My wife and I have been homeowners in Manatee County for 30 years and permanent residents for about half that time. We now reside full-time on Anna Maria Island, where we built a new home in 2014. It is reasonable in size and it has only one elevated floor, elevated to meet the latest codes. We love this area and settled here by choice after living in three different countries and spending time in 20 others.
I wish to express my feelings about this parking garage which is causing so much frustration and dissatisfaction. Mostly, I would like to present a totally different approach.
Building a multi-floor garage is not the ideal solution. First of all, it will only contain the additional number of cars generated by all the new construction surrounding the Bradenton area for at best a year. What will we do in another year – build a second garage, and then a third, as hundreds of new homes are popping up like mushrooms all around our area?
The land area of Anna Maria is approximately 0.73 square miles or less than 2 square kilometers. During the winter season, there are approximately 6,500 residents on this Island, making it a population density of 8,900 people per square mile. The average population density in the U.S. is 37 people per square kilometer or 96 per square mile. We are therefore already 93 times more populated than the national average.
The problem is that this situation cannot be alleviated by adding more parking capacity. What we need is to create one or more new beaches outside of this small spit of land called Anna Maria Island.
Manatee County, according to Google search and the “Welcome to Manatee County” literature, has nearly 150 miles of “pristine coastline.” However, it seems that practically all the road signs indicating the direction to beaches in Manatee County point only toward Anna Maria Island.
I have heard that the cost of this garage may be as high as $45 million. Even if it should turn out to be half that much, I believe that a lot of vacant land could be acquired in that price range to establish a completely new “beach” area with plenty of parking spaces. This would tremendously reduce the usual gridlock which happens regularly when all the beachgoers guided by all the existing road signs arrive on this already crowded residential island.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
Raymond J. Mathieu
Holmes Beach
