. Across every condominium unit in this county carrying a hotel use code, 628 folios in sixteen buildings, 0.48 per cent claim a homestead exemption. Across ordinary condominium folios the rate is 37.6 per cent. A unit in a hotel branded condominium here is about seventy-nine times less likely to be somebody's homesteaded home, and the exemption is a flat $591.70 a year plus the assessment growth cap that travels with it.
The same comparable tells you who your neighbours in that product tend to be. At the nearest condominium hotel on the county roll, twenty-three of thirty units are held by limited liability companies and several of those names are explicitly rental vehicles. That is an investor register rather than a residents' register. Every one of the county's 628 hotel coded folios is on a barrier island or key, so if this is built as permitted it would be the first of its shape on the city mainland.
The practical version: the rate is ordinary and computable, the current bill is for a restaurant and tells you nothing about your future one, and nobody in this county has ever assessed a building with both hotel rooms and condominium units in it, so how the assessor will code your unit has no local precedent. Non ad valorem assessments sit behind a tax collector that blocks automated retrieval, so every figure above is the ad valorem bill only.
The compliance clock
Every clock here runs from a document that has not been recorded
Since the Surfside collapse Florida has built a hard timetable around structural inspection and reserve funding, and every condominium sits somewhere on it. This one sits before the start line in every respect, and the reason is the same in each case.
Nothing is recorded, and we checked six different ways. The state's recorded roll does not carry this filing, the clerk's index returns no declaration under seven renderings of the sponsor name or under the project name, and the tax roll shows the county's not-yet-built signature: one use coded parcel with no unit folios behind it. Until a declaration records there is no association, no budget with real figures, no share schedule, no reserves and no turnover clock.
On the milestone inspection, the rule most people quote has been repealed and the answer here is simple. Current law sets the first milestone inspection at thirty years from the certificate of occupancy, then every ten years, with twenty-five available only where the local enforcement agency determines that local conditions, including proximity to salt water, require it. The familiar three mile test was repealed in 2022. No certificate of occupancy exists and no building exists, so the clock has not started and no date can honestly be published. The city has adopted no local trigger.
The structural integrity reserve study runs on the same clock and is equally unstarted. The obligation attaches to buildings of three storeys or more on a cycle measured from the certificate of occupancy, and a developer is expressly excused from completing one before the first unit is conveyed. There is no building, no certificate and no conveyance. Expect the developer's own reserve position and the proposed budget in the prospectus to be the only reserve documents you will see before turnover.
On statutory thresholds you are in a strong position, and one of them had to be checked rather than assumed. At 35 units all three attach: the developer must file with the state, which it has, you are owed a prospectus before you can be held to a contract, and the association must maintain a website and post its budget, contracts, insurance and inspection reports. The website duty is switched off for buildings containing timeshare units, and this is not a timeshare on the state's own taxonomy, so it stands.
But be clear about what those protections reach. The hotel is outside the condominium statute altogether. About three quarters of the doors here are hotel rooms and chapter 718 does not touch them. Whatever governs the relationship between 35 owners and a 120 room hotel operation, including who pays for shared systems, will live in the declaration and in an operating agreement, neither of them recorded.
The turnover rule is the same everywhere and is consistently misunderstood. At turnover the developer must deliver audited financial records, a turnover inspection report and studies covering roof, structure, plumbing, electrical, waterproofing, windows, elevators, heating and cooling, the pool and the drainage. Nothing in any of it requires the developer to put money into the reserve. In a building with a hotel in it, ask separately how shared costs are apportioned, because your association's turnover does not touch the hotel's side of the ledger.
On timing, the record supports an observation and not a date. About forty-one months have passed since the first construction application and about fifty-four since the sponsor took title, with no construction permit issued at all, against local benchmarks running 35.5 through 59.6 months from application all the way to occupancy. Two of those five have already passed here without a permit being issued.
Here is what a buyer cannot see today. No recorded declaration, so no unit boundaries, no share schedule, no bylaws and no association. No unit mix, unit sizes, floor plate, parking count, amenity programme or price, because no primary record publishes any of them and the relevant permit fields are blank. No operating agreement with the hotel. The prospectus will be the binding disclosure and it is the developer's own account of its own project.
What to demand in writing before your rescission period closes: the date the vertical construction permit will be applied for; the expected recording date for the declaration; the unit mix, sizes and parking allocation; the prospectus and every condominium document; the proposed budget and reserve schedule; the agreement governing the hotel relationship and the apportionment of shared costs; the recorded restrictions over part of this site; and the delay provisions of your contract. Your deposit's first ten per cent sits in escrow, and above that the statute lets the developer spend it on construction once work has begun.
Get notified when a construction permit issues and pricing lands
Neither has happened, and the restaurant on the site is still open.
The area
Outside the flood map, inside a twenty-six foot surge zone
The flood answer here is good, and the way we got to it is the part worth copying. The federal hazard layer returned nothing at five points across the parcel, which on its own proves nothing, because it returns nothing at plenty of places that are in the hazard area. The county's own layer, clipped to the hazard area so that an empty answer is a quiet low risk, returned nothing at the same points. Two independently clipped services agreeing to say nothing is the strongest evidence available that this parcel is outside the mapped special flood hazard area.
The city agrees, in its own paperwork. Both live construction permits require no finished floor certificate at either stage and record no minimum finished floor elevation, with the flood zone field left blank. The physical reason is the ground: lidar at five points runs about 19 to 21 feet, a spread of around two feet, because the site sits on the downtown ridge roughly a kilometre inland of the bayfront where the waterfront projects in this series sit at or below the base flood.
Hold one thing alongside that, because the two hazard layers tell opposite stories at this address. A parcel outside the federal hazard area entirely, on ground 19 to 21 feet above sea level, sits in evacuation level D, a category four zone modelled for a 26 foot surge, which exceeds the highest measured ground point here by about five feet. They measure different things and only one of them appears on a flood certificate. Level D is also the last ordered out: later warning, deeper modelled water.
On the postcode claim record, the usual caveat applies and it matters more here than usual. This postcode has recorded about 1,179 federal flood insurance claims and roughly $108.4 million paid across the life of the programme, with 744 claims and about $100.2 million in 2024 alone. It spans the downtown mainland, a bayfront peninsula, two keys and a barrier island, and the claims come overwhelmingly from the low lying portions. A postcode figure is not a parcel figure.
Within that year the damage came from the storm that missed rather than the one that landed. The September 2024 storm produced 514 claims and about $93.7 million in this postcode, and the October storm that actually made landfall in this county produced 210 and about $5.0 million, so the one that missed out paid the landfall nearly nineteen to one. The 2022 hurricane that dominates Florida insurance conversation produced eight claims here in the whole year.
On schools this address returns something slightly unusual. The elementary and middle layers return the same kindergarten through eighth campus, so a child here changes buildings once rather than twice. Confirm with the district before you contract, because boundaries move.
One last caution about a number that gets quoted as a rule. The idea that the assessor carries condominium units below their sale price is only true of recent sales. At the county's nearest condominium hotel, recent sales sit around 77 to 84 per cent of price while older ones sit between 110 and 142 per cent. Quote that rule with a vintage attached or it is wrong for most of a building.
What you need to know
Buying pre-construction with someone on your side
Representation costs you nothing and the timing is the catch: in a pre-construction sales gallery your agent generally has to be with you or named at your very first contact for the registration to stand. Sort it out before you call.
The case for it here is that the gap between the brochure and the record is unusually wide. There is no issued construction permit, no inspection, no recorded declaration, no unit mix, no floor plate and no price on any public record, and the only construction figure that exists sits on a permit that authorises a foundation. Everything you will be shown comes from the developer. Someone should be reading the record on your side of the table.
Know what the statute gives you. On a developer sale you are entitled to the prospectus and the condominium documents, and you have a rescission right measured in days from the later of signing or delivery of those documents. That window is the most valuable thing you have and it closes quickly. Have someone read the declaration, the budget, the reserve schedule and anything governing the hotel relationship inside that window.
There is one more thing worth confirming here that would not occur to most buyers. Until the state notifies a developer that its filing is proper, a developer may not close on a contract and a purchaser's contract is voidable before closing. Whether that notification has been given on this filing could not be established from any reachable record. Ask for it in writing, and ask which entity is signing.
On deposits the protection is narrower than most buyers assume. The first ten per cent is held in escrow. Above ten per cent the statute permits the developer to use the money for construction once work has begun, and on this site work has not begun. We did not search Florida regulatory enforcement records or civil dockets for any builder, developer, contractor or land-holding entity, so read the absence of any such note as unchecked, not clean. Get an independent inspection of your unit before closing, use the one year window afterwards, and read the limited warranty before you sign.
Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Hospitality Group Sarasota Portfolio V, any homebuilder, any developer of SOTA, the City of Sarasota, or Sarasota County. The developer is identified here because it is the owner of record in the county property records and the developer of record in the state condominium filing, which is a statement of fact and not a representation of any relationship. Community names and marks are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification only. Subdiview is operated by a real estate broker licensed in Illinois. We are not your agent, we do not represent you, and we perform no real estate brokerage services in this state. No one at Subdiview is licensed in this state. If you join an interest list, your information is referred to a real estate professional licensed in the state where the property is located, who will contact you directly. We are compensated by that professional's brokerage, not by you. Pricing, plans, inventory, district, tax, flood and approval details on this page carry the dates shown, are as published, proposed or reported rather than committed, and are subject to change without notice.
Questions and answers
SOTA FAQ
What is SOTA actually going to be?
One building containing 120 hotel guestrooms and 35 condominium units, over ground floor restaurant retail and a four storey parking garage. That is the City of Sarasota's own description, in the city's own words, on three separate permit records filed by two different city divisions. So the condominium is about a quarter of the building by door count and the hotel is about three quarters. Storey count is the one thing the records do not agree on: the structured field says sixteen and so does the tree permit, while the foundation permit's own written description says seventeen. We quote sixteen because two records carry it, including a structured field, and note the third.
Is it a timeshare, and does that change my rights?
It is not, and the answer matters more than it sounds. Florida's condominium statute lets a building that contains timeshare units off the association website obligation, so the question is worth checking rather than assuming. The state's own filing taxonomy separates timeshares and vacation ownership plans into their own project types, with hundreds of filings between them statewide, and this project is filed under the ordinary residential condominium type instead. No timeshare or vacation ownership filing exists anywhere in the state under this sponsor's name, this project name or this address, and no recorded instrument at the parcel mentions timeshare or interval ownership. At 35 units you are over the twenty unit prospectus threshold and over the twenty-five unit website threshold, and both duties stand.
How far along is it?
Nothing has been built and nothing has been started. No construction permit has ever been issued at this address. The 1940 restaurant building is still standing, still carries an improvement value on the tax roll, and the demolition permit to take it down expired without being used. The permit that gets quoted as a $57.5 million construction value reads, on its own face, foundation only, and it has sat at a status of pending contractor action for about thirty-nine and a half months. Seven of its eight review tracks are approved; the administrative track has been pending since the month it was filed. Not one inspection has ever been requested at this address under any current permit. That is about forty-one months since the first construction application and about fifty-four months since the sponsor took title.
What are the taxes, and where is the district line?
The parcel sits in the plain City of Sarasota code at 14.8815 mills across thirteen separate levy lines, and it is outside the downtown improvement district, which is the two mill flat surcharge that a lot of downtown addresses carry. The boundary runs down this street: an address twelve blocks west is inside the district at 16.8815 mills and this one is outside it at 14.8815. The sponsor currently pays about $46,900 a year on a 1940 restaurant. One number worth not assuming: the ten per cent cap on non homesteaded assessment growth is worth exactly nothing here, because the assessment actually fell slightly year over year, and a cap only helps against a rise. Per parcel non ad valorem assessments could not be retrieved, so no figure is asserted for them.
Is it in a flood zone?
No, on the best evidence available. The federal hazard layer returned nothing at five points across the parcel, and the county's own layer, which is clipped to the hazard area so that an empty answer is a quiet way of saying low risk, returned nothing at the same points. Both live construction permits require no finished floor certificate at either stage and record no minimum finished floor elevation, which is the city agreeing. Ground here runs about 19 to 21 feet, high by Sarasota standards, because the site sits on the downtown ridge roughly a kilometre inland of the bayfront. The thing to hold alongside that: the evacuation layer puts this address in level D, a category four zone modelled for a 26 foot surge, which is about five feet above the highest measured ground point. Those two answers are not in conflict, they measure different things, and only one of them shows up on a flood certificate.
What should I be most careful about here?
Three things. First, the money figure: do not carry $57.5 million in your head as the construction value of this building, because the permit that carries it authorises a foundation on its own terms and has never issued. Second, homestead. We measured every condominium unit folio in this county that carries a hotel use code, 628 of them, and 0.48 per cent claim a homestead exemption, against 37.6 per cent of ordinary condominium folios. A unit in a hotel branded building is about seventy-nine times less likely to be somebody's homesteaded home here, and in this millage code the exemption is worth $591.70 a year plus an assessment growth cap. Third, the hotel is outside the condominium statute altogether, so whatever governs the relationship between 35 owners and a 120 room hotel operation will sit in the declaration and an operating agreement, neither of which is recorded and neither of which can be read today.
Be first in line
Get on the SOTA interest list
We will connect you with a real estate professional licensed in Florida who represents you rather than the seller, who can register you before your first contact with the sales gallery, and who will get you the answers this page could not: when the vertical permit will be applied for, the unit mix and sizes, the parking allocation, the prospectus and condominium documents, the proposed budget and reserve schedule, the terms governing the hotel relationship, and pricing as soon as it exists.
It costs nothing, creates no brokerage relationship by itself, and does not obligate you to anything.