Public Needs to Keep an Eye on City Hall Sell Off

The City of Bradenton has long entertained the idea of selling the prime waterfront property on which its city hall and police headquarters have resided for the past two decades. As the planning begins to unfold, it will be critical that the press and citizens watchdog the process to ensure that the best interest of the people is paramount in transitioning this valuable public asset to private enterprises.

At a joint meeting on Thursday, Manatee County Commissioners and Bradenton City Council members discussed several shared concerns regarding affordable housing. During item number four on the agenda–Publicly Held Downtown Properties–city hall came up, along with the vacant former jail and the long-vacant parcel across from the First Presbyterian Church at Manatee Ave and 15th Street West where Bradenton’s old city hall once stood.

The county owns the latter two parcels and has most recently been discussing transitional housing and other services for homeless veterans in the old jail. However, Thursday’s discussions indicated that there is still not a consensus on the issue. The former city hall property, which was taken via public domain for the Ware’s Creek project, is jointly owned with the Southwest Florida Water Management District, who would receive the greater of $3 million or half of the sale price if and when it is sold off.

There is a strong argument that governments should not be sitting on prime downtown real estate that could be providing the community with considerable property tax revenue, along with a much-needed boost in workforce housing inventory, as well as commercial enterprises that would have an economic multiplier effect. However, this being government and this being Manatee County, it surely will not be as simple as that may seem.

Most concerning is the City of Bradenton, which seemed to have jumped the gun when, during a Capital Development Presentation in a January 26 meeting, City Administrator Rob Perry told council members that he’d had discussions with an interested party and mentioned the possibility of using an appraiser out of Jacksonville. A price tag of $10-11 million was thrown around (click here to watch).

The city does not have a good record when it comes to such matters, and most people who follow the city's government with interest will probably have a pretty unified guess as to who that anonymous entity might be.

In 2011, I covered the city’s efforts to redevelop the long-vacant downtown property formerly dubbed the Pink Palace, where the Manatee River Hotel once operated. The Downtown Development Authority was poised to throw millions of dollars in subsidies to an out-of-state developer who was represented by the chair of the DDA’s board. The city council had no issue with the matter until it turned on a dime and voted to contribute only a fraction of the originally-proposed figure of more than $6 million. I had broken the story regarding the conflict of interest and pointed out several reasons why it was bad public policy in a column that was the first to address the matter three days earlier and can only hope that it influenced the decision to reverse course, saving several million dollars in public funding for a project that still got done without that money.

There have been many other examples of questionable government actions when it comes to these sorts of high-value public-private partnerships, which usually translate to government subsidizing otherwise profitable private sector investments, ostensibly because they cannot get done without public dollars, even when both common sense and simple math suggest otherwise. The downtown public parking garage with its price increases and giveaway spaces are one example, as are the prime spots the county gave away on the Pink Palace deal.

Tax abatements, which the city has doled out quite liberally, are another. There was the promised redevelopment of the sandpile where the new Manatee Performing Arts Center was to be surrounded by retail commercial development with housing on top until the developer came back and told the city it wasn’t "economically viable" to do the promised commercial development and was allowed to proceed with nothing more than overpriced apartments that did nothing to bring the young professionals downtown as was intended in the original vision. There was the vote for a proposal that would bring another storage facility to the urban core rather than more desperately needed housing.

It should also be noted that it has been city officials who have consistently stymied historic efforts to alleviate the central corridor traffic congestion that will now play a major role in efforts to increase density downtown by vetoing any effort to use elevated roadways in the central corridor under the backward and antiquated notion that they would cause blight while hurting downtown businesses. In reality, not having them has caused brutal gridlock for at least half of each day and one seriously has to question how our current traffic nightmare is not far worse for downtown merchants than a few flyover lanes providing increased mobility would have been.

Don’t get me wrong, as I stated earlier, there is a good argument to relocate city hall and the police headquarters from the riverfront. However, few would be surprised if the asset were to be sold for a song to someone with political connections, while the public finances two expensive replacement buildings with the contract going to that very same entity.

It was disappointing to hear that the process had gotten that far without even discussions about what sort of zoning would be allowed, a key element in determining the value. Were the city to sell it first and consider rezones and comp plan amendments after the purchase once the developer decided on its use, the public would almost certainly lose since increasing things such as height and density would raise the property’s value drastically after the sale.

If city officials want to do right by the community, step one is to begin a conversation about what we want to see in place of the current city hall. Do we want a block of waterfront restaurants and boutiques that will draw more people to the downtown? Do we want to insist on such commercial operations on the ground floor with some workforce housing units on top? Selling it to the highest bidder and deciding such details later would only provide yet another opportunity for short-sided sell-offs over long-term cash cows that could go a long way to funding much-needed investments in less attractive areas of the urban core.

Bill Sanders has been the only member of the council who has seemed particularly interested in these discussions at city council meetings. When Sanders tried to steer the conversation toward what comes next during Thursday’s meeting, I wasn’t surprised to see him treated like the proverbial skunk at the garden party. Sanders likely knew that because the City of Bradenton doesn’t broadcast their meetings live online and waits until the following week to upload them to YouTube, this was likely the biggest audience for which his questions could be heard.

Bradenton’s downtown is at a crucial point in its development as people from all over the United States flock to the area. Whether it will manage to become a thriving river city with a bustling downtown entertainment district like San Antonio or Savannah will largely depend on its next few major moves, and whether it continues to operate like a sleepy Southern town run by a good old boy network that puts self-interest above public service. I’m rooting for its success, but my optimism is hedged by past experiences.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of ourweekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County governmentsince 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Clickherefor his bio. His 2016 short story collection, Casting Shadows, was recently reissued and is availablehere.