Bradenton council denies plan amendment for Jordan Creek project after neighbors raise traffic and design concerns

The Bradenton City Council on May 13 denied a request to approve a major plan-development amendment for the Jordan Creek East site, voting 5–0 to reject an application that would have allowed a change from a previously approved 66-unit duplex scheme to 106 townhome units.

Planning staff described the proposal (PLN MAJ 25001 / resolution 26-28) as a second option for the 12.19-acre property east of 27th Street East and south of 11th Avenue East. Applicant representatives said the Option B plan would provide 106 units (a density of about 8.69 dwelling units per acre), 237 parking spaces and roughly 34 percent open space. Traffic consultants for the applicant told the council that, because the product type changed from detached single-family assumptions to attached units, modeled peak-hour trips would not increase and in some metrics declined.

During the public-hearing period, multiple nearby residents urged denial. Sandy Lohr said the applicant’s description of a 60% increase as “slight” misrepresented the scope and argued the change would add hundreds of daily trips. Susie Copeland, a neighbor directly adjacent to the site, said she had accepted the previously approved 66-unit plan but opposed the 106-unit request, citing daily congestion on 27th Street East.

Applicant traffic expert Theo Petrich said the Institute of Transportation Engineers trip-generation tables and site-distribution analysis showed peak-hour trips that were comparable or lower than the previous assumptions: "the 106 units, the trips actually go down...to 54 with a new version of ITE," he said. Neighbors disputed the method and scale of the study and emphasized local access constraints.

In deliberations, Councilwoman Barnaby said the PDP process is intended to encourage higher-quality, innovative design and that the submitted plan did not meet that bar. She moved to deny the amendment; the motion passed 5–0. Staff said the council will prepare a draft denial order for a future meeting.

Next steps: the denial will be memorialized in a written order on a subsequent agenda item; the applicant may revise and resubmit a different proposal at a later date.