Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport officials have unveiled preliminary designs for a parking garage near the terminal's main entrance, aiming to fix what one official calls the airport's biggest headache: not enough spaces for a rapidly growing number of travelers. The project, still in its early planning stages, would rise no more than five stories and arrive in two separate phases rather than all at once.
The plans were presented at a tourist development council meeting, according to bradenton.com. Mark Stuckey put it plainly: “Right now, our biggest issue is parking. Short-term and long-term can fill up at times, usually on the weekends.” When that happens, he said, “we spill over into other lots where we have to shuttle people.”
That overflow problem isn't rare. The same outlet reports that short-term and long-term parking fills up at times, usually on weekends, forcing the airport to redirect travelers to other lots and bus them in. A separate report from baynews9.com notes the long-term lot specifically tends to fill on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, which is when staff start directing drivers to overflow parking.
Two Phases, One Five-Story Structure
Under the preliminary plan, the East parking garage — paired with a rental-car return area — would be built first. The West garage would follow, adding a rental-car exit area, a parking exit ticketing plaza and expanded long-term parking, per the same bradenton.com report. Combined, the garage is expected to top out at five stories, with the ground floor set aside entirely for rental cars.
Airport officials have not released a construction start date or a completion timeline for the project. What they have said is that design planning is expected to begin in January, and Stuckey indicated groundbreaking would likely follow roughly a year after that design work gets underway.
A Stopgap While the Garage Waits
In the meantime, airport officials have designated 60 additional parking spaces specifically for rental cars, according to baynews9.com's reporting on the parking strain. SRQ also already runs a free shuttle between the long-term lot and overflow parking once the long-term lot fills, and the airport's website lists overflow lots A, D and the Tower lot — opened only as needed — charging $2 for the first 20 minutes with a $14 daily maximum, per flysrq.com. That same shuttle service to the terminal runs from two hours before the first morning departure until after the last scheduled arriving flight, even accounting for delays.
Why the Crunch Is Getting Worse
The pressure on SRQ's lots tracks a sharp rise in air travel through the airport. SRQ served a record 4,514,781 passengers in 2025, a 6.34% jump over the prior year, according to businessobserverfl.com. Airport CEO Paul Hoback told the outlet that updates to parking and the rental-car center were overdue, noting those facilities “have not kept up with demand as passenger traffic has increased.”
The growth isn't a one-year blip. Baynews9.com reports the airport's passenger volume has tripled since 2018, while yourobserver.com notes the count has more than doubled from the 1.9 million travelers SRQ saw in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, with roughly 4.5 million passengers anticipated for 2025. Yourobserver.com also reports the airport expects to cross the so-called PAL 2 threshold of nearly 2.8 million enplanements sometime between 2026 and 2030, though further expansion triggers beyond that aren't anticipated until around 2040, when projected boardings would exceed 3.3 million.
The Bradenton Herald first reported the garage proposal, which was later covered by the Miami Herald, marking one of the clearer signs yet that SRQ is trying to get ahead of its own growth rather than simply reacting to it lot by lot. For now, travelers heading to Sarasota-Bradenton on a busy weekend should still expect the possibility of a shuttle ride from an overflow lot — at least until the new garage breaks ground.
