A 19,500-square-foot medical office building at 1970 Golf Street in downtown Sarasota sold for $8.43 million on July 1, and the new owners plan to convert it from a single-tenant property into a multi-tenant medical office hub.
Abdelrahman Ayyad, CEO of Maryland-based Regency Furniture, and his wife Sara Ayyad purchased the two-story building from 1970 Golf LLC, owned by Sarasota entrepreneur Jesse Biter, according to Sarasota County property records cited by the Business Observer. The sale price works out to roughly $432 per square foot.
The Ayyads, who live in Edgewater, Maryland, plan to renovate the building and lease it to multiple medical tenants. Construction is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026, though no permits have been filed yet and no contractor has been named publicly.
The building sat empty after its longtime anchor, Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute, vacated following more than 20 years at the address. FCS moved into a 60,000-square-foot space on the fourth and fifth floors of Sarasota Memorial's new Milman-Kover Cancer Pavilion at 1941 Waldemere Street, which opened June 12. The new facility nearly triples FCS's previous footprint, expanding from 19 exam rooms and 48 infusion chairs to 27 exam rooms and 80 infusion chairs.
Cameron Wilson, director of corporate realty services at Ian Black Real Estate, said downtown Sarasota's growing residential population has increased demand for conveniently located healthcare services, making medical office properties with on-site parking particularly attractive to investors. Wilson and partner Steve Horn represented the seller. Matthew Cook of Exit King Realty represented the buyers.
"The fact that this property has on-site parking made it even more appealing to potential buyers," Wilson said in a statement to the Business Observer.
The building, constructed in 2002, includes an attached two-story parking garage.
The sale comes as Sarasota's office market draws national attention. A Business Observer report on LoopNet data published July 20 ranked Sarasota No. 2 among U.S. cities for office investment in 2026, citing a 1.1% year-over-year increase in office-using employment and average asking rents of $37.46 per square foot. Medical office space in Southwest Florida carried a vacancy rate of just 5.4% over the past year, according to Matthews Real Estate data citing CoStar Group, well below the broader Sarasota office vacancy rate of 8.5% recorded in 2024.
Regency Furniture operates about 60 retail locations across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. No asking rents or tenant commitments for the renovated Golf Street building have been disclosed, and the Ayyads have not announced when the multi-tenant space would be ready for occupancy beyond the fourth-quarter construction start.
