HOLMES BEACH – Spring break is in full swing on Anna Maria Island but despite long traffic delays, the Island’s biggest city still has plenty of parking for beachgoers, according to officials.
During a March 12 commission meeting, Police Chief Bill Tokajer said he’d been out every day during spring break to check parking in Holmes Beach. Despite beautiful weather and traffic delays, he said there were hundreds of spots available to beachgoers throughout the city in marked spaces within a quarter mile of beach access points.
He said he’d seen entire blocks of open spaces that were properly marked. Due to the number of open spaces, he said he’d stopped counting the openings when he reached in the hundreds each time he was doing inventory.
In addition to the open parking spaces within the quarter block area, more unmarked parking spaces slightly further from the beach were also available.
Tokajer said that over the previous week and two weekends since spring break started, Holmes Beach has seen an average of 36,000 cars coming into the city each day.
Mayor Judy Titsworth said that the open parking spaces are being recorded with time and date-stamped photographs for future meetings with state legislators. She said the problem isn’t a lack of parking, it’s that people aren’t in favor of waiting in line for up to three hours to travel down Manatee Avenue from Bradenton to the Island.
City leaders are working diligently to make sure that available parking spaces in the city are improved and marked as well as indicated on the city’s public parking map. The accounting of parking spaces is at least partially due to an ongoing issue among the city, Manatee County commissioners and members of the Manatee County state legislative delegation concerning the availability of beach parking in the city.
County commissioners say that there isn’t enough parking in the city after some residential areas were turned into permit parking-only areas during the day following complaints from residents about vandalism, trespassing and other issues with beachgoers parking in front of their homes and then damaging property, using private pools and hoses, leaving trash and causing other problems. State leaders made the decision to skip city permitting and land development code regulations during the 2023 state legislative session by passing a bill allowing the county to construct a three-story parking garage at the county-owned Manatee Beach. Though some county commissioners have been very vocal about wanting to build the garage as soon as possible, no funding for that project has been secured.
City leaders and residents continue to oppose the parking garage. If constructed, the garage would eliminate the current parking at Manatee Beach during construction, cause the demolition of the current concession, retail and restroom facilities and cost taxpayers more than an estimated $50 million to construct with an estimated $200,000 in annual maintenance once completed. County Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge, who champions the parking garage, said that the money for maintenance and construction would be recouped by charging an hourly rate for parking.
Paid parking is also not an allowable use in Holmes Beach. City leaders said if a garage is constructed and paid parking initiated there by the county it would mean that other parking, including street side and at beach access points, would also become paid parking spaces.
Parking at Manatee Beach, at beach access points and along the side of the road where allowable in Holmes Beach is currently free.
