BUYER: Mobilepreacher.org Inc. (principals: Joe and Laura Davis and Marcy Colkitt), Sarasota
SELLER: David Berger
PROPERTY: 6240 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota
PRICE: $1.55 million
PREVIOUS PRICE: $2.3 million, January 2006
LAW FIRM ON DEED: Icard Merrill Cullis Timm Furen & Ginsburg PA, Sarasota
PLANS, DESCRIPTION: The Rev. Joseph Davis and his wife Laura Davis of Mobilepreacher.org Inc. purchased a 4,751-square-foot sports bar building on 1.28 acres for $1.55 million, equal to an average of $326 per square foot of building space. The Davis’ plan to paint and make other cosmetic changes to the building to turn it into a youth community center.
Davis, who works as a coach at Riverview High School, plans to work the casual, sport-bar feel of the current layout into the teen center and to create a café for lunch.
“It came with everything from the sports bar, including the commercial kitchen, the bar and pool tables,” Davis says. “We’re planning to work all that in. The bar is absolutely beautiful, and we plan to use it, just not for alcohol of course. I would [also] love to turn it into a job machine for these kids. The business model I have for the restaurant is just to cover the expenses of the restaurant. ….It shouldn’t be too hard for us to be cash flow positive on an operating basis.”
Davis hopes that the new café will attract the business crowd that wants a bit to eat while also helping troubled kids and the center itself.
The new youth center is the result, Davis says, of the death of his 18-year-old daughter and the life changes that it inspired and the depressed commercial real estate market, which depressed the value of the prime Trail property by at least a third.
The new community center will likely be called Nightlife, Hope When Times Get Dark.
Barry Seidel of American Property Group of Sarasota Inc. handled the transaction.
The purchase entity Mobilepreacher.org mortgaged it to Kingdom Investment of Sarasota LLC for $1.26 million and to Flagship National Bank for $300,000.