Troubled strip mall gets facelift

It’s been five years since Mark Sharff sold his commercial cleaning supplies company, Vista Serv Corp.

“Since then I’ve been a bum,” he joked during a July 16 interview with the Pelican Press.

Now he’ll return to cleaning — but on a much larger scale. He plans to invest more than $100,000 to remodel the storefronts of nine retail spaces at the Southgate Village Shops center on Siesta Drive for the first time in almost 50 years. Sharff said construction workers would begin assembling the scaffolding for the renovation July 18, however, there is no activity as of press time.

In a time when people were hesitant of real-estate investment, Sharff bucked the trend in 2010 and bought some of the commercial property he plans to renovate.

“It’s all about the return,” he said.

It wasn’t a major investment to acquire the property, he said, because it’s currently regarded as “Class D” space. So, after he was able to buy two more buildings to complete the string of shops he now owns, he was able to plan the renovation.

“It looked like hell,” he said. “This should be Class B space.”

The aesthetics are dreary. Customers are welcomed to the strip mall by a rusty sign and an absence of parking lot lines.

“See if you can spot where the handicap spot is,” Sharff asked before pointing to some faded blue paint on a curb. He is frustrated that Westfield Southgate Mall, a major commercial hub nestled in a dense residential district to the east, sits across two lanes of traffic.

When inquiring about what he could have possibly seen in the strip mall, Sharff doesn’t have to say anything — he just raises his arm and points toward the mall’s double doors.

“Imagine the kind of traffic we’d get if (the shops had a modern, welcoming look),” he said.

As part of the renovation, the new sidewalks will be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which feature a gentle slope stretching five feet from where they currently reach. There is currently a small ramp that services most of the strip mall, and imperfections in store stoop designs make some areas dangerous for any person.

“It’s a lot of little things,” he said.

And Sharff said some tenants would tweak their concepts to fit the new contemporary feel of the renovation design, which was undertaken by architect Larry Hale. With the extra space afforded with the revamp, outside seating will be possible.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s 95 degrees, people love to sit outside,” he said.

He had to get easements from every tenant in the strip mall to widen the sidewalk. On July 16 Sharff distributed flyers with information about renovation, which is bittersweet for some of his tenants.

“I have no objections, but I’m not crazy about the idea that I have to pay for a new sign,” said Tatyana Kukrecht-Bakota, owner of Sarasota Wigs and Post Mastectomy. She has been in the Southgate Village Shops center for 28 years but moved three shopfronts over two years ago and added a new sign.

As part of the remodeling effort, signs will shrink to become uniform rectangles, Sharff said. According to the flyer he distributed, representatives from a local signage company would visit each tenant in the coming weeks.

Anderson and Ellis Inc., Sarasota-based contractors, will oversee construction, which Sharff said would take approximately 100 days.

Kukrecht-Bakota, a Yugoslavian immigrant who fled Soviet rule after World War II, has witnessed the revolving door of businesses in the shopping center and is hopeful the new look will boost shopping traffic.

“The sketch looks good,” she said. “But, you know, only the future will tell.”