County-Owned Property

There are several ways Manatee County acquires property. The current County-owned properties were acquired by:

• Purchases from individuals for various projects
• Dedications through plats
• Donation from individuals, corporate entities, or government agencies
• Grants from governmental agencies
• Tax judgements and escheatment
• Obtained through maintenance via road plats
• Eminent domain settlements and judgements

Some of our parks and preserves are long-range projects that are purchased over the course of several years from multiple owners. As the County grows the parks, the parcels that were purchased individually keep their original parcel identification number and are reflected as individual parcels on the Property Appraiser’s website. This type of compilation of individual parcels for a single project also happens in right-of-way projects.

The Property Appraiser assigns a Land Use Code (LUC) to every property in Manatee County. Out of 200 codes, there are only three codes used for parcels owned by Manatee County government - ‘Public Right-of-Way’ is used for streets, roads, and alleyways; ‘County’ is assigned to all parcels that have vertical structures. An example of this is our County Administration building at 1112 Manatee Avenue West; ‘Government Owned Vacant County’ is assigned to parcels that have no vertical structures. Preserves and stormwater parcels are examples of ‘Government Owned Vacant County’. With the exception of ‘Public Right-of-Way’, the LUC Description will not tell you what a particular parcel is used for.

Property Acquisition staff has examined every County-owned property to determine how it was acquired and what its current use is. This involved researching maps, public records, Board records, the historical tax roll data, and occasional site visits. Staff continuously review data and work with the Property Appraiser’s Office to update ‘Owner Type’ designations as needed.

To avoid duplicating data efforts, we created a filter on the parcel data that is managed and maintained by the Manatee County Property Appraiser. This means that our County-owned property data comes directly from the Property Appraiser. As they update their data, our data will update as well. Recent sales or acquisitions may not be immediately reflected in the data but will appear once ownership changes are recorded by the Manatee County Clerk of Court.

If you click on a parcel you may notice how some may say “1 of #” in the header of the popup. While it may appear that there are “stacked” parcels, it’s actually just a single parcel that has multiple addresses associated with it (i.e. multiple buildings or offices).

The County-Owned Property map is color coded according to the County Department that manages or uses each parcel.

• Yellow – County Administration
• Gray – Public Works
• Green – Parks and Natural Resources
• Red – Public Safety
• Pink – Neighborhood Services
• Purple – Redevelopment and Economic Opportunity
• Blue – Utilities
• Orange – Convention and Visitor’s Bureau

County-owned real property is continuously reviewed by the Property Acquisition division to identify potential surplus.

Potential surplus properties are reviewed by all County departments to determine whether a current or future need for the property exists. If such a need exists, then the property is retained for the current or future use specified. If no such need exists, then the property is presented to the Board of County Commissioners for surplus consideration.