Across from our scenic bay-front, running parallel to today's Gulfstream Avenue, along historic South Palm Avenue - another downtown high-rise commences. But this construction is a bit more daring.
Between 1922-1923, a fine-featured DeMarcay Hotel was built as a standout among the historic, and now long-gone Mira Mar Apartments. Both were built using a Mission Revival Style, then so popular in early Sarasota. Inside it's lobby, this once unique Hotel offered-up, the Mira Mar Cafe. Early local advertising read, "positively the finest cafe in Florida."
Thankfully, after so many notable and local architectural loses, in March of 1984, the cute and quirky two-story DeMarcay Hotel was added to the US National Register of Historic Places. But it seems, it didn't do much good of anything.
Today, construction began on an 18 story tower using the Hotel's original facade as a historic marketing piece. (below) What now remains of the repurposed facade.
Across the street sits the marketing and sales office for the newest 'DeMarcay'.
The developer (DK Development) has built to scale, a model that sits in their upscale showcase window. And if you look really, really hard, you will see how the original historic facade above (now a little tiny thing) has been incorporated on the ground level - soon to be rising 18 stories high, higher than the current competition of other newly built bay-front condominiums.
Marketing directors of the latest 'DeMarcay' have come up with their own new intriguing sales slogan, "Elevated Living in the Heart of Sarasota."
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