Table of Contents
1000 North, the members-only club and dining brand co-founded by Jordan and a roster of sports and media figures, announced this week that the Sarasota location has gone under contract to purchase an adjacent property in downtown Sarasota. The move comes while the club is still under construction, driven by membership demand that has already outrun the projections the team set before building began.
Chief operating officer Alex Elshimy said the additional parcel totals 10,500 square feet. The existing club, set inside the BLVD Sarasota building at 520 N. Tamiami Trail near the corner of Boulevard of the Arts and North Tamiami Trail, spans just over 13,000 square feet. The new parcel sits directly west of the BLVD building, between it and The Sarasota Modern hotel. An older, unoccupied home currently stands on the site. Whether the expanded space will be physically connected to the existing building or developed as a standalone structure has not been decided.
"Membership demand exceeded the company's early projections," Elshimy said, describing it as having given the team the confidence to move forward with the purchase. The annual membership fee at the Sarasota location is $6,000. The initiation cost has not been disclosed, though the original Jupiter location charges $5,000 as an initiation fee on top of a $5,000 annual fee.
Who is behind it
The club was originally founded in Jupiter, Florida by developer Ira Fenton alongside a group of partners that reads like a hall of fame shortlist. Jordan, the six-time NBA champion and basketball's most commercially dominant figure, is among the founders, as are golf legend Ernie Els, former New York Giants running back Tucker Frederickson, tennis great Serena Williams, broadcaster Ahmad Rashad, television personality Bryant Gumbel, wine industry leader Bill Terlato, and Marvin Shanken, publisher of Wine Spectator.
The Sarasota expansion is a collaboration between Fenton and local developer Kevin Daves, who built The Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Residences in Sarasota and The Concession Golf Club near Lakewood Ranch. First Horizon Bank is the financing partner for the project, which is expected to create roughly 40 new jobs. General Manager Tim Fanning and Elshimy lead the operational team.
What the club is
1000 North is not a restaurant that also has a members area. The entire operation is members-only, a private social environment where food anchors the experience without wholly defining it. The Sarasota location will span 2 levels, with private dining rooms, a wine lounge, members' wine and liquor lockers, a piano bar and an upstairs lounge.
The menu will center on steaks, seafood and seasonal ingredients, with tasting menus, tableside French service and a roster of visiting international chefs rotating through. Tableside French service means dishes are finished, assembled and presented beside the table rather than plated in the kitchen, giving the meal a layer of theater that the club clearly intends as a feature rather than an affectation. Programming will include salon-style talks and culinary events, and the concierge offering extends to curating international travel, dining and cultural experiences for members.
The build-out has been approached with the same attention to specificity as the menu. Walnut millwork runs throughout the space, more than 2.1 miles of it according to the club's own reckoning, roughly the distance from the front door to St. Armands Circle. Brass-accented wine lockers, a quartzite bar top with green veining and a lighting plan designed by JKM Luxury Lighting Design that shifts through the day give the space a deliberately curated sensibility. The sound system is embedded, with no visible speakers. A generator system protects the wine rooms and critical equipment. The televisions support Bluetooth pairing with personal earbuds, with capacity for up to 2,000 devices per screen.
Members who sign up before opening day get private hard-hat walkthroughs of the site under construction, a detail that turns the build period itself into a membership benefit.
The Sarasota context
The club is due to open this fall, making it among the more substantial additions to a Sarasota luxury landscape that has grown notably more competitive in recent years. The BLVD building sits near the entrance to the Rosemary District, a part of downtown that has changed considerably as the city has drawn more high-net-worth residents from the northeast and Midwest.
Jordan's broader business interests have long extended well beyond basketball. His net worth has been estimated at over $3 billion, built on his Nike Jordan Brand partnership, his former majority ownership of the Charlotte Hornets and investments spanning restaurants, car dealerships and now private hospitality. 1000 North fits the pattern: a brand play that pairs exclusivity with his name, in a market where that combination continues to have commercial weight.
