It’s hard to find beach parking on Anna Maria Island. Is a parking garage the answer?
Anna Maria Island officials agree that something has to change when it comes to finding a spot park your car. A brand-new parking garage might be the answer.
County Commissioner Carol Whitmore suggested building a multi-story garage in a discussion with the Board of County Commissioners Tuesday evening. As Manatee County keeps growing, officials need to find a creative solution for beach access, she said.
“I don’t know if it’s going to solve the issues, but it’s going to help because the city of Holmes Beach has drastically cut the parking that’s been welcome out there for at least 50 years,” said Whitmore, a former Holmes Beach mayor.
“I never supported it before, but I don’t think we have a choice,” she continued.
The idea of a parking garage on or near the island has been floated for years, but the removal of spaces in Holmes Beach has brought the issue back to the forefront.
Holmes Beach’s new policy reduced the availability of street parking in city neighborhoods by 1,100 spaces. A parking garage could win some of those spots back. Whitmore proposed paying for the facility with tourism taxes that are collected from short-term rentals throughout the county.
City of Anna Maria Mayor Dan Murphy agreed that a parking garage would be the “perfect solution,” in an interview with the Bradenton Herald.
“That really would be a generous solution if the Tourist Development Council were to fund something like that. That’s probably a perfect solution,” said Murphy.
To deal with Holmes Beach’s parking restrictions at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Murphy said Anna Maria officials were forced to remove about 80 spaces near Bean Point.
“What ended up on Bean Point was an unbelievably unsafe condition with all those people on the beach,” Murphy explained, referring to a lack of social distancing on the beach. “Those new signs kind of curbed it and helped with the onslaught of people who were trying to park at Holmes Beach.”
Since the signs went up in April, however, Murphy said the city has been monitoring the parking and is removing the no parking signs gradually.
Whitmore said she could think of several places to build a new parking garage, including the existing Manatee Public Beach parking lot and the sites of shuttered banking buildings in Holmes Beach.
Holmes Beach Mayor Judy Titsworth did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the city would be open to a parking garage.
County commissioners said they plan to meet with the elected officials from the island cities at a later date to discuss other solutions to the shortage of beach parking on Anna Maria Island.
