The glass building at 6960 Gulf of Mexico Drive has not served a customer since 2008. Walk past it on the north end of Longboat Key and you will see a lobby with a disco ball propped near the entrance, a stray leaf blower, and a printer that nobody has claimed. A traffic light built for a bank's drive-through still hangs at an angle over the parking lot, decades after the last banker pulled through.
Tomorrow morning, at 9:15, the Longboat Key Planning and Zoning Board will decide whether that building gets to keep sitting there.
The applicant is Whitney LBK LLC, the company behind Whitney's, the restaurant and bar next door that has become one of the north end's steadiest draws. Whitney LBK bought the vacant building in late 2025 for $1.2 million, according to Manatee County property records, with a plan already in mind: tear it down and replace it with a tropical outdoor dining garden, a new commissary kitchen, and roughly 200 seats, nearly triple what the original restaurant was permitted to hold. Town planning staff has reviewed the application and is recommending approval.
If that happens, it will close out one of the stranger property histories on the island. It is also the clearest single data point for something that has been happening on the north end for years without anyone quite naming it: the stretch of Gulf of Mexico Drive that used to run on banking hours now runs on dinner reservations.
What that building has actually been
The property was built in 1976 as a bank. A local buyer purchased it in 2004 for $775,000 and leased it to the Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce, which shared the space with the Longboat Key Historical Society through the early 2000s. Former chamber president Gail Loefgren still remembers the layout exactly: her office in the corner, the assistant next door, and the tourism specialist stationed at the old teller's desk to greet visitors coming onto the island from the north. When the chamber moved out, the building went dark and has stayed mostly dark since, save for one memorable chapter: a Georgia pastor turned financial adviser named Aubrey Lee Price bought it in 2010 for $533,900, hoping to turn it back into a bank. Price later admitted to bank, wire, and securities fraud tied to more than $70 million in losses from over 100 investors, faked his own death, and was eventually caught living under a false identity before his conviction and 30-year federal sentence. Anthony Marterie bought the property in 2015 for $549,000. It has not found a real tenant since.
There was one earlier attempt to do something bigger with the corner. On Aug. 30, 2016, Longboat Key voters went to the polls to decide whether a developer called Floridays Development Co. could combine this building, the old Chevron gas station next door, and adjoining parcels into a 120-room hotel called the North End Hotel and Beach Club. They rejected it soundly, with 78 percent voting no. The site's second act, the one that succeeded, was smaller and simpler: the Chevron station became Whitney's, a casual restaurant that has been busy enough, long enough, that its owners are now the ones proposing to reshape the corner.
Loefgren put the shift in plain terms when a reporter asked her about the north end's changing character:
"Whitney Plaza is probably the best example of businesses on the north end, and most of them are businesses that serve people, not office space. I think the office space has migrated to the center of the island."
That is the actual story here. Longboat Key's north end has not lost its commercial base. It has traded one kind of commerce for another, and the building at 6960 Gulf of Mexico Drive is the last vacant lot that hadn't gotten the memo yet.
What Whitney's is actually proposing
The application in front of the board tomorrow pairs two requests: a change to the property's future land use designation and a rezone, so the 5,400-square-foot former bank building, sitting on a 30,105-square-foot parcel, can be joined with the restaurant next door and function as a single campus. The centerpiece is close to 2,900 square feet of new outdoor dining, shaded by a white pergola and threaded through tropical landscaping and pervious pavers. All food and drink preparation stays inside the existing building. Furniture outside would be portable, lighting minimal, with no new signage for the dining area itself.
The math behind the seat count is worth knowing if you plan to have an opinion at the hearing. When Whitney's was originally permitted, old parking rules capped it at 70 seats. Under the town's current formula, the combined project works out to roughly 200 seats across 51 parking spaces, an increase the applicant frames as a continuation of what already worked once: turning a forgotten commercial parcel into a genuine hospitality destination, the same argument the owners made when they converted the abandoned gas station next door into Whitney's in the first place.
One detail matters beyond Tuesday's vote. The rezone runs with the land, not with the restaurant. If the dining garden never gets built, staff notes that a bank or office would still be allowed under the C-3 zoning, and so would the wider menu of highway-commercial uses that district permits. Whatever the board recommends this week will shape what can happen on that corner for decades, regardless of exactly what Whitney's ends up building.
The rest of the north end is placing the same bet
The Whitney's expansion is the biggest single project, but it is not an isolated move. Look at what has opened, expanded, or sold out around it recently and the pattern holds.
- Sips, the coffee shop that has anchored Whitney Beach Plaza since 2023, is opening a second, smaller location at 3172 Gulf of Mexico Drive, in the space once occupied by Turtle Coffee Bar before it closed following Hurricane Helene. Co-owner Chris Carter said the shop has grown well past what he and his wife expected when they opened.
- Ventura's Italian Kitchen and Wine Bar, tucked into Whitney Plaza on the north end, expanded off the island entirely, opening a second location on Cortez Road in Bradenton.
- Lo' Key Island Grille, which opened on the north end in January 2025 after surviving three hurricanes during construction, marked its one-year anniversary this winter and hosted its first-ever booth at Taste of the Keys, the Longboat Key Garden Club's long-running fundraiser.
- Three of the island's restaurants, Harry's Continental Kitchens, the Lazy Lobster, and Lo' Key Island Grille, launched a brand new event this spring called the Longboat Key Turtle Crawl, a progressive dinner benefiting the Longboat Key Turtle Watch. It sold out its 150 tickets within days of being announced and organizers are already talking about making it annual.
- Longboat Key Provisions, a charcuterie and picnic-goods shop, opened in December and was featured as one of the newest additions at the Chamber of Commerce's spring Meet Greet Eat networking event.
None of these are office tenants. None of them are professional services filling empty square footage the way a bank or a chamber office once did. Every one of them is a place built around eating, drinking, or gathering, which is exactly the shift Loefgren was describing. The businesses that once needed a lobby and a teller window have relocated toward the middle of the island. The businesses replacing them on the north end are the ones that need a patio.
What to watch after Tuesday
If the Planning and Zoning Board recommends approval, the decision moves to the Town Commission, where the final vote on the land use change and rezone will happen in the coming months. That gives residents another chance to weigh in before anything gets demolished. The hearing itself is open to the public, 9:15 a.m. at Town Hall on Bay Isles Road, and speaks to something bigger than one restaurant's growth plans. It is the town formally deciding whether the last piece of the old commercial north end gets to stay standing, or whether the corner finishes the transition that started when a gas station became Whitney's in the first place.
Either way, the building will not sit empty much longer. That is nearly two decades for a corner on Gulf of Mexico Drive to wait for its next chapter, and this one already has staff's recommendation behind it.
If you are watching how the north end keeps changing and want a read on what it means for property values, rental demand, or the timing of a future move, Pointer Property Group knows this stretch of the island block by block. Reach out any time you want a straight answer from someone who is actually paying attention to what is happening here.
