As tensions continue to flare over a proposed cruise port in Manatee County, a top county official said Wednesday that staff and their families are receiving “unacceptable” threats and harassment.
County Administrator Charlie Bishop said multiple county employees and their families, including children, are being intimidated in response to the private terminal being pursued by a leading cruise company, SSA Marine.
It has been less than three weeks since the company first publicized its idea to explore developing a multiberth port with a Tampa holding company that owns the coastal property where the port could be built.
Since then, county planning staff have held early and routine discussions with the team working on the proposal, records show. SSA Marine has released few specifics, though, and outrage has started to outpace the known facts around the plan.
A county spokesperson reiterated there so far has been no formal application submitted to rezone the property, and a two-hour meeting between the project team and county staff on Friday was a preliminary step in a longer governmental process.
“No county employee should be harassed for performing their professional duties,” Bishop, the county administrator, said in a statement to reporters Wednesday.
“No child should ever be targeted because of where their parent works. These actions must stop,” Bishop said.
The details around specific threats are unclear. But in an interview, Deputy County Administrator Courtney DePol said employees have been threatened with physical harm and staffers’ phones are ringing nonstop about the terminal proposal.
The children of county planners are being “harassed by other students” at school, she said.
DePol noted that the planning process with local staff could take at least 10 to 12 months, which could be a conservative estimate. And that’s before it ever reaches the county commission for a vote.
The county’s statement Wednesday underscores how emotional and fiercely intense the debate over the proposed port has become. There is still little known about what the company is actually proposing, beyond its public statements that it wants to develop a 328-acre tract of coastal land, called the Knott-Cowen Tract, just south of the Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge while preserving nearby Rattlesnake Key from development.
Social media has been lit ablaze with disinformation. Early versions of petitions circulating online, for example, claimed that SSA wanted to build the port on Rattlesnake Key, despite the company’s public pledge to preserve it.
And it appears that even state lawmakers are confusing the facts about what the company has proposed thus far.
In a column published last week in The Bradenton Times, for example, state Sen. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, wrote that the new owner of Rattlesnake Key, a subsidiary of the cruise company that bought the property in October for $18 million, “has disclosed plans to transform this treasure into a tourist trap.”
Boyd referenced renderings showing a dock, tiki bar and beaches crowded with cruise patrons. When a reporter first asked Boyd whether he’d seen the renderings, he said he hadn’t, and SSA Marine has not submitted any detailed documents to county staff beyond an initial map showing where the port could be built.
In a phone call Wednesday afternoon,Boyd said his column was referencing the renderings for a separate development proposal of the 13-acre Ed’s Key, which emerged after news of the cruise port first broke.
Some port opponents have also raised concerns about a Jan. 15 letter from a county staffer to a consultant working for the landowner granting an “expedited permitting timeline” for the project.
County staff said Wednesday that the boilerplate letter is routine for projects that could be eligible for economic incentive programs. A project that is granted “rapid response” status require a 21-day response from county staff compared to a 30-day response, DePol said.
“This administrative correspondence does not constitute project approval, guarantee funding, or advance a project through the development review process,” Bishop said.
Leading experts on the bay’s environmental health, meanwhile, have laid out their concerns about what a cruise port could mean for the vibrant habitats surrounding the coastal Knott-Cowen land.
A May 2024 letter obtained by the Tampa Bay Times shows a staffer with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection noting that the property where the port could be built is “adjacent” to, not within, the Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve.
That discrepancy is a moot point, though, to those who argue that a sweeping port operation would affect the ecosystems so close to the terminal development.
The Tampa Bay Estuary Program cited long-term fisheries monitoring data showing approximately 200 unique species in the Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve.
And of the 88 species found within the proposed project footprint, about 30% are considered recreationally or commercially important species, including snook, red drum and gag grouper.
“Our region has demonstrated that we do not have to trade environmental quality for economic growth,” the group wrote on a fact sheet about the port proposal.
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