Bradenton City Council Approves Preliminary Plan for Manatee Avenue East Apartment Community Amid Controversy

BRADENTON – The preliminary plan for a 490-unit apartment complex called Villages at Riverwalk in east Bradenton was approved by the Bradenton City Council in a 4-1 vote, after receiving vocal opposition from Ward 4 Councilman Bemis Smith and a citizen who showed up to give comment.

The plan will give city-owned land between Riverside Drive East and Manatee Avenue East - including Glazier Gates Park - to NDC Construction (the complex would be developed by Atlanta-based Hatfield Development Co.). In exchange, NDC will give the city a plot of land equal in size that would extend the Riverwalk Park.

The project effectively replaces a high-rise condominium project that had been previously planned for the latter plot of land, which consists of 20 acres.

The 4-1 vote followed a November 5 workshop during which the plan was discussed. Much of the opposition to the project sprung from the short notice given to the public about the presentation at the meeting, which Smith and Jackie Atwood, a city resident who owns a home in the project's designated area, expressed at length. Several current residents would have their homes surrounded by the planned apartments and townhouses. 

NDC President Ron Allen and representing attorney Ed Vogler presented to the council a modified version of the plan they had showed at the workshop.

Vogler told the council that the project "is conceived to be an urban-residential but mixed use community," and would function as an "urban walkable village" with retail and other amenities. He added, "this is going to set East Bradenton alive and be the catalyst for redevelopment ... if you want to redevelop this city, you need to have residents working and living [in the downtown area]."

Praising the design of the planned complex, Ward 3 Councilman Patrick Roff said he believed that millennials and baby boomers will desire to live in it. "As I look at wanting to develop Ward 3, what I'm looking at is young families and empty-nesters to come into my neighborhoods in disrepair, and put their sweat and equity into those homes, and I think this will harvest that group of people," he added.

Allen advised that NDC had attempted to contact the residents that the project's land area currently envelops, but the firm was not successful in coming to agreement "from an economic standpoint, or to sell or be part of the project." He added, "so what we tried to do is design [the project around their properties]."

One of those residents, Bonnie Atwood, was present at the meeting to voice opposition to the project. Atwood claimed that she had not been contacted by the developer, and added that she was "stunned" that there was not more than one given day of notice for the item for Wednesday's meeting.

"To have to live in a fish bowl of a park, you are going to severely restrict the enjoyment [of current residents]," Atwood said, and went on to emotionally tell council members she would never consider allowing a development to be built around their homes, were their roles reversed.

Before the vote, Smith said his issue was not with the project itself, but with the process that it went through before approval.

"I like the design primarily," he said, but objected to what he called "the obfuscation, the lack of transparency, and the lack of community input" in the process. He later added that the council was "giving way too much deference to making a good business deal, that we are not being fair to our citizens." Smith, who represents the ward that the project will be developed in, asked if his colleagues would be happy about the complex if it were in their ward.

Near end of discussion, a motion made by Smith to deny approval of the current plan died for lack of a second. Following that motion's failure, Ward 5 Councilman Harold Byrd said the council "should make a formal commitment to work with the residents and that community; and developers on making that extension of the Riverwalk and that park high priorities."

Ward 1 Councilman Gene Gallo then made a motion that "this council commit, along with a strong suggestion that the developers assist us, to see that the concerns of the residents are met at the issue of privacy." That motion passed before the early plan was approved by the council.

A map of Villages at Riverwalk that was shown at the meeting on television screens. The white boxes represent residents' homes that the developer would build around.