(Guest Commentary by Kim and Dapper Davidson) My name is Dapper, my wife is Kim. We’ve been been coming to Fort Myers Beach since 1997. We were tired of the east coast of Florida and needed something laid back, old school Florida, and we found it, Fort Myers Beach.
We started staying at the Lani Kai, a great place, and the island was incredible. The local hangouts included Jimmy B which was right on the beach, Casey’s Alley, a bar where you could do your laundry, play a game of pool, and the band was the Casey’s House Rockers.
Then along came Hurricane Charley in 2004 and that changed everything. We believe it’s the main reason we now have Margaritaville. The development was a massive undertaking. There was huge public debate, but the town stayed firm, and Margaritaville was finally approved and built.
What a beautiful resort Margaritaville is. It is now the jewel of the island. I personally think Margaretville saved our island after hurricane Ian in 2022. That resort gave us hope. It’s a great place to stay or visit as the island starts to recover and rebuild.
Now 2 years after the big storm things are changing big time.
I’m amazed at the amount of new projects that are going forward and being approved. This island will never be a Mexico Beach, but it will be a Miami if the Town Council fails at protecting the existing neighborhoods. I am not against high rise buildings. I like the Seagate development but it needs to be designed to protect the abutting neighborhoods.
That’s the neighborhood we live in. We own a house on Estero Blvd. that was destroyed by hurricane Ian and we were rebuilding. That didn’t work (our house was the one that fell over), so we will be rebuilding again. We bought a condo so we could live on the island as we rebuild but that keeps going backwards.
Our condo is located in the Gulf Westwind complex on the corner of Donora Blvd and Estero Blvd. The Seagate property is 10 plus acres of land but they are building half of the condo units on Donora Blvd, and there is no buffer area , just a set back of 10 feet from the street.
The Seagate development will be 8 buildings with a height of 255 feet, so we’ll have a massive 255 foot wall of building on Donora with only a 10 ft set back and no buffer to the residential neighborhood. Soon when we look out our window we’ll see a concrete jungle and a service road with loading docks for the Seagate development.
I am asking the Town Council to not destroy our neighborhood with this current design of this massive development. There is plenty of room on the back of the property to build these skyscrapers. Go up 30 floors, I don’t care, just add a buffer zone to protect the existing small neighborhood. We need to have a buffer space between residential neighborhoods and commercial projects like Seagate.
The town talks a lot about having a view corridor for all the new developments. But the town is taking away our view corridor by approving the current design for Seagate. Our entire neighborhood is having their view corridor taken away and given to one company to sell for high profits.
We are coming to the island Sunday for the Monday Town Council meeting and have invited the entire Town Council to visit with us at our condo complex at 4PM Sunday to show them our issue in person. So far 2 out of the 5 members have responded.
Dapper & Kim Davidson
kimdavidsonpaint@aol.com
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