Walk into Hanami Sushi, Cocktails & Grill on Fourth Street some evening this summer and the first thing you notice isn't the sushi case. It's the taxidermied bear standing guard near the entrance, or the chandeliers threaded through cherry blossom branches that climb the ceiling, or the open book on a stand showing a 1908 Japanese fable next to a shelf of antique teapots and dolls. Subtlety was never the plan here.
What you might not notice, unless someone tells you, is that you're standing in the one restaurant that has managed to stay open in this particular building since 2011. Locals in the Rosemary District have joked for years that 1525 Fourth Street is cursed. Seven restaurants moved through the space in fifteen years. Hanami is the eighth tenant, and as of this August it's still serving dinner, which by the building's own track record makes it something of an outlier.
Fifteen Years, Seven Restaurants
The building dates to 1925, when it was known as The Citrus Exchange and Florida citrus was packed and shipped from that address across the country. Its second life as a restaurant space started in 2011, and what followed reads less like bad luck and more like a pattern.
| Tenant | Years Open | Approximate Run |
|---|---|---|
| Mad Crow Brewery & Grill | 2011 | about a year |
| Darwin's on 4th | 2012 to 2015 | about three years |
| Servandos | 2015 to 2017 | about two years |
| Salsas & Boogaloo Restaurant & Lounge | 2017 | about a year |
| Catrina's Tacos and Tequila | 2018 to 2019 | about a year |
| Oasis Restaurant & Bar | 2020 to 2023 | about three years |
| Nancy's BBQ | 2023 to 2024 | about a year |
Average that out and no concept lasted much past the two-year mark before the next one arrived. Something about the address kept resetting the clock.
What a Year and a Half of Renovation Actually Bought
Tsunami Restaurant Services, the group behind the longtime Main Street favorite Tsunami Sushi & Hibachi, signed the lease on 1525 Fourth Street in August 2024. Hanami didn't open until April 10, 2026. That gap, about a year and a half from signed lease to first dinner service, is longer than the entire operating life of at least three of the building's previous tenants.
The renovation wasn't cosmetic. Crews moved the front entrance, removed an apartment unit that had been blocking windows, changed the angle of the bar, stripped drywall to expose the original century-old brick, and repainted the exterior white. Lee DeLieto Jr., the broker who represented both tenant and landlord on the lease, put it simply when the restaurant opened: the building's owners, the Cornelius family, needed a tenant willing to see the space for what it could become rather than treat it as a shell to fill quickly.
Co-owner Samuel Ray addressed the neighborhood's running joke directly when the doors finally opened.
"It's not cursed. It was a delicate line to make it our own and still be respectful of the building's past."
Every previous tenant had inherited the same bones and the same brick behind the same drywall. None of them stayed long enough, or slowed down enough, to do anything with it.
A Homecoming, and a Loss
Hanami isn't a new restaurant group testing the neighborhood. It's an established one relocating. Tsunami Sushi & Hibachi had anchored downtown Sarasota's dining scene for more than a decade before its owners decided to trade a compact Main Street footprint for room to grow in the Rosemary District. Ray led the renovation and documented much of the process on social media, while partners Jason Klamson and Jeffrey Karasawa kept the group's Lakewood Ranch location running. The three of them described the move less as a reinvention than a return, a homecoming for a menu that longtime regulars had been asking to see back in Sarasota proper.
Ray didn't get to see the second act fully play out. He died unexpectedly in April 2026, shortly after Hanami opened. A Sarasota Magazine review published that July described a small memorial near the entrance, a photograph and mementos honoring a man known around the neighboring Central Cocoanut community for his design sense and for the six-foot Laughing Buddha he kept outside his own home. The restaurant he helped rebuild from the studs up is still open because of the work he put in before he was gone.
The Rest of the Block Was Never the Problem
It would be easy to read the curse story as evidence that something was wrong with the Rosemary District itself. The opposite is closer to the truth. While 1525 Fourth Street cycled through eight names in fifteen years, the blocks around it kept filling in. Hanami's current neighbors include Station 400, Food + Beer, and Vin Cella Wine Cellar, part of a dining corridor that has grown steadily over the past decade even as this one address struggled to hold a tenant.
That's the part worth sitting with if you live nearby and have watched the turnover from your own front porch or bike commute. The neighborhood wasn't cursed. One specific building, with one specific set of physical quirks, kept getting treated like a blank box by operators moving fast. The first group willing to spend a year and a half restoring what was already there, brick and all, is the first one still standing.
If you're looking for a table on a Friday night, Hanami is at 1525 Fourth Street, open from 4:30 to 10 p.m. Go for the sushi. Stay long enough to notice the brick.
For more on what's changing across Sarasota's neighborhoods, including the shift happening a short walk away around downtown's waterfront, RSTS Group's recent coverage of downtown Sarasota tracks it in more detail, and our Sarasota neighborhood page stays current on what's moving through the broader market.
Whether you're already calling Sarasota home or just keeping an eye on it from a distance, RSTS Group is always glad to talk through what's changing block by block. Search All Homes currently listed in Sarasota to see what's out there.
