U.S. Assets Group News
Below are some comments and reports from leading Gulf Coast publications regarding U.S. Assets Group projects:
U.S. Assets Group Track Record – Sarasota Herald-Tribune
…en Provence's 21 units sold out in three weeks, and generated $52 million in sales.
"We discovered there was even more pent-up demand than we had anticipated," Brown said…
…The quest to satisfy upper-end customer demand and build high-caliber projects has been U.S. Assets' hallmark ever since, placing it among the area's most active—and successful—developers.
"Many developers will do a job and say goodbye," said Lori Fountain, president and owner of FT Designs, a Sarasota interior design firm. "But I truly feel like U.S. Assets wants to provide a wonderful product. And it's not about being nice guys; it's about being really smart businessmen."
Pushing the envelope
During the past four years, U.S. Assets has pushed its standards higher with each subsequent project.
At Beau Ciel, a $62 million downtown condo tower developed adjacent to the Hyatt Sarasota on Boulevard of the Arts, U.S. Assets and Curts Gaines Hall Jones Architects introduced modern design and filled the 17-story building with luxury appointments.
Residents of the 44-unit high-rise, completed in late 2003, have access to private dining and media rooms, an exclusive swimming pool, a state-of-the-art fitness center with views of Sarasota Bay, concierge service and an opulent, art-filled lobby.
Despite the building's seven-figure prices, Beau Ciel sold half its units in two months. When the tower was completed, only four condos remained unsold. All 44 were snapped up within a year of its opening.
Beau Ciel's top-floor penthouse fetched $5 million…
…The U.S. Assets partners say "obsessive" attention to detail and customer service are critical to maintaining buyer loyalty.
"At the price range they operate in, people are interested in two things," said Cheryl Loeffler, a Prudential Palms Realty agent who is among the company's top producers nationwide.
"They want to make a good investment and have a certain lifestyle, and they thoroughly understand those concepts. They deliver a superior product, and they always seem concerned with their end user."
That focus on fulfilling customer demands has extended to U.S. Assets' latest projects as well.
The Founders Club, a 700-acre tract off Fruitville Road east of Interstate 75, contains 262 homesites and a Robert Trent Jones Jr. signature golf course that opened earlier this year.
The $500 million development features homes from builders Lee Wetherington Homes, John Cannon Homes, Pruett Builders Inc. and others.
Equity golf memberships, which will be limited to 275 total members, are selling for $82,500 each, excluding $6,960 in annual dues. U.S. Assets is approaching 100 sales.
"We think this project has elevated the golf course community in Sarasota County, because there hadn't been a project like this," Brown said. "We consciously tried to raise the bar."
U.S. Assets has had similar results at Orchid Beach Club, a $110 million, beachfront condo project on Lido Key.
Although construction on Orchid Beach's two 11-story towers won't be completed for months, only three of 54 units remain unsold. One penthouse recently sold for $4.9 million.
As with the rest of its portfolio, Brown believes the emphasis on amenities—Orchid Beach will contain a private pool, fitness center, billiard room, spa, library, media room, resident bar and concierge service—sets the project apart…
…And there is always the emphasis on quality.
"We're not density seekers," said Brown, 59. "The numbers have to work, of course, but it's more important to us to do a quality project."
Unlike many development firms, U.S. Assets has maintained that focus despite diversity in design, location and product type.
"You don't get caught in a cookie-cutter mentality with them," Fountain said.
Beau Ciel, for instance, is an urban project with modern architecture. Orchid Beach, on Lido, has a West Indies feel. Founders Club contains primarily single-family homes in a suburban setting.
"They're methodical and thoughtful, and very hands-on in their approach both to people and their projects," said Bruce Franklin, president of The ADP Group, a Sarasota architectural and land planning firm. "It's how they can succeed at so many different things."
But U.S. Assets' success hasn't come without adversity.
Beau Ciel, built on land connected to the Hyatt, required an extensive sales pitch to the Chicago-based hotel chain, which worried about disrupting the 297-room hotel's guests.
U.S. Assets prevailed, but only after agreeing to invest $3 million in a new swimming pool and grotto area, replace 112 parking spaces and restructure the hotel's debt.
They also had to commit to a tight six-month construction schedule to minimize disruption…
en Provence - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
…Dr. Seth Bonder of Ann Arbor, Mich., moved in before most of the furnishings arrived. After renting a beach house on Captiva for several seasons, he wanted to be closer to the theater and symphony in Sarasota. He also wanted the feel of a single-family home. His unit on the first living level has a staircase down to a private pool. The two first-floor units in each of the three buildings have private pools. The 40- by 40-foot community pool is a physical and visual amenity.
The fourth building is a clubhouse complete with woodburning fireplace, carved buffet from France's Provence region, granite bar, dining room for 12 and catering kitchen. Floors are Turkish limestone. The well-equipped fitness room overlooks a landscaped courtyard.
En Provence grounds still have 19 Canary Island palms saved from the Charles Savidge home that used to stand on the six-acre property, which was sold for $10 million to provide the land for the condominium. The buildings are arranged much the same as Longboat's Vizcaya, which had the same architect, Curts Gaines Hall and its lead architect, Chuck Jones…
Orchid Beach Club – Sarasota Herald-Tribune
…U.S. Assets Group collected nine $25,000 deposits Wednesday for its just-announced Orchid Beach Club, a resort-style condominium to be built on Lido Key.
"Lido has never had anything like this, with the smallest unit offering 2,936 square feet of living area and penthouses to 6,253 square feet," said Linda Page, sales and marketing vice president… Four other would-be buyers wanted to make reservations on their credit cards, Page said.
The amenity list for the 54 Orchid Beach Club units will rival those of The Ritz-Carlton Beach Club condominiums on Lido; plans for those 88 units in one condominium building are not yet finalized…
American Institute of Architects Touring Beau Ciel – Sarasota Herald-Tribune
…Charles Jones, partner with Curts Gaines Hall Architects Planners Inc. and architect of record, said the modern theme is in keeping with neighboring Hyatt Sarasota, 888, G.WIZ and Van Wezel.
"The massing is an interplay of three cylinders which collide and erode with straight segments and are anchored with the rectangular stair towers," Jones said. "The playful yet ordered composition is meant to suggest the related art forms of music and dance as the eye moves across the modulating surfaces of light and shade, stucco and glass, and crescendos in the soft curves of the roof lines."
A new sculpture by nationally known arist Howard Ben Tre will be the centerpiece of the dramatic two-story lobby with its curving staircase and abundant glass. Each residence views the bay on one side and the yacht harbor on the other…
Beau Ciel – Sarasota Herald-Tribune
…A new bronze and cast-glass sculpture, by nationally known artist Howard Ben Tre, will be the centerpiece of Beau Ciel's dramatic, two-story lobby with domed ceiling. The sculpture won't arrive until December, but the lobby already has an 11- by 17-foot piece by Brian Miller of Sarasota. Its six square panels are acrylic over wood with an epoxy resin finish that makes it look like stained glass.
Hodgell Gallery is providing about 40 pieces of original art. Among them is Linda Howard's 16-foot, brushed-aluminum, curving and slatted sculpture between the Hyatt Sarasota and Beau Ciel. Some of the other artists include Vicky Randall, Judy Axe, Joe Kephart and Jonas Gerard.
Pale maple paneling adds to the warmth. A circular staircase leads from the lobby up to the Plaza Club amenities. These include the club room and bar overlooking the yacht harbor. The adjoining 16-seat theater can become party space, if needed. The private dining room/board room looks out on the pool deck and harbor. There's a catering kitchen, card room and conference room with computer and fax.
Bay views can brighten workouts in the fitness club, which has a terrace. The concierge can schedule massages or a personal trainer. Locker rooms include saunas. Besides their own pool, residents have a private gate to the new Hyatt Sarasota lagoon pool with its with rocky waterfall. The pool and the Hyatt parking garage are part of $3 million in Hyatt improvements for which Beau Ciel paid…
The Founders Club – Sarasota Magazine
…And it's only the beginning, as developers target a wealthy niche market with carefully engineered golf communities designed to preserve the land and feed the demand of aging baby boomers searching for an amenity-laden lifestyle.
"Actually, it's overdue," says Tom Brown of U.S. Assets Group, developer of The Founders. "Sarasota is just coming into its own, and has a far greater potential than, say, Naples or other parts of Florida."
A study by Brown's company that analyzed the Naples area found 25 golf clubs with approximately 9,000 people who paid from $75,000 to $260,000 for their memberships. Brown also recalls working projects in Vero Beach, where five clubs had fees beginning at $100,000, and hearing of members who had looked first in Sarasota.
"They wanted these upscale environments here and had to go elsewhere," Brown says.
Much like the condominium boom in downtown Sarasota, a spillover from other parts of Florida's west coast has been in the works for several years. For example, as competition between clubs increased and available land decreased, Naples had nowhere to grow; and developers looked elsewhere, leap-frogging Fort Myers and Lee County and landing squarely on Sarasota's highly coveted affluent demographic…
The Founders Club – Sarasota Herald-Tribune
…On Friday, however, as county officials, developers, marketing executives and caterers, gathered under a white tent, the talk was about golf and how the $300 million Founder's project will set standards for other courses and how the unfinished country club has already spawned imitators…
…Jones, based just outside Paolo Alto, Calif., said his latest creation, set to open by the year's end, ahead of the competition, will stand above those others by emphasizing an imaginative design with indigenous fauna and flora. The result will be a club that "looks like it was always there."
The 6,900-yard course at Fruitville Road, three miles east of Interstate 75, is sculpted around wetlands, slash pines, palmettos and live oaks draped with Spanish moss. It's being developed by the Starling Group and U.S. Assets Group, the developer of Sarasota's Beau Ciel condominium tower.
Two-hundred sixty-two estate homes on ¾-acre lots will surround the course and pay for its construction. The houses will range from $700,000 to more than $3 million, said Thomas Brown, a principal owner of Sarasota-based U.S. Assets. Already, 200 of the home sites have sold, he said.
Golf Hall at The Founders Club – Sarasota Herald-Tribune
"…It's a subtle, nuanced golf course," Jones says, "that will repeatedly challenge repeat players, with tees placed to accommodate players of varied sizes and strengths."
"But no matter their score on the course, players are sure to be pleased when it's time to 'go get a drink.'"
Golf Hall, named for the clubhouse that Col. J. Hamilton Gillespie built 100 years ago at his nine-hole course in Sarasota, was unveiled a week ago in a ceremony that was, like The Founders Club, private and dignified and heavy on the Scottish influences. A bagpipe band played and the Highland Dancers from Riverview High School danced. And even the developers of the 700-acre, 262-home community and "core" golf course—Tom Brown, Jay Tallman and Fred Starling—wore plaid golf attire.
Architect Sol Fleischmann, of Tampa's FleischmannGarcia, and interior designer Lori Fountain, of FT Designs, have created a 24,000-square-foot clubhouse with the traditional, low-country architecture found in the coastal South. Twelve miles from the coast (The Founders Club is east of Interstate 75 on Fruitville Road), the architecture is appropriate for the site, which features hundreds of moss-draped live oaks.
Outside, it features wide verandas, a steeply pitched roof with simulated slate shingles, six copper-roofed dormers, tall windows with dark-green shutters, and detailed columns on a brick base. The deep shadows will cool golfers during the summer.
Fountain's interiors are dark and calming, with wood floors, bead-board ceilings and white trimwork. The ceiling details are elaborate, underscoring the interior designer's role in creating the interior architecture, and not just coordinating colors and furnishings.
Fountain has worked with The Founders Club's co-developer, U.S. Assets Group, before. She designed the clubhouse and ouse and three lobbies at en Provence on Longboat Key, and the amenity level at the new Orchid Beach Club on Lido Key.
Fountain says the theme at Golf Hall was to "make it look like it's been there since the early 1900s, to give it a homey feeling." She's done so with weathered brick and copper elements, native woods and pecky-cypress wainscoting. There's plenty of overstuffed leather furniture and even some antiques, including an 1840s English library cabinet that will house trophies.
The ambience continues in the locker rooms, where the lockers are made of cherry and mahogany. The men's locker has a card room with poker tables and a big-screen television, while the women have a private sitting room.
There's also an exercise room and massage room in the fitness center, along with the requisite golf shop. And, in a most non-traditional touch, the golf course has a fax machine on the ninth green, so that members can advance their lunch orders to the kitchen.
Col. Gillespie could not have imagined such a thing.
Nor could the developers have imagined that they would have sold 130 home sites (starting at $400,000) to end users just a year and a half after starting sales.
