The Neighborhood Report – Lido Shores
Lido Shores is home to an array of luxurious homes.
Established in 1950 and nestled between St. Armands and Longboat Key, Lido Shores is an intimate oasis of approximately one hundred homes. The waterfront properties have frontage on Pansy Bayou, Sarasota Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and New Pass, which provide direct deep water boating access to the Gulf of Mexico or Sarasota Bay.
Lido Shore’s location is ideal, within walking distance of St. Armands Circle and Mote Marine, and just a few miles from downtown Sarasota with its restaurants and myriad of cultural activities. Residents have a private beach with pavilion directly on the Gulf of Mexico. The voluntary and friendly Lido Shores Property Owners Association organizes social activities including sunset parties, a Fall House Tour with Dinner, and Spring Beach Barbecue. Some of the most elegant homes in Sarasota are located on Westway Drive, often called “The Rodeo Drive of Sarasota.”
An In-Depth Look – Lido Shores
Lido Shores has a unique place in architectural history. Beginning in the early 1940s, a group of local architects embraced the visions of Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph to create a regional modernism that came to be known as The Sarasota School of Architecture. Their designs incorporated new and native materials such as cypress, plate glass and terrazzo floors, as well as structures such as roof overhangs, louvered walls and shutters to provide ventilation in the subtropical Sarasota climate. Tim Seibert, Gene Leedy, Carl Abbott and Jack West are leading names of this regional style. In the early 1950s, the progressive developer Philip Hiss hired Paul Rudolph to design a colony of such climate-sensitive modernism creating Lido Shores. The neighborhood still contains several very important examples of the original Sarasota School of Architecture.
Today, Lido Shores continues to have some of the most architecturally significant homes in Southwest Florida designed by well recognized and talented current architects such as Jonathan Parks and Guy Peterson in a modernist style, as well as Clifford Scholz with his palladium designs.
Market Activity – Lido Shores
An area property specialist from Michael Saunders & Company’s St. Armands office, Christina Landry keeps her fingers on the pulse of the trends and figures that shape the local market activity. She reports that there are currently 11 properties available on Lido Shores listed from $779,000 to $10,000,000 and ranging from 2,000 to 6,600 square feet. Since the beginning of 2009, 10 residences have sold. Lido Shore’s Westway Drive is home to two of the most expensive Sarasota properties sold during the past year, including the recent purchase of 1333 Westway Drive for $8,400,000.
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