Down the Pike - Fall 2017

Residential and more residential. As we have said many times before, the commercial market follows the residential market – because new residents demand and require retail spaces to shop, dine and bank in, and medical offices to fulfill their health care and wellness needs, just to name a few ancillary uses that new residential development attracts. Fitness clubs have become especially prevalent downtown as new residents have flocked to Sarasota. Today, there is no shortage of CrossFit gyms, aerobic exercise and yoga studios, boxing clubs, dance classes and resistance-training facilities augmenting the more standard weight-lifting and cardio gyms of years gone by, with brand names like Fyzical and Orange Theory Fitness, to name just two. Their proliferation should not be surprising, since many of the new residents are aging but healthy baby boomers interested in maintaining their level of fitness and millennials whose lifestyles are centered on wellness and health. While relatively new to our marketplace, the advent of this new “lifestyle retail” is not unexpected, thanks to the demographic that Sarasota attracts. Also interesting is that these houses for heath/fitness businesses are cropping up across the commercial real estate spectrum – in gritty, back street warehouses, upscale, Main Street office buildings and prime retail locations. We at Harshman & Co. believe this is a fantastic development for our marketplace, as it will add to Sarasota’s “livability” while making the city a more desirable and sustainable place to live.