If you've driven Cortez Road toward Bradenton Beach in the last few weeks, you've probably clocked the extra equipment staged near the old drawbridge and wondered when it actually starts moving. The answer, according to the Florida Department of Transportation, is early September. But the assumption most residents are making, that the bridge project means slower crossings starting almost immediately, doesn't match how this particular build is sequenced. For most of the next several years, the drawbridge you already know keeps doing exactly what it's always done. What changes first isn't your commute. It's the small footprint of land right around it.
What FDOT is actually building, and when
The Cortez Bridge dates to 1956, a two-lane bascule drawbridge that opens for boat traffic on State Road 684 between Cortez Village and Bradenton Beach. FDOT has been clear for years that repairing it further isn't a real option, so the replacement is a 65-foot fixed span with two 12-foot travel lanes, two 10-foot shoulders, and two 10-foot sidewalks, eliminating the drawbridge mechanism entirely. FDOT spokesperson Ethan Purvis confirmed to the Anna Maria Island Sun in June that construction is anticipated to start near the beginning of September, and both The Anna Maria Islander in July and Your Observer in mid-August reported the same window holding.
Some of the groundwork has already been underway for months. Manatee County has been relocating water and sewer pipes from the underside of the current bridge to its south side, a utility crossing Purvis says needs to wrap before bridge construction proper can begin. Precast concrete piles for the foundations, and later the precast beams, are being built offsite and trucked in rather than poured on location. None of that has touched traffic flow yet, and the early September work FDOT describes is similarly quiet from a driver's seat: installing traffic control devices, mobilizing barges, and starting pile driving from the water.
The phasing that actually matters
Here's the detail that changes the whole read on this project. FDOT isn't tearing out the old bridge and building a new one in its place. It's constructing the new bridge immediately north of the existing structure, which means the current drawbridge stays fully operational through the entire first phase. Only once that northern half is complete does traffic shift onto it. Then, and only then, does the old 1956 span come down, clearing the way for the second half of the new bridge to go up on the south side. Barges and temporary trestles get deployed for that phase, not this one.
So the four-year timeline FDOT and Bay News 9 have both cited isn't four years of a work zone squeezing your daily crossing. It's a long runway where the bridge you drive today keeps functioning, followed later by a shorter, more visible stretch when the switch actually happens. If you're budgeting for disruption, the disruption you should expect isn't evenly spread across four years. It's backloaded.
Where the impact actually lands this fall
That doesn't mean nothing changes on the ground this fall. It means the changes are landing somewhere more specific than the general traffic story suggests, and that place is Cortez Village itself.
FDOT's construction plan includes a brand new connector road, Hunter's Point Way, linking 127th Street West to Cortez Road. Its job is to keep access open to the Seafood Shack, Tide Tables, and the other businesses and homes near Hunter's Point Resort & Marina once the main road becomes a construction corridor. If you regularly eat at either of those restaurants, or you know someone who does, that's the practical detail worth knowing before your next visit rather than after you've hit a detour.
James Gowett, who's worked at the Star Fish Company in Cortez for 25 years, told Bay News 9 in February what a lot of Cortez business owners are quietly thinking: construction near the bridge could keep customers from getting there at all during the busiest stretches of the season. That concern is real and specific to the businesses closest to the work, which is a different problem than islandwide gridlock. Manatee County has tried to soften exactly this by staging construction on a county owned lot, the former Seafood Shack property at 4110 127th Street West, rather than on land tied to more private business owners. County communications coordinator Ogden Clark put it plainly when he noted that side of Cortez Road has fewer impacts than the businesses south of it. In exchange for staging access, the contractor is also building a fueling station and parking for the sheriff's marine unit and the Gulf Islands Ferry, repairing sea walls damaged in Hurricane Milton, and constructing a bypass road connecting 127th Street West and 126th Street West.
None of that shows up as a delay on your drive to the beach. It shows up as a changed turn lane if you're heading to a specific restaurant, and as a handful of new amenities near the water once the dust settles.
What Bradenton Beach's mayor expects, and what he doesn't
Mayor John Chappie has been talking about this project publicly for months, and his read is more specific than a blanket "traffic will improve." He told Bay News 9 he expects the new bridge to help traffic flow off the island more than it helps traffic coming on, since a fixed span removes the stop and go of a drawbridge without adding lanes for volume. He's also been upfront that access to the bridge itself, not the bridge deck, remains the harder problem. New development going in at the corner of 75th Street and Cortez Road is going to bring more people wanting to reach the island regardless of what the bridge looks like once it's finished, and Chappie has described that tension directly: you take with one hand and give with the other. It's a useful corrective to the idea that a new bridge alone solves congestion. It solves the specific failure point of a drawbridge stopping traffic for marine passage. It doesn't solve everything upstream of it.
Your other two ways off the island aren't touched
If Cortez Road does get congested during active construction, it helps to remember the island has never depended on one crossing. Three separate bridges connect Anna Maria Island to the mainland and to Longboat Key:
- Cortez Road (SR 684), connecting Cortez Village to Bradenton Beach, the one under construction now
- Manatee Avenue (SR 64), connecting Perico Island to Holmes Beach in the middle of the island
- Gulf Drive at Longboat Pass (SR 789), the Ernest A. Chapel Bridge, connecting Bradenton Beach to Longboat Key
Manatee County has deliberately staggered these projects so only one major bridge is under construction at a time. The Anna Maria Island Bridge replacement along Manatee Avenue is sitting at 90 percent design and isn't funded for construction until fiscal year 2029, which runs from July 2028 through June 2029. That's not an accident. It's a coordination decision the county made specifically so residents aren't managing two major bridge projects at once for years. If you live closer to Holmes Beach or the island's north end, Manatee Avenue stays your reliable route through this entire phase of the Cortez project.
There's also a lower profile mitigation in the works. The Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau has been expanding ferry service, including a third Gulf Islands Ferry, specifically to give residents and visitors another way on and off the island while bridge work is underway. It won't replace a car for most daily errands, but it's worth knowing it exists if you're weighing options for a particular week.
What this actually means for the fall ahead
The honest version of this story isn't "expect delays." It's that the disruption arriving this September is smaller and more localized than the four year headline suggests, concentrated around Cortez Village's businesses and a new connector road rather than spread across your daily crossing. The bigger shift, when the old drawbridge comes down and traffic moves permanently onto the new span, is still ahead of us. For now, the practical move is simple: if your routine runs through the Seafood Shack, Tide Tables, or anywhere near Hunter's Point, expect a new turn onto Hunter's Point Way. If it doesn't, your drive over the Cortez Bridge this fall will likely look almost exactly like it did last month.
Whether you're settled here for good or weighing what a home near this corridor means for your daily life on the island, it helps to have someone who tracks these details as they happen rather than after they've already changed your routine. Kathy Harman has spent a career following exactly this kind of local development on Anna Maria Island. If you'd like to talk through what's changing here or anywhere else on the island, let's discuss your island priorities and find the perfect waterfront fit.
