Corporate housing to be built for Gulfshore Playhouse actors, workers

Original article: https://www.gulfshorebusiness.com/corporate-housing-gulfshore-playhouse-actors-workers/
BY Aisling.Swift | December 16, 2024

Naples City Council approved a new corporate-housing concept that will allow traveling actors, designers and other theater professionals to live next door to Gulfshore Playhouse while they work, rehearse and perform.

Naples City Council on Dec. 11 unanimously approved a conditional-use petition to allow the Wynn family, as Downtown Naples LLC, to build 17 third-floor transient units — 400-square-foot studio apartments — within a three-story, 45,000-square-foot mixed-use development at 1090 First Ave. S. The site is just west of the theater and north of the new city parking garage in the city’s design district.

“This is a partnership between the Wynns and the Playhouse to … provide a convenient place for guest artists to stay when they come into town to rehearse and perform a production,” land-use attorney Noel Davies told Council. “… Access for the guest artists will be through state-of-the-art phone-app technology.”

The project includes a 20-year lease between Gulfshore Playhouse and the Wynn family, with Gulfshore Playhouse responsible for managing the studio apartments and paying rent directly to Downtown Naples LLC. The idea has been five years in the making.

“This is not the transient lodging request you’re accustomed to hearing,” Davies said, calling it more like corporate or workforce housing.

Gulfshore Playhouse CEO Kristen Coury, who is married to Michael Wynn, told Council they hold casting calls in New York City, where they can tap a large pool of higher-caliber actors and theater professionals, and they’ve been using Airbnbs and rentals countywide, which requires Gulfshore Playhouse to pay for car rentals.

“We’ve had to house 20 or 30 at a time,” Coury said. “… With two theaters running at the same time, it is incumbent upon us to have 54 beds this year — and that number could continue to grow. … Many of our apartments … are two-bedroom apartments, and even though they’re two-bedroom, two-bath, they still don’t want to share an apartment with somebody else.”

During Hurricane Ian, she said, seven first-floor units they’d rented at Jade Apartments flooded and actors, who were evacuated to Miami, lost all their possessions. They were evacuated again during Hurricane Milton this year due to fears of storm surge. The theater has been using Stillwater Cove apartments nearby, she said, but no longer rent there due to safety concerns.

“We have a staff of three company managers whose job it is to move our visiting artists in and out to clean the apartments,” Coury said, adding that actors usually stay eight weeks, half for rehearsals and half for performances, while designers usually stay two to four weeks.

The 45,000-square foot mixed-use development will feature 16,422 square feet of commercial space, including a small theater platform, 7,000- to 8,000-square-foot ground-floor restaurant and outdoor dining geared toward theatergoers. The second floor will offer 15,181 square feet of office space, half for Gulfshore Playhouse. In addition to the studio apartments, a larger apartment will be used by the Wynn family.

The project team also includes Beck Architectural Group, Barraco and Associates Inc., transportation engineers Trebilcock Consulting Solutions, landscape architects Windham Studio Inc. and Sesco Lighting. The multiuse development is part of a larger project involving the city, the Wynns and Gulfshore Playhouse.

A four-level, 366-space public garage, the city’s third, is being built on the southwest corner of 12th Street and First Avenue South, west of Goodlette-Frank Road next to the Naples Square development. The land was provided by the Wynn family and Gulfshore Playhouse, whose new theater will use 123 parking spaces.

The garage is being funded by the city Community Redevelopment Agency — money from taxpayers whose homes and businesses are within the 550-acre CRA district, which is bounded by Seventh Avenue North, Gordon River, Sixth Avenue South and Third Street South. Last month, the CRA approved a change to the theater’s valet-parking contract, giving it 123 spaces on the first two floors, instead of the top floor, three hours before each theater show date.

Completion is expected in early February.

Council member Beth Petrunoff asked if Gulfshore Playhouse had considered hotel rooms, but Coury said that’s too costly, $100 to $300 per night, and the union, Actors Equity Association, requires a kitchen. Gulfshore Playhouse would pay Downtown Naples LLC $1,500 monthly per theater professional.

The development is expected to break ground at the end of the first quarter of 2025, with completion in late 2025 or early 2026. Last month, the Planning Advisory Board recommended approval and required Downtown Naples LLC to record a restrictive covenant, approved by the city attorney, to limit transient lodging to Gulfshore Playhouse artists. Before building permits can be issued, the developer needs final design approval by the Design Review Board.

Construction can’t begin until the garage is completed because the property is being used for construction staging.