The Application
What is actually being proposed.
The site at 985 Gulf Boulevard is the southern-tip property formerly known as Weston's WannaB Inn, more recently the Manasota Key Resort. Before Hurricanes Helene and Milton, it consisted of 17 low-slung buildings holding 80 rooms across roughly 6.64 acres. It was a low-density, family-oriented beach property in line with the rest of the Key.
The current ownership group has applied to Charlotte County to rezone the parcel from medium-density residential to a Planned Development. The concept plan calls for up to 246 resort units with restaurants and bars, a dock, a pool, and structures up to five stories — all on the same 6.64 acres, behind a proposed seawall described in early site materials as roughly 400 feet long and 20 feet high.
The site cleared staff-level site-plan review on February 25, 2026. There was no public hearing for that step. The first time the public sees this case on a published agenda will be the Planning & Zoning Board hearing on July 13, 2026 at 1:30 PM, which votes a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners.
Charlotte County Planning & Zoning Board
Monday, July 13, 2026 · 1:30 PM
Murdock Administration Center, 18500 Murdock Circle, Port Charlotte, FL 33948
Public comment is taken in person and in writing. Written comments to the staff liaison are entered into the record and distributed to board members.
The Pattern
The county has been quietly raising the Key's height limits for two years.
This rezone is not arriving in a vacuum. The Board of County Commissioners has, in the last 13 months, twice amended the Manasota and Sandpiper Key Zoning District Overlay in ways that move directly toward what this application asks for:
- TLDR-24-02 (adopted unanimously November 26, 2024) raised the maximum building height in commercial zones on the Key to 45 feet, reduced side setbacks, and codified the disaster-recovery framework that the resort is built around.
- TLDR-25-03 (heard in early 2026) layers a freeboard allowance on top — effectively adding 5 to 7 vertical feet on top of the 45-foot cap on barrier-island parcels.
A 246-room, five-story resort needs both of those changes to be feasible. Both were adopted before the application surfaced publicly. That is the documentary record.
The Legal Vulnerability
The site is in the Coastal High Hazard Area.
Manasota Key is in Charlotte County's evacuation Zone A — the first ordered out before any tropical storm. Florida law (Section 163.3178, Florida Statutes) requires every coastal county's comprehensive plan to discourage population concentration in the Coastal High Hazard Area for hurricane-evacuation safety. Charlotte County's own Coastal Planning Element implements that policy.
Tripling the unit count on a 6.64-acre Zone A parcel served by one bridge and one two-lane road is the precise action the law was written to disfavor. The county's own February 2025 vote to reject a $50.7 million renourishment bid for the very beach this resort would sit on confirms what everyone already knows: the public can't afford to keep sand on this island. A private developer adding hundreds of rooms and a 400-foot seawall does not change that math.
The strongest argument at the July 13 hearing is not aesthetic or anti-growth. It is statutory. The proposed up-zoning conflicts with state-mandated CHHA policy, with the county's own comp-plan coastal element, and with the hurricane-evacuation analysis the applicant must demonstrate.
What You Can Do
Write the commissioners. Now, not in July.
The county has acknowledged that written comment received before the hearing is distributed to board members and entered into the record. Five Charlotte County Commissioners and the Planning & Zoning Board staff liaison are the people who actually need to hear from you. Their public emails are below.
Use the form. Edit the letter freely — personalized comment carries more weight than form letters. Print and mail if you can. Email if you can't. Do both if you can.