Sarasota County commissioners approved a $13.1 million purchase of a building on North Lakewood Ranch Boulevard on Wednesday, Aug. 26.

The property at 4081 N. Lakewood Ranch Blvd. will become a Public Utilities Administration Building, according to the county's action agenda. The seller is Centauri Specialty Insurance Company, which lists its corporate headquarters at the address.

Commissioners adopted the purchase resolution as part of a package that also added two new capital improvement projects to the county's Fiscal Year 2026–2030 plan. A companion budget amendment appropriated $15.3 million for the utilities building project and $543,000 for a separate project called "Little BOB Campus Improvements." The combined appropriation totals $15.84 million.

The $543,000 Little BOB project concerns the county's Little BOB facility at 8781 Bee Ridge Road, not the separate BOB operations center. The linked Sarasota News Leader reporting identifies the BOB building as the county's operations center at 1001 Sarasota Center Blvd. The action agenda does not provide a line-item explanation for the difference between the $13.1 million purchase price and the $15.3 million utilities-building appropriation.

The acquisition fits a broader push by Sarasota County to expand government facilities east of Interstate 75. Your Observer reported in May that the county had three active projects in the area totaling more than $60 million in construction and design, including a new planning and development services center, a library expansion and a historical center.

Commissioner Teresa Mast, who represents District 1, has called infrastructure her top priority. In May, Mast told Your Observer she supports master-planned communities like Lakewood Ranch as development models, saying of east-county growth: "It has to be a premier project for me to vote for it."

The vote came a day after the county held its first County Commission meeting at its new $100.15 million Administration Center at 1 Apex Road, following a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Aug. 25. County officials have said the former downtown administration building would have required about $50 million in upgrades to remain operational.

The action agenda listed the vote outcome as "adopted/approved/authorized." The action agenda did not provide an individual commissioner-by-commissioner tally.