Manatee County Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge seeks at-large seat

Kevin Van Ostenbridge notes that he is the only sitting commissioner who was born and raised in Manatee County.

“My grandmother used to say that Bradenton became a concrete jungle when they four-laned Manatee Avenue,” he said. 

Van Ostenbridge currently represents District 3, or the islands, but has switched races to oppose Commissioner George Kruse in the Republican Primary for the at-large District 7 seat. 

Van Ostenbridge has been accused by Kruse and many citizens of favoring developers. However, he says someone has to be a grownup. 

“I can vote however I want, which is what my opponent sometimes does,” Van Ostenbridge said of Kruse. “He gives a grandiose speech, and then he votes in a way that if three other people voted the same way, we would find ourselves in a courtroom.”

Van Ostenbridge said he misses the undeveloped Manatee County, too. He used to ride horses around Robinson Preserve before the Robinsons even owned the land. 

“We’d get arrested now — full gallops through the mangroves, racing each other bareback, laying down flat because a branch would take your head off,” he said. “That was so much fun back then. There used to be a lot of horses up in northwest Bradenton.”

Van Ostenbridge was 11 years old in 1991 when the Sarasota Polo Club opened and Lakewood Ranch was on the horizon, which gives him a different perspective when people complain about development heading too far east. 

He said anything past Rosedale used to be the boondocks. Who was going to live in homes past the landfill on Lena Road?

Fast forward to 2020 during his first commission meeting as a member of the board, and residents living in Savannah at Lakewood Ranch were upset about a request to build a Walgreens off State Road 64. 

To those residents, the whole area was being paved over. To Van Ostenbridge, it was a 3-acre lot filled with Brazilian pepper trees. 

“Lakewood Ranch is literally the best thing that’s ever happened to the county when it comes to the economy and jobs,” Van Ostenbridge said. “But Lakewood Ranch didn't exist. It's all been paved over for homes, so for people in Lakewood Ranch to say they don’t want more development, it’s perplexing to me to hear that.” 

Van Ostenbridge has been a realtor since the age of 21. He’s had to step back a bit since joining the commission in 2020, but he’s still an active agent with Boyd Realty in Bradenton. 

As much as he loves the old days, he said he loves his work and believes wholeheartedly in the rights of property owners to develop their land as they see fit. However, he doesn’t like when development steps on the character and culture of Manatee County.

Other changes can irk him as well. 

“I can’t stand that McKechnie Field is called LECOM now,” Van Ostenbridge said. “No. It’s McKechnie Field; it’s always been McKechnie Field.”

There's only one place that pulled Van Ostenbridge away from Manatee County for any length of time — Skagway, Alaska. 

It was 2008, in the midst of the recession, when real estate had tanked. Van Ostenbridge was 28 years old, and a friend suggested he drive a tour bus in Alaska. It only seemed like a crazy idea at first. 

With nothing going on at work, Van Ostendbridge decided it made perfect sense to goof off for a summer in Alaska. 

“I’ve always been inquisitive, and I love nature,” he said. “When I travel, I don’t do manufactured tourism like Vegas and Orlando. I like natural wonders and history and that kind of thing.” 

Van Ostenbridge drove a tour bus for Holland America that summer and made enough connections to return the following summer. He ended up managing Chilkoot Charters & Tours and spent seven summers in Alaska. 

The tours were seasonal, so Van Ostenbridge started his own Manatee County company, Be Easy Tours, to stay busy during the winter. It was the same concept of traveling by tour bus. He targeted mobile home residents, and the buses would pick them up and take them to places as close as The Ringling and as far as New Orleans.

After COVID, Van Ostenbridge said he let the company go. Beyond the complications of a pandemic, he had started a new chapter on the commission, which he’s hoping to continue for another four years by unseating Kruse.

“I’m proud to be the only candidate in the race who has endorsed President Trump and is truly an America First Republican.” Van Ostenbridge said. “I want to lower taxes again and carry on our mission of being the board that keeps building roads because that’s what the county needs.”