Orange Juice Anyone?

As Realtors in Sarasota, my wife Liz and I drive around Sarasota a lot showing property for RE/MAX Alliance Group. One of the neighborhoods that we sell and list that always holds fond memories, especially for Liz, is Southgate. Liz, her mom and her sister lived there for over 30 years on a little one block street near Shade Avenue and Webber Street. At the time her mom purchased the home in the early 1960’s, the neighborhood was fairly new and she paid about $16,000 for the house. She loved the location – it was close to schools and shopping and was a safe neighborhood where the kids could ride their bikes to almost everywhere they wanted to go. The other great thing about the house was the row of orange trees in the backyard.The reason most of those home had a row of orange trees goes to the history of Southgate.

According to a Sarasota Herald Tribune, in the mid-1950s, Sarasota developers Rolland King and Frank Smith purchased 1,240 acres of citrus groves that had originally been planted by Bertha Honore Potter, the Chicago socialite who purchased 80,000 acres of land in Sarasota County beginning with her arrival in 1910. When King and Smith began developing South Gate, the groves were being worked by Minute Maid. Some of the original citrus trees are still growing in the back yards of some South Gate homes today.

In the mid-1950s, there were few construction companies that could undertake such a large-scale project. The same was true for the real estate industry. Many small firms had a hand in building and selling South Gate. Deciding who would build where was simple. Every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, Smith and King would entice real estate agents with free orange juice and coffee. They would sell plots of land while sitting around the large conference table. Groundbreaking occurred in 1955 for the first South Gate homes near Siesta Drive and School Avenue. By 1956, the pair, who had drawn blueprints for the first phase by hand, had already sold 1,250 lots. Over the next 15 years, South Gate added more than 2,000 homes.

The first three model homes opened in March 1955. The first home sold was at 2207 Siesta Drive. The Southgate Post Office opened March 30, 1957. The South Gate Shopping Center became Westfield SouthGate then Westfield Siesta Key, opened that year, as did some of the shops in the Southgate Village along Siesta Drive east of the Post Office.

Homes in Southgate now sell anywhere from $265,000 to upward of $700,000 along Phillippi Creek. Although the homes plotted along streets named after different varieties of oranges may seem ordinary today, the development changed Sarasota, bringing in more developers with grand-scale plans. It was the precursor to places like Lakewood Ranch and Palmer Ranch. And to this day, Liz laughs about all the frozen orange juice that her mom made from the oranges she picked - it literally filled the freezer and all of it from the trees in her backyard!

If you are looking for a great neighborhood to buy a home in Sarasota, Southgate is certainly one of them! Give me a call and I'll join you over a glass of orange juice to talk about it!