Valid Concerns Over Proposed High School Location in Parrish

The Manatee School District is planning to build a new high school on a 100-acre site in Parrish. Nearby residents say that the roads surrounding the proposed campus are not suitable for that sort of intensity and that a school of that size would destroy the rural neighborhood. District staff says that all concerns will be addressed, but a recent visit to the site raised serious doubts as to compatibility. One neighbor is hoping school board members will also see the location with their own eyes before making a final decision to move forward.

The neighborhood that surrounds the intersection of Martha Road and 69th Street East in Parrish is a gorgeous slice of pastoral old Florida. Spanish moss drips from oak trees along canopy roads that suggest a southern charm and beauty of days gone by. Indeed, there aren’t too many places like it remaining in Manatee County, especially in this neighborhood, which has been hemmed in on all sides by the wave of dense, cookie-cutter construction that has washed over our county's beautiful hinterlands these past several years.

Tammy Vaughan and her husband built their home on three and a half-acres off Martha Road thirteen years ago and have seen plenty of change come to Parrish in that time. Vaughan was kind enough to give me a golf-cart tour of the neighborhood when I visited last week, pointing out neighbors’ homes and popular four-wheeler routes of neighborhood kids as we criss-crossed the narrow streets at low speed. The school district recently purchased a shuttered nursery adjacent to a piece of property it long ago bought from developer Pat Neal for around $2 million. The district is poised to build a new high school on the 100-acre footprint within the next three years to facilitate rapid growth in the surrounding area.

Vaughan pointed to the narrow width of 69th Street East, which borders the proposed campus, and at one point we watch as a large truck and a regular-sized vehicle have to pull off in order to get by each other at a spot where the road, which is lined by deep drainage ditches on both sides, tapers. "Imagine school buses trying to do that,“ says Vaughan. "The district says that no buses will be used on this street, but they are already using them now (for the nearby elementary and middle schools) and they've got to do the same thing when a car is coming at one of those points.“ She notes that they’ll also have high school-aged students who are late for class and given to drive above the posted speed limit already, in addition to pedestrians who might walk to school from nearby houses. "Life out here the way we know it, will be over.“

We turn around and check out the part of Martha Road that forms a right angle along the campus border. It too is suspiciously narrow with little in the way of options for widening. The district says that the only entrance to the school will be parallel from 69th Street on the much more adequately-sized Erie Road but again, Vaughan notes that all perimeter streets will receive a massive influx of new traffic heading toward the school’s entrance, as not every driver will approach via Erie Road.

She and other neighbors think the school district should consider other locations, of which Parrish has plenty, many of which are surrounded by density and commercial development that are much more compatible with a brand new high school campus. She concedes that some of it is a personal desire not to have the tranquil neighborhood she lives in turned upside down but also says that doesn’t mean the area is a suitable location. "Whenever someone wants to build something like this, you’re always going to have people in the neighborhood who complain,“ said Vaughan. "I think school board members are used to that and are always expecting it. Sure, there’s a little bit of Ônot in my backyard,’ for me, but that doesn’t mean it’s still not the wrong location to build a school.“

A high school has an enormous footprint and it immediately changes any area when one is erected. All one has to do is look around the county to see examples in which good and poor selections for campus locations have been made. One of the best examples of a highly-functional model is Lakewood Ranch High School in east county, where the county, school district and developers partnered to build a campus that has been a win-win for all involved.

The county got Schroeder Manatee Ranch to donate land that could be used for an adjacent, county-maintained athletic field complex in exchange for widening Lakewood Ranch Boulevard. The east county location for Manatee Technical College was then added to the same footprint. The shared resources make for better utilization of land that would otherwise be completely shuttered during off-school hours, while the park provides a buffer between the school and nearby developments, of which there are now plenty.

Map comparison: Top: proposed site for the Parrish high school. Bottom: the footprint for Lakewood Ranch High, MTC east and the county maintained athletic park.

Parrish is still largely undeveloped, and it’s hard to imagine that suitable land along 301 with access roads capable of sustaining better entrance points, conservation buffers and room for a county-managed park facility couldn’t be found. Vaughan worries that district staff are so determined to use the current site that better long-term options haven’t been fully considered. She noted that the district also owns another 60-acre site in Parrish that it had once hoped to utilize for a future campus of some sort but later realized that a nearby railroad track would have caused every single bus to stop and open its door both coming and going, leading them to decide it would not be feasible for use. She suggested the district consider selling that and the 100-acres in question or look to do a land swap that might yield a more suitable campus.

"More than anything, I just hope that all five of our school board members will do what you did today,“ said Vaughan. "I just want them to drive out and see this location, see the streets and the neighborhoods and ask themselves if this makes sense for a high school, not just vote for something this permanent with this big of an impact because of what staff tells them in a presentation.“

Dennis Maley is a featured columnist for The Bradenton Times. His column appears each Thursday and Sunday. He is the author of the novel, A Long Road Home, and the brand new short story collection, Casting Shadows, which can be ordered in paperback here, or in the Amazon Kindle store here.