- April 3, 2025
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While Manatee County’s comprehensive plan does not set policies, it helps to shape and guide policies.
Manatee County Commission Chair George Kruse called it “a vision for the future.”
The county held a special work session Feb. 19 to discuss revisions to the plan, which have been in the works for two years and are expected to be completed and adopted by Dec. 4.
While there are 13 elements to the plan, only two were discussed during the workshop: Housing and Future Land Use.
The U.S. Census estimates Manatee County’s 2025 population to be 447,800. The projection for 2045 is 562,300.
Affordable housing, or the lack thereof, was a major part of the discussion.
Kruse called Manatee County’s affordable housing “fake."
On Lena Road, 152 out of 606 apartments were deemed “moderately affordable.” On Lorraine road, 17 out of 66 townhomes were labeled the same.
Neither project is built yet, but tenants applying for those units will need to make between 80-120% of the Area Median Income. For example, a single mother with a child needs to earn between $64,320 and $96,480 to qualify for a two-bedroom apartment. The rent would run from $1,810 to $2,715.
Commissioner Jason Bearden said he received an email from a single mother who doesn’t make that much and works for the county.
He’s not in favor of completely denying affordable housing over 80% of the AMI, but he’d like to see it tied into a ratio. The 80-120% units could still be approved, but with that, a certain number of units could also be built for residents making 50% of the AMI.
“The only way we’ve figured out how to find affordable housing is to offer people to double the density for some nominal amount of fake affordable housing that isn’t affordable to anybody,” Kruse said.
When building affordable housing for people earning over 80% of the AMI, developers do not receive financial incentives, but they can double the density, cut down more trees, use reduced buffers, provide less parking and receive expedited permitting.
Bearden voted against the project on Lorraine Road because of traffic issues along the corridor. While Kruse voted in favor of the project, he wants to shift away from adding double the density “where that density probably shouldn’t be in the first place” and look toward nonconforming lots.
Nonconforming lots used to be legal, but they don’t fit current codes. Kruse wants to get rid of minimum lot sizes. He said there are hundreds, if not thousands, of nonconforming lots spread across the county.
He used the example of a 500-square-foot tiny home that could easily be built and wouldn’t impact roads or schools. If all the setbacks and other requirements are met, he doesn’t see why the government should restrict building a smaller home that someone could buy or rent at an affordable price.
“That’s probably my top priority in this entire comprehensive plan is getting rid of minimum lot sizes,” Kruse said. “They’re terrible.”
He’d also like to change how the incentives work for developers. Instead of tiering the incentives based on AMI, they could be tiered based on location.
If the county heavily incentivizes building on infill lots in downtown Bradenton, then developers will start looking at options beyond the cow pastures in East County and Parrish.
Commissioners say what has worked well in East County is Lakewood Ranch’s mixed-use projects, namely The Green at Lakewood Ranch and Waterside Place.
“They’ve handled transitions between single family to the four-story buildings and duplexes to commercial very well,” Commissioner Tal Siddique said. “That’s something we should be getting advice from them on how to actually implement that in code.”
Siddique described transitions that are not well done as looking “oppressive.” He said developers have been in charge of the transitions thus far, so a farm sits next to duplexes and single family homes in areas where it doesn’t make sense.
Siddique wants to see the comprehensive plan lay out what transitions between residential, commercial and agriculture should look like.
He wants to create zones for focused growth and redevelopment versus simply drawing “another line in the sand and calling it the next version of the Future Development Area Boundary.”
Kruse used State Road 64 and the “commercial nodes” the county relies on now as poor examples of planning because they “effectively just break all of our intersections.”
All four corners of major roads are crammed with retail, and people have to drive to get there. Kruse wants to allow commercial closer to residential and change the incentives to encourage mixed use.
The public will have another chance to weigh in on the comprehensive plan this summer, but the workshops have not been scheduled yet.
