Village at Beekman Place in Sarasota? (University, University Park: for sale, foreclosure, condo)

[ebaynu2u]

Good Morning all - I did a search for information on this community, Village at Beekman Place in Sarasota, and the latest post I found was a little dated (from 2009 I think). Does anyone have any current information or comments concerning this area? Has the area improved over the past several years? Is it in a flight path? Can anyone suggest any other similar communities with small single family homes priced in the lower $200's similar to this one? Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated. We are looking for a retirement home, older couple, no children at home. Need quiet community. Thanks!

[bbronston]

It's not current info but my parents lived in a condo there about 4 years ago and they liked it very much.

[TamRE]

Village at Beekman Place is located in northern Sarasota near the airport and is close to downtown, I-75, beaches, dining and shopping. It is a maintenance free community with a monthly homeowner association fee which includes cable, ground maintenance, rec facility and escrow reserve as well as two community pools and tennis and it is gated. There are currently 4 homes for sale in the community, see below.

[Sunshine Rules]

The community is located on the east side of Lockwood Ridge Road, south of University Parkway in north Sarasota county.

I know someone who's lived in Beekman Place for a number of years and she likes the community. It's well maintained and she is friends with a number of her neighbors.

The main complaint she has is about the huge church being built immediately next door to their community, to the south. Lockwood Ridge Road is a mixture of residential and commercial. Most of the east side of Lockwood south of Beekman Place is commercial/ retail. A couple of mini strip malls of commercial buildings for retail have been built recently on the west side of Lockwood just a couple of blocks south of Beekman Place. One has tenants but the owner of the other lost it to foreclosure and the strip mall has been vacant for quite awhile. I do know that zoning was changed a few years back so that a strip mall could potentially be built at both the NW corner of Lockwood Ridge and 27th/MLK and on the NE corner of Gocio Road and Lockwood. So Lockwood Ridge Road in that area appears to be going more commercial/retail than residential.

There are a couple of residential neighborhoods nearby to Beekman Place -- Whispering Crane, which is a newer community that was built back behind the old Eagles building on the east side of Lockwood, and Beverly Terrace, an old neighborhood of mostly small, inexpensive homes on the west side of Lockwood. Beveraly Terrace has what I would call very "relaxed" property standards. Another neighborhood, Desoto Acres starts at Lockwood Ridge Road just north of Beekman Place and runs west and north of there. It consists of mostly older, single family homes built on 1 - 5 acre lots. The guy that owns the property at the SE corner of Desoto Acres by Lockwood has been using the property for agriculture, growing vegetables.

I used to live in a subdivision just down the road from Beekman Place. We would get an occasional jet banking over the neighborhood as it headed in to the Sarasota airport. Maybe 1 or 2 a day.

So Beekman Place has a 2 thumbs up from the person I know that lives there, but mixed reviews on the surrounding area going commercial.