The Lee County Board of Commissioners is expected to approve $3.1 million Tuesday and begin installing lights at 42 crosswalks on Estero Boulevard in October. Lee County owns Estero Boulevard. The County will also be removing and replacing sidewalks at the crosswalk locations.
The arrangement between the County and Fort Myers Beach when Lee County replaced Estero Boulevard was that the County would take care of all the lights at the crosswalks and if the town wanted to replace the lights up and down the Boulevard the town would have to come up with the funding. Back before Ian, and with the previous Fort Myers Beach administration, that was always a sticky wicket. The Town Council wanted lights on Estero Boulevard and being that it was a County road the also wanted the County to pay for them.
Perhaps one positive that has come out of Hurricane Ian is that the State of Florida is providing the funding for the lights on Estero Boulevard. The funds were secured after Mayor Dan Allers, State Rep Adam Botana, and others at the local level, went to Tallahassee to lobby for the money. The Florida Department of Emergency Management provided about $8 million for that project.
That project which is being done by an FPL vendor just started. Between Estero Boulevard and the side streets there will be 730 new light poles installed, 405 on Estero, 295 on side streets and 30 downtown. The lights will be turtle-friendly amber lights and the space between each pole will be about 100 feet. The 20-22 foot high poles are going in first and the lights will be installed after Hurricane season. The entire project is expected to take 15 months. Read more about the town lighting project HERE.
The Lee County crosswalk project begins in October and is expected to take a little more than a year. The contractor for the job is American Infrastructure Services. The County is also spending $763,000 with Johnson Engineering to administer and inspect the work.
We asked the County where they expect this project to begin being that there are several other projects underway now on the beach. We were told the contractor doing the work will make that call.
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Oh good, more construction! Maybe this is something that should have been installed when Estero was ripped up for 7 yrs. smh Are the lights going to be “Turtle Time” compliant? If not the turtle Nazis will be screeching to have them shut down to protect the turtles!