SARASOTA, FLORIDA, November 14th, 2016 – The natural beauty and wide-open spaces iconic of an Old Florida community are no longer in jeopardy at the Braden Woods neighborhoods of East Manatee. Neal Communities announced early this November that it is abandoning its plan to purchase and develop a 32-acre heavily wooded parcel called Myara near the Braden River between Braden Woods and The River Club.
The Manatee County planning board already voted in October to recommend disapproval of this project to county commissioners who were supposed to render a final verdict on it in December. Neal’s decision to skip the Myara development came as welcome news to some 5,000 local residents who signed a petition opposing it because of environmental issues and concerns on local wildlife.
This opposition group banded early this year under an organization called Keep Our Woods, mounting a vigorous online campaign for its cause. Following Neal’s retreat, the group’s website announced it is working with the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast to search for an entity willing to buy the property and turn it into a nature preserve.
Notably, the foundation has recently been successful in gathering conservation support for the 1,143-acre Triangle Ranch in the upper Myakka River watershed. In a partnership with the Southwest Florida Water Management District, it closed a deal in October to spare the ranch from development and restore its sawgrass marshes providing water filtration, flood control and habitat to over 120 wildlife species.
Though definitely smaller, the 32-acre Myara property is as treasured particularly by residents of Braden Woods and The River Club. They consider it as a natural wildlife sanctuary and stake much value to its proximity to the Braden River whose water quality needs to be protected.
This conservation drive could possibly extend to an adjacent 12-acre property owned by a local resident, Carl Bergstresser. An outdoorsman, Bergstresser passed away just this summer and willed that this parcel his family now owns be maintained as a nature preserve.
The motivation to have the Myara and Bergstresser properties preserved is well founded particularly for residents of Braden Woods. Wide-open spaces and luxuriant stands of trees and wetlands constitute the prime attraction of this community since its development in the 1980s.
This friendly neighborhood was developed in six phases over a 600-acre expanse now built out already. The entire property has close to 500 residences, which are coveted choices when available in listings of Bradenton homes for sale. Braden Woods’ first four phases feature lots of an acre or larger, while the final two have lot sizes of half an acre at least.
Recent sales activity is brisk at Braden Woods, with some 30 homes sold so far this year. The typical listings of Bradenton homes for sale in this community are in the $200s‒$400s range, featuring floor areas of between 1,600 and 3,000+ square feet designed with three to four bedrooms. Many of these homes were built adjacent to a lake or back up to lush nature preserves, a community trademark that now looks likely to remain undisturbed for many more years.
SARASOTA, FLORIDA, October 7, 2019 – Property values of communities in the Sarasota-Manatee region now face lesser threat from neighborhood eyesores brought about by abandoned, foreclosed homes. Known in the real estate trade as zombie foreclosures, these properties have shrunk significantly in the region. According to an August report of ATTOM Data Solutions, abandoned […] more>>