The Sarasota City Commission recently approved plans to transform the Sandcastle Resort At Lido Beach—formerly the Helmsley Sandcastle—into a modern luxury resort. The 176-room hotel, built in 1953, will be replaced by a 304-room, four- or five-star resort with two curving towers of eight and nine stories.
The resort is expected to include amenities such as valet parking, a 10,000-square-foot ballroom, a 5,000-square-foot junior ballroom, 7,000 square feet of meeting space, a spa, a private pool with cabanas, restaurants and bars open to the public.
The project will retain the Sandcastle Resort at Lido Beach name and will be built on a roughly six-acre beachfront site on Ben Franklin Drive near Lido’s south end. The current hotel, built in 1953 and expanded in the 1960s, is one of the oldest hotels in Southwest Florida.
Project representatives said a complete overhaul is overdue. “This is the only remaining obsolete hotel of this scale on Lido Beach,” said John Patterson, an attorney representing the project. “It’s in dire need of being torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.”
The existing hotel was once owned by a millionaire Maltese dog named “Trouble,” who inherited it from its longtime owners, New York billionaires Harry and Leona Helmsley. After the Helmsleys and “Trouble” died, the hotel was purchased in early 2014 for $27.4 million by a Delray Beach hotel group that also owns the Longboat Key Club. They subsequently announced that the hotel would be retained and rebranded as the Sandcastle Resort at Lido Beach.
“My vision for the Sandcastle is to create a fun, unique, fresh, and engaging experience for both guests and area residents,” said architect James Wurst of Coral Gables-based Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Associates.
Prior to approval, some commissioners expressed concerns about potential traffic congestion on Benjamin Franklin Drive and inadequate parking. However, project representatives assured the commission that mandatory valet parking would keep cars moving and that the resort would have 601 parking spaces – 19 more than the city requires. Furthermore, many people use ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, and other area hotels often provide complimentary transportation within the city.
The developers have not yet released estimated costs. The design and permitting process is expected to take up to two years, with construction taking at least 18 months. The resort will be operated by Delray Beach-based Ocean Properties, which owns more than 100 hotels in North America, including the Lido Beach Resort. The Sandcastle Resort at Lido Beach promises to be a premier luxury destination in the area.
