Sarasota’s Players Centre finds a buyer for its longtime home

The Players Centre for Performing Arts took a giant step toward Lakewood Ranch Tuesday.

The theater company formerly known as the Players Theatre (and commonly but erroneously called Sarasota Players), has reached an agreement to sell it aging and deteriorating longtime home on Tamiami Trail. The potential buyer “wishes to remain anonymous at this time,” Players Centre managing director and CEO Michelle Bianchi said, but it is a private entity that offered “significantly more” than the $9.5 million asking price.

“We had signed a letter of intent to sell to the Sarasota Bayfront Planning Corp.,” Bianchi said. “But we went in a different direction because we had a cash buyer who was offering more than our asking price.”

The Sarasota Bayfront Planning Corp. is the group behind the Bayfront 20:20 project, a redevelopment initiative will reshape the area around the Van Wezel Perfoming Arts Hall, across the street from the current home of the Players Centre.

Bianchi said she couldn’t talk about what the new owners planned to do with the property and the building, but indicated that the new owners planned to coordinate with Bayfront 20:20 to create a cohesive look for the area.

In the summer of 2016, the Players Centre announced plans to build a new campus in Lakewood Ranch. A few weeks ago, Players announced its 2018-19 season, and said that the last show of that season, in spring of 2019, would likely be its last in its longtime home at 838 N. Tamiami Trail.

The two parties plan to close on the sale of the property this summer, after the end end of the current season. Then the buyer will lease the property back to the Players Centre for $1 for one year.

The 2018-19 season will likely close with “Follies,” Stephen Sondheim’s musical about actors gathering at their former theater, which is about to be demolished.

For the 2019-20 season, Bianchi said, Players will produce shows in temporary quarters in Lakewood Ranch. Several options are being discussed, she said, and it’s even possible that shows will be produced in a tent somewhere in Lakewood Ranch.

Now that it has an offer on its current property, Bianchi said, the Players Centre can begin construction on its new theater at the same time that developers of Waterside begin building roads and commercial property in that neighborhood of Lakewood Ranch. The New Players Centre campus, which will cost an estimated $30 million, will be located within Waterside, at the south end of Lakewood Ranch off of University Parkway.

No matter what happens, even if the sale of the property doesn’t go through, The Players Centre for Performing Arts will continue to produce plays and musicals.

“We will not have any kind of interruption in our programming,” Bianchi said.

This story was originally published January 17, 2018 at 4:31 PM with the headline "Sarasota’s Players Centre finds a buyer for its longtime home."