Opera Naples eyes Bayshore Drive for $50M opera house

After years of searching, Opera Naples may be closing in on a site for a permanent home.

Two developers have made separate offers to buy a county-owned lot on Bayshore Drive in East Naples, both with the intention of building a new opera house.

In light of the offers, the county has essentially put the 17-acre site up for bid after having it sit vacant more than a decade.

Interested buyers and developers can submit offers and proposals over the next couple months for how they would use the land. Commissioners will then decide if they want to sell.

Redevelopers have long been hoping to build an opera house on Bayshore Drive.

The county’s community redevelopment agency for the area bought the site in 2006 for $4.6 million, then quickly rezoned it to allow for a 350-seat opera house and up to 40 units of condominiums or residential units to go along with some stores and shopping.

“We wanted that to become a cultural village,” said Jean Jourdan, operations manager for a community redevelopment agency. “We want the mixed-use where it could have residential units to go along with commercial and a parking garage for a theater.”

The county offered the site to Opera Naples when the local organization began its search for a permanent home around the same time the county bought the land.

Opera Naples turned it down then. But with the Naples Botanical Garden now up and running just down the road and a number of high-end developments creeping across the Naples city limits toward Bayshore, the site is looking more feasible, said Jerry Goldberg, chairman of the Opera Naples board of directors.

“It wasn’t anything against Bayshore; it was just back in 2006, we didn’t think it would be practical to raise the tens of millions of dollars needed to build a proper opera house,” Goldberg said. “Now I believe we would be successful in raising the funds for a site there. With the botanical garden anchoring one end, this performing arts venue would anchor the second end. In real estate, it takes two anchors.”

The organization is hoping for a 1,000-seat venue that would model its interior design and seating after La Fenice theater in Venice.

“That’s the shape and size we want,” Goldberg said. “It would give us about 450 seats on the orchestra floor. It’s a tall multilevel theater with a top level mezzanine that allows for outstanding acoustics. It also allows us to close off the boxes, so the theater can appear to be a smaller 450 seats when we want something more intimate.”

The land is worth $3.23 million, according to the most recent county-funded appraisal. A current appraisal is underway.

Both developer proposals have estimated it will cost $50 million to build the opera house.

The Banroc Corp., owned by Naples developer Harry Bandinel, has offered $3.5 million for the site or the value that will be determined once the current appraisal is finished, whichever is cheaper.

Banroc has proposed to build an 850-seat opera house, along with an open air park, a walking village for shops, restaurants, boutiques and art galleries, 30 condos and a small boathouse and kayak rental. Banroc estimates it would invest over $90 million in the total project.

The second proposal is from Arno Inc., owned by Naples developer Arno de Villiers, which has offered the county $3.2 million for the site.

Arno Inc. would build a 1,000-seat theater along with a walking village of boutiques, shops and restaurants, along with a village square and covered farmer’s market.