130 new houses planned for East Bradenton

Sometimes planning “backwards” is a good thing, according to Vice Mayor Patrick Roff, when it comes to a proposal to build 130 new single family homes in East Bradenton.

“We don’t often go backwards from high density commercial to low density residential,” Roff said. “It’s a nice transition between those horse farms to the south and Home Depot to the north, so I call this good planning.”

The 33 acres of vacant land just south of the new Home Depot on State Road 64 and Morgan Johnson Road is designated suburban commercial corridor and was previously approved for a large assisted living facility. The council on Wednesday approved submitting the future land use change from SCC to residential to the state for approval.

Should the state approve the rezone, a more comprehensive plan of the development is expected to come back to the council some time in September for final approval.

Planning and Community Development Director Catherine Hartley said the original proposal came in the midst of the Great Recession and never went forward, but it had been approved for more than 700,000 square feet of commercial space.

“Now we are talking about 130 units so we are under the original density and I definitely support that,” Hartley said. “The original project would have had a much more significant impact on traffic in that area.”

That area of East Bradenton has seen significant growth within blocks of the latest proposal being planned by M/I Homes, based out of Ohio but with Sarasota and Tampa offices. Communities built in the past few years include the Cottages at San Lorenzo and San Casciano, Harbour Walk, Bella Sole and the Blue Heron Apartments.

Land use attorney Caleb Grimes is representing the development team and said the city annexed the 33 acres in 2009, “but 2009 wasn’t the best time in the world for construction so it has remained vacant. What we have now is a request to change the comprehensive plan so we can go with residential instead of the original idea of an ALF.”

This story was originally published August 2, 2017 at 2:06 PM with the headline "130 new houses planned for East Bradenton."