Bradenton Riverwalk Listed as Top 10 Waterfront Open Space

Bradenton, FL – The City of Bradenton is proud of its revitalized downtown and its crowning jewel, the Bradenton Riverwalk. And people across the country have taken notice.

The Bradenton Riverwalk was listed first in its list of Top 10 Waterfront Open Spaces in the June issue of Urban Land, the magazine of the Urban Land Institute.

All of the waterfront open spaces listed were designed to do away with concrete barriers to prevent stormwater runoff and replace them with useable space that can handle flooding without causing damage and allows stormwater to drain quickly and easily. Each of the 10 projects were completed within the last five years.

The City of Bradenton, the Bradenton Downtown Development Authority and nonprofit Realize Bradenton collaborated on creating the Bradenton Riverwalk. What was once “The Sand Pile,” the 50-acres of dredged silt from the Manatee River, is now a waterfront park complete with an interactive water feature, a playground, a fishing pier, three event lawns, a botanical walk and a skate park.

The approximately 1-mile linear park stretches from the South Florida Museum to Manatee Memorial Hospital, and is interlaced with public works of art, pavilions, fabric canopies and shade trees.

Mayor Wayne Poston said it was a great honor for Bradenton to be recognized among other projects around the world.

The Urban Land Institute is a non-partisan, nonprofit research and education organization supported by its members. Founded in 1936, ULI now has 38,000 members worldwide, representing the entire spectrum of land use and real estate development disciplines working in private enterprise and public service.

For more information about the Urban Land Institute, visit http://uli.org.

Image via the City of Bradenton Website

Sign up for the Bradenton Patch newsletter and alerts!

Be sure to follow us on Facebook, too!