The Empty Bank Next to Whitney's: What Happens Now

There is a glass building at 6960 Gulf of Mexico Drive with a traffic light still hanging over what used to be a bank drive-thru. Nobody has driven through it in years. Next door, the line for burgers at Whitney's runs out toward Broadway Street most evenings.

Danielle Gladding drives past that corner most weeks and lives further down the island in Queens Harbour, inside Bay Isles. She has been a licensed Florida Realtor since 1981 and a broker since 1987, and runs Danielle Gladding & Co. Realty with her daughter Alison Kanter.

What the corner has already tried to be

The building went up in 1976, built for what was then First Bank — a glass box with twenty-two-foot ceilings, a vault, and a working drive-thru, on two-thirds of an acre directly across from the Broadway beach access. In the early 2000s it held the Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce and the Longboat Key Historical Society, with the Chamber's tourism specialist working from the old teller's desk. The Chamber moved out in 2008, and the parcel has struggled to hold a use since.

2004 — bought by a Longboat Key real estate broker, who leased it to the Chamber
2010 — bought by a Georgia financial adviser who intended to reopen it as a bank. He was later convicted in a federal fraud case, and his assets, the building among them, were seized
2015 — sold again, to a private owner
Before Whitney's existed — a developer proposed folding this parcel, the derelict gas station next door and neighboring land into a 120-room hotel, the North End Hotel & Beach Club. Longboat Key voters rejected the rezoning at the ballot box, with 78 percent against
November 2025 — Whitney LBK LLC, the entity behind the restaurant, closed on the parcel

Five owners, a failed hotel referendum, a federal fraud case, and roughly sixteen years without a working tenant. Look through the glass doors today and you will see a disco ball propped against the entrance, a stray leaf blower, and boxes scattered across a lobby that takes up most of the building.

What has been applied for

Whitney LBK LLC has applied to demolish the roughly 5,400-square-foot bank building and replace it with about 2,900 square feet of outdoor dining, shaded by a white pergola, with tropical landscaping and pervious pavers. Alongside it, 1,370 square feet of new construction would hold a commissary kitchen, storage, cooler space and restrooms. All food and drink preparation stays inside the existing restaurant. Furniture would be portable, lighting minimal, and the application specifies no new signage for the dining area.

The seating figure is the one most people will care about. When Whitney's was first permitted, parking rules under the old code capped it at 70 seats. Under the Town's current formula, the combined interior and outdoor space of roughly 7,650 square feet requires 51 parking spaces, at one space per 150 square feet, to be provided across both properties. That works out to around 200 seats — close to triple the original approval. One version of the application materials gives a higher figure, which is the sort of discrepancy a board tends to want reconciled.

Town staff noted the bank site had been vacant and for sale for an extended period, and concluded that office use is not well suited to current conditions on that stretch of Gulf of Mexico Drive.

Why the applicants think it will work

Because they have done it once already, twenty yards away. The building that holds Whitney's was a derelict Chevron station until four partners bought it in 2018 and opened the restaurant in January 2020. They kept the roll-up service bay doors, the original canopy and some of the old tile. One of the partners, who grew up on the island, has described the approach as keeping the soul of the gas station.

The application leans on that precedent directly, and points to Mar Vista and The Shore as evidence that open-air dining can work as a destination on this island rather than as a back patio. A former Chamber staffer who worked in the bank building told the Business Observer that Whitney Plaza now represents the north end's shift toward businesses that serve people rather than office space.

Our roundup of where to eat on Longboat Key covers the wider picture, and the north end is its own subject.

The part that outlasts the restaurant

This is the detail worth understanding if you own anything near that corner, and it is easy to lose behind the pergolas and the parking counts.

The rezone runs with the land, not with the business. Ordinance 2027-02 would change the parcel from Office-Institutional to Highway-Oriented Commercial, the same designation Whitney's already holds. If the dining garden is never built, or the restaurant changes hands or closes, the zoning stays as changed. Town staff note that a bank or an office would still be permitted afterwards — and so would the wider range of highway-commercial uses that district allows.

The process is longer than a single hearing. (Full disclosure at the foot of this article: Danielle Gladding's husband sits on the Town Commission and will vote on these ordinances.) The rezone requires two readings before the Town Commission and is expressly contingent on the comprehensive plan amendment passing first. The ordinance's signature block anticipates a second reading in 2027. Even if both pass, the actual site development plan — final layout, landscaping, parking — returns to the Planning and Zoning Board at a separate public hearing.

One reason this is not following the hotel's path: neither change increases residential density. Both designations carry zero residential density under the Town's 1984 Comprehensive Plan, so neither triggers the referendum requirement that defeated the 120-room proposal. The decision sits with the board and the Commission.

Flood zone, hours and the rest of the conditions

The site sits in FEMA flood zones AE 8 and AE 9, landward of the state's Coastal Construction Control Line, and within the highest storm surge evacuation category. The application discloses that the existing restaurant took two to three inches of water on its floor during the 2024 hurricane season. Two stormwater detention areas would be reconfigured. If flood exposure is something you are working through on your own property, our guide to flood zones and insurance on Longboat Key covers how the zones work.

Because the parcel sits within 250 feet of residential property, the Town's outdoor dining rules cap the garden's hours at 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., with last call on the patio at 10. The applicant has agreed to conditions barring music and amplified voices outdoors, requiring minimal lighting and landscape screening, and maintaining a continuous delineated walking surface around the perimeter.

The same Planning and Zoning Board agenda carried two other items: Sarasota County's application to amend the planned unit development for the new Longboat Key library at 600 Bay Isles Road, and a workshop on the zoning obstacles facing owners trying to elevate houses to meet FEMA requirements on smaller non-conforming lots. That second one affects considerably more properties than the first two combined.

Where it stands

The Planning and Zoning Board took the applications up on 15 September 2026. Whatever it recommended, the recommendation is not the decision — the binding votes belong to the Town Commission, across two readings, with the second anticipated in 2027, and a separate site plan hearing after that.

So the corner will not change this year. What was decided this month is the direction of travel, and the zoning that attaches to the land regardless of who ends up owning it.

Go deeper

Longboat Key — the island end to end
Milestone inspections and reserve studies — the other rule change reshaping property here

Disclosure

Nick Gladding, Danielle Gladding's husband, is District 3 Town Commissioner for the Town of Longboat Key, sworn in March 2026, and will vote on the ordinances described here. This article reports what was applied for and what the process requires; it advocates no position. Danielle Gladding & Co. Realty has no client, listing, or financial interest in this application or in any adjoining property.

A note on sources

Details of the application come from the Town of Longboat Key filing and from reporting by Longboat Key News, the Longboat Observer and the Business Observer. Zoning applications change between filing and final vote. Confirm the current status with the Town of Longboat Key Planning, Zoning and Building Department before relying on anything here.

Danielle Gladding came to Sarasota in 1976, has been a licensed Florida Realtor since 1981 and a broker since 1987, and runs Danielle Gladding & Co. Realty with her daughter and Sales Partner Alison Kanter. She can be reached at (941) 539-8535, and Alison Kanter at (941) 306-9786, or through the contact page.