The historic Charles Ringling Building at 1927 Ringling Blvd. has a new owner and a new purpose. After sitting vacant since January 2021, when its last tenant, Sarasota Sky Bar & Club, closed, the three-story, 11,720-square-foot structure is getting ready to reopen in late December as the Venue 1927 Event Center.

The nearly century-old building was constructed in 1926, designed by architects Clas, Shepherd & Clas and built by the Martin L. Wread Company in the Spanish Mediterranean Revival style that was especially popular in Florida during the 1920s land boom. According to the historical marker out front, the second floor once housed Charles Ringling’s own offices and meeting rooms, while the ground floor was home to Triangle Drug Store and Clarence Saunders Grocery. The building also operated as Barth I. G. A. Grocery in the 1930s and through the 1950s, and subsequently housed a succession of restaurants and nightclubs. If you lived here in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you might remember Bumpers and Margarita Maggie’s, to name a couple.

Rafael Arguelles, who owns the two Latin Quarters restaurants in Sarasota, purchased the property on Aug. 14, 2025, for $2.5 million. He says the renovation will be purely cosmetic—new flooring, updated bathrooms, fixtures throughout and equipment—but “nothing structural, nothing to change its footprint,” he says. The exterior already has a fresh coat of paint.

Before Arguelles, 56, purchased the property, the Charles Ringling Building had been slated for a different transformation. In 2022, a developer planned to turn it into an upscale live-music venue called SRQUS—pronounced “circus”—with a mezzanine for VIP guests and a speakeasy-style social club on the top floor. That plan never materialized, and the building, which had sold for about $2.1 million, remained vacant until Arguelles acquired it.

Arguelles, who moved to Sarasota from Chicago 25 years ago and is originally from Puerto Rico, says he'd been searching for a downtown space like this for two years. The first two floors can hold up to roughly 800 people, and the third—about 6,000 square feet—will be used as business offices for lease. Half of that upper level is already leased to a contractor and the local architecture firm Architura Space Planning and Design; movable walls will separate the remaining dozen or so spaces to preserve the building’s historic integrity.

Venue 1927 will rent for roughly $2,000 to $5,000, not including catering. Guests will have access to three nearby free parking garages. As for food, “we’ll be happy to cater, but they can bring anyone else in that they like too,” Arguelles says.

Both Latin Quarters restaurants will continue to operate as usual, with Arguelles' daughters helping manage the downtown location. The family involvement is par for the course: every December, Latin Quarters' Beneva Road restaurant hosts a community gift giveaway, complete with appearances by Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus and bounce houses. Last year, they handed out 847 gifts, all funded by the family. “It’s something we just do ourselves,” Arguelles says.

The Beneva restaurant, just north of Fruitville Road in the strip mall that shares the Super Bravo supermarket, is a lively, unpretentious neighborhood restaurant known for flavorful meals at modest prices (many dishes hover around the $19 range). On weekend nights at the downtown location on Main Street, live bands play and the dance floor fills up, with lines out the door around midnight. The menu features Puerto Rican and broader Latin-American specialties, such as mofongo, arroz con gandules and plantains, alongside more standard fare. (Arguelles says the churrasco skirt steak with mofongo is his favorite dish.)

Arguelles, who jokes that he’s “the guy in the Bad Bunny shirts on weekends,” also plans to publish a book about his life titled The Falling of the Crown. Back when he lived in Chicago, he associated with the street gang known as the Almighty Latin King Nation. He later became a federal informant, wearing a hidden recorder and assisting law enforcement in the indictment of gang leaders. A 1997 article in the Chicago Tribune documented his cooperation, and his story was later referenced in media coverage of gang-conspiracy cases. The "Declassified: A King’s Ransom" episode of the documentary series Locked Up Abroad (season 15, episode five) follows Arguelles’ story and his decision to become a federal informant. The episode is available for streaming on platforms like Apple TV and DIRECTV.

It makes sense that Arguelles, a master of reinvention (he also runs a construction business specializing in remodels, flooring and framing), is the person reopening the 100-year-old building after its half-decade hiatus, this time for a new generation of celebration.

For more information or to book an event, call Iris Arguelles at (941) 567-8596.