Two New York Times Articles Offer Excellent Advice for Downtown Bradenton Development
One article talks about an arts-oriented retirement home in Burbank, California. The other is about a loft community for filmmakers in Cleveland, Ohio. Similar developments could do very well here.
Bradenton has a significant arts community, along with a pretty good concentration of people doing innovative video work, although the latter group tends to be somewhat hidden — and totally overlooked by city government.
Since this area has (or had, before real estate prices and homeowners insurance fees went crazy) a good reputation as a low-cost retirement haven, perhaps it would be best to start with an arts-oriented retirement complex. That would be a perfect as the residential component of the hoped-for “mixed use” complex the city would like to see on the former Manatee Inns site on TamiamiFourteenthStreetTrail, very much in line with the nearby Village of the Arts.
As far as a filmmaker’s haven, that could be a good add-on to Manatee Community College, which already has a well-regarded film and video program. I have thought about taking classes there myself, but I was warned off by a recent program grad who told me I knew too much and would be bored crazy by most of the classes, which are oriented toward beginners and dreamers and offer little in the way of new information for anyone who has been messing with film and video for any length of time.
Perhaps MCC could put together some sort of independent film program that would give talented people access to their equipment and facilities after a “how not to break things” orientation session, combined with faculty-led mutual criticism sessions. That would go a long way toward making Bradenton into an independent filmmakers’ mecca. Lord knows, this is a nicer place to live than Cleveland…
The “arts-oriented retirement community” would take a significant investment. The film program would take hardly any. But the retirement community development would take no more investment than any other development in the same area — possibly less if it offered unfinished “loft” dwellings — and would have a significant niche marketing advantage over the endless “active retiree” havens we see advertised on billboards around here with a grinning-like-a-fool old dude swinging a golf club standing next to a silver haired woman toting a tennis racquet.
Both of these ideas would fit right in with plans I’ve seen from city hall and the Downtown Devlopment Authority that stress building a high-density residential urban core that appeals to people who want to live in vibrant communities instead of in suburban-style houses where no one knows their neighbors.