Lakewood Ranch clock tower getting new owner

Tick, tock, what about that clock?

After a visit to San Marco Plaza in Lakewood Ranch, Evan Guido’s focus turned to its clock tower, and to the fact the clock didn’t work.

Now, the Lakewood Ranch businessman is hoping to do something about it.

On Nov. 16, Guido opened his new financial advising company, Aksala (pronounced Ox-sala) Wealth Advisors, at 8225 Natures Way, Suite 119. And Nov. 30, he is slated to close on the purchase of the base of the clock tower, which is located at the plaza’s center and is its focal point.

“It’s part of the community,” Guido said of the clock tower. “I would like to make the bells ring again.”

Guido will not own the clock tower, which will sit on the 200-square-foot base he owns. Guido said everything above the ceiling of the base belongs to the San Marco Condominium Association and maintenance responsibilities for the tower fall on the association.

He said it is written in the association’s bylaws that it maintains the clock in working order, so he hopes he can help move that goal to the forefront.

Buying the base wasn’t easy. In talking with other condo owners, he learned it was a quagmire of back taxes,  condo association dues and ownership records that went from one corporation to the next. Guido persisted with the help of his attorney, Carly Lambert, and the pair tracked down the property’s owner and negotiated a cash purchase of $20,000 plus the other money owed, close to another $20,000.

The property is owned by JLAWAB LLC, which has a  registered agent, Janice Appel, daughter of the plaza’s co-developer Stanley Appel. Stanley Appel ventured with businessman Gary Moyer to build the $21 million plaza. It opened summer 2007 and was to be anchored by the Golden Apple Dinner Theater, which went out of business in Sarasota in March 2013.

Theater owners Bob Turoff and his wife, Roberta MacDonald, had purchased the space with plans to open a second location, but the 250-seat theater in Lakewood Ranch was never built out.

Observer newspaper archives show an initial 2005 tenant list for the plaza to include “The Shop Under the Clock.”

Guido said he had been told the tower was intended, at one time, to be the theater’s ticket office.

He said owning the base of a clock tower is just one of his many harebrained ideas. He likes the idea of his children — Hudson, Savannah and Olivia — saying, “Remember when Dad …?”

There are logistical challenges for making the clock tower function from a business perspective. It is located at the plaza’s center, within what would be a median for a roundabout with no pedestrian path around it, beside a vehicular travel lane.

Guido said he thinks the space is still usable and has been brainstorming for potential uses. A few ideas are a display for builders or local nonprofits, a valet or a docking station for a bicycle ride-share program.

“Ideas keep floating,” he said. “I don’t have a peer group to talk about clock towers with.”

Ultimately, Guido said he hopes it can become something other than a defunct building with a nonfunctioning clock. 

“What does Lakewood Ranch want it to be?” Guido said. “I don’t know what it ends up. But if it drives traffic back to San Marco, everybody wins.”