On January 8th, the Fort Myers Beach Town Council gave owners of The Pink Shell Beach Resort & Marina the first of 2 Yes votes needed to build a new 6-story 40-room boutique hotel across from the big resort. On Monday, they received the second yes vote needed to move forward.
During the first public hearing in January, Pink Shell owner Bob Boykin would not commit to a time-frame to start building the new resort. He did not commit to putting shovels in the ground this week either. Boykin wants to wait to see how the 2025 season turns out before approaching a lender for the project so there is no time-frame on when the resort will break ground.
Boykin told Beach Talk Radio he was pleased with the vote. “We are excited to write the next chapter in the Pink Shell story, there is much to do but our team is ready to go. We need some more recovery in the market and we hope that part of that is the clean up of the demolished inventory on the island, the more we look like paradise the quicker the island recovers.”
The final vote to approve the project was 4-0 with Mayor Allers recusing himself because he does business with the resort. On January 8th Councilwoman Karen Woodson voted no because she wanted the Pink Shell team to commit to starting the project. On Monday Woodson said after doing additional research and talking to lenders she understood why the Pink Shell couldn’t commit and she was more comfortable changing her vote to a yes.
In January the Local Planning Agency voted to deny the project by a vote of 4-2.
The 2nd vote 4-0 from the town makes perfect sense to me. Thank you for sharing the explanations given. It will be a beautiful addition to FMB when Pink Shell sees further market recovery. Many people do understand the fiscal responsibility side. Best of luck to Pink Shell. Thank you to town council.
The marvel of illogic unfolding at Fort Myers Beach Town hall:
– Residents grouse about untenable traffic.
– Time and public funds are spent on solutions by the town council even as it approves higher densities, talĺer buildings and enlarged resorts.
I still don’t understand how they can vote for these projects yet vote against EIBC replacement project. I would love an explanation if anyone has one.
Karen Woodson, will you better explain this statement and how you derived your reasoning?
“On Monday Woodson said after doing additional research and talking to lenders she understood why the Pink Shell couldn’t commit and she was more comfortable changing her vote to a yes.”
Crickets
Woodson’s initial vote of “no” was because there was no start date given. Her second vote was a “yes”…..but still without a start date. To the regular person…seems like a no brainer to vote “no” again. But it’s par for the course for this council to vote so erratically. She said she changed her mind after doing additional research. Why wasn’t this research done initially?? To me, this shows this council member didn’t do their due diligence initially, and probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote on such important issues.
….. Because at the initial vote, she had asked about a start date and he was very honest about having no idea when, unknown financing, too many unknowns as to how long it before starting. Then as she sa d in the council meeting I watched, she explained as to why she was switching her vote. It helps to know the whole story by actually watching the meetings.
Thanks for the insight. Didn’t have time to watch the meeting this time, and assumed the journalism would be reliable. Guess I was wrong.
How ironic, Woodson votes to double density for Myerside and Neptune, votes to approve Seagate and now Pink Shell, then complains about traffic. WAK are totally disingenuous.
There will never be a fix to the traffic problem unless cars are banned from the island period.
Ok, so let’s double the density on the Island.