The Empty Glass Building Next to Whitney's Is Finally Getting a Second Act

A disco ball leans against the front door. A leaf blower sits nearby. A printer and a few stray boxes are scattered across what used to be a bank lobby with 25-foot ceilings. That's the current state of 6960 Gulf of Mexico Drive, the glass office building next to Whitney's on the north end, according to a recent walk-through documented by the Business Observer. No tenant has moved in since the Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce packed up and left more than two decades ago.

That's about to change. Whitney's, the restaurant and bar that anchors the Village stretch of the north end, wants to knock the building down and turn the lot into a tropical outdoor dining garden. On September 15, the town's Planning and Zoning Board took up the request and voted unanimously to recommend it.

If you've driven past that building for years wondering what it was waiting for, here's the answer, and here's why it took this particular shape.

A Bank That Outlasted Three Owners and One Federal Indictment

The building went up in 1976 as a bank branch. In the early 2000s it became office space for the Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce and the Historical Society, with the tourism desk set up at the old teller's counter and a traffic light still hanging over the drive-through lane, a relic from when bankers signaled customers through. The chamber moved out, and the building has sat vacant more often than not since 2008, a run Longboat Key News puts at 16 years total.

The most unusual chapter belongs to Aubrey Lee Price, a Georgia pastor turned financial adviser who bought the building in 2010 for $533,900 with plans to reopen it as a bank. He never got the chance. Price was later convicted of bank, wire and securities fraud after stealing more than $70 million from over 100 investors, according to a 2014 FBI release, and the building went into seizure along with the rest of his assets.

Anthony Marterie bought it in 2015 for $549,000. It sat empty under his ownership too, until Whitney LBK LLC, the entity behind the restaurant next door, closed on the 0.69-acre parcel on November 19, 2025 for $1.2 million. In fifteen years, the building's price more than doubled without a single tenant ever moving back in.

From Gas Station to Restaurant, and Now the Lot Next Door

Whitney's own site tells a similar before-and-after story. The restaurant now occupies what was once an abandoned Chevron gas station, and the zoning application filed with the town leans on that history directly, describing the redevelopment as proof that the old parcel could go from underused to something people actually visit. The filing calls the neighboring bank building an "unsightly, long vacant and incompatible structure," and argues the same approach that worked once can work again while preserving "the relaxed and informal character of the Village area of Longboat Key."

The numbers in the current plan are specific. Whitney's original permitting, based on an older parking formula, capped the restaurant at 70 seats. The combined project, once the bank building comes down and roughly 2,900 square feet of new outdoor dining space goes up under a white pergola with pervious pavers and portable furniture, would bring the total to about 200 seats, with 51 parking spaces required across the joined lots. The application estimates the change would generate roughly 96 additional vehicle trips per day, just under the 100-trip threshold that would trigger a full traffic study. Last call for the new patio, per the application's own ground rules, would be 10 p.m.

The filing also points to Mar Vista and The Shore as evidence that outdoor dining spaces on Longboat Key can become what the application calls "memorable destinations," framing the bank site's second act as part of a pattern rather than a one-off bet.

What Failed at 78 Percent, and What Passed Unanimously

Not everything on this stretch of Gulf of Mexico Drive moves this easily. Years earlier, a developer proposed folding this same building, along with the gas station that became Whitney's and adjacent land, into a 120-room hotel called the North End Hotel & Beach Club. Voters rejected the rezoning needed for it, with 78 percent opposed.

The difference comes down to what each proposal actually changes. The hotel needed new residential density on land that didn't carry it, which under Longboat Key's rules sends the question to a referendum. Whitney's expansion doesn't touch density at all. Both the current Office-Institutional designation and the proposed Highway-Oriented Commercial designation carry zero residential density under the town's 1984 Comprehensive Plan, so the rezone skips the ballot box entirely and moves through Town Hall on its own.

You can see the same pattern play out a few blocks north this year, where a long-stalled residential project on vacant land near Tarawitt Drive spent close to a decade working through a foundation that couldn't sell it, a rejected referendum, an approved one, and two rounds of resale before finally clearing its last procedural hurdle in September, a private dredge order for a boat basin serving eight condominium units. Ten years for one small residential project. A few months, so far, for a restaurant expansion that doesn't touch a single unit of housing.

That's the mechanism behind why the north end can feel like it's constantly in motion in small ways while its biggest proposals stall for years. Restaurants converting old buildings into dining space don't need permission from voters. Anything that adds housing density does.

What the Corner Actually Becomes

Whitney's isn't finished at Town Hall yet. The Planning and Zoning Board's recommendation heads next to the Town Commission, which needs two readings to adopt the rezoning ordinance, and the ordinance's own paperwork anticipates that second reading landing sometime in 2027. Even after that, the actual site plan, with final landscaping, lighting and parking layout, comes back to the Planning and Zoning Board for a separate hearing before anything gets built.

What's already settled is the shape of the plan and the reasoning behind it. Town staff's own assessment noted that an office use simply isn't what the market wants on that stretch of Gulf of Mexico Drive anymore, and recommended approval alongside the board. The building that couldn't hold a tenant since the Chamber of Commerce left is on track to become an extension of one of the busiest restaurants on the north end, following the exact template the restaurant used on its own lot years ago.

For now, the glass doors stay locked, the disco ball stays propped against them, and the corner keeps waiting on its second act. But for the first time in over a decade, there's an actual plan on file at Town Hall, one with a hearing date, a staff recommendation, and a unanimous board vote behind it.

If you're weighing a move on Longboat Key's north end, or just trying to understand how a neighborhood like this actually changes over time, Chris Carpenter tracks these local filings as they happen. Let's Connect.