We talk about new development in Southwest Florida all the time. But the aspect of re-development, especially in our local municipalities’ older, and perhaps blighted, downtown districts, is just as important to address.
I recently caught up with the Executive Director of the Fort Myers Community Redevelopment Agency, Michele Hylton-Terry, who brought me up to speed with the CRA and some of its current projects.
"The mission of the Fort Myers Redevelopment Agency is to revitalize the blighted underserved older parts of the city. We enhance the business climate through various initiatives," Hylton-Terry said. "The CRA seeks to improve the overall environment with designated redevelopment areas making them more attractive for investment and growth. We increase property values by revitalizing neighborhoods and improving infrastructure. The CRA aims to increase property values for residents and businesses. And of course, we encourage community participation. The CRA Identifies the areas that need improvement and we go in with the resources and tools that we have that are exclusive to a CRA and ohh boy do they make a difference."
Hyton-Terry discussed one of the ways the CRA wants to revitalize the downtown area of Fort Myers.
"We are...creating a gateway feature that will welcome you into the river district and ohh my goodness it is so beautiful! It's going to be located right at Fowler and MLK and right behind it is going in the new Swamp Cat Brewery, you know, a new business that we are supporting with $100,000 façade grant," she said.
The CRA Executive Director then discussed how the agency is currently updating its plans and how the public can participate.
"Because we are always looking for that public participation, I want to let people know that we're in the process of updating most of our redevelopment plans right now, the downtown redevelopment plan, the Cleveland Ave. redevelopment plan and in the summer we will be kicking off the MLK redevelopment plan," Hylton-Terry explained.
She added that t he purpose of updating the plan is to refresh the ideas that were in place five years ago.
"Things change all the time. Hear what the public sees and desires now, five years later. Some of the plans are actually a little older than five years," she said. "So we want the plans to be current and fresh because as a redevelopment area we can only do things that are identified in that plan. And so please look for opportunities to participate in our listening sessions where your voice can be heard and you can influence how your redevelopment in your city will look."
Hylton-Terry then talked about the different components of what she called the Fort Myers CRA toolbox and how their use will continue to shape the city’s future development.
"I think if we take advantage of all the tools in the toolbox here in Fort Myers--we provide façade grants for businesses, we also have residential home preservation grants and paint programs; signage for businesses who want to improve their signs...We just have all these tools and we're able to because we have an incredible staff here that allows us to implement all these programs," she said. "These are some of the tools that I mentioned that the CRA has available to it. We provide grants, we provide incentives to attract and to maintain the businesses that are already in our redevelopment areas."
Hylton-Terry also talked about the landscape improvement project along Cleveland Avenue.
"Most of you know the roadway has been under construction for three to four years and now that FDOT has completed that work, we are gonna follow behind them and install beautiful landscape that’s irrigated so it can be maintained and make Cleveland Avenue more attractive," she said. "As we currently work on the redevelopment plan for Cleveland Ave, this is one of the things that we know will lift up that redevelopment area as we're building businesses on Cleveland."
She discussed the major turning point in the revitalization of the Fort Myers downtown area that took place about a decade ago.
"Many years ago and I'm grateful that we can say, many years ago, our downtown was a ghost town. Well, through our incremental funding that we get from the city and the county, we were able to support a $10 million infrastructure project that beautified downtown with brick streets, beautiful new street furniture and light fixtures," she said. "That’s a significant contribution that made a huge impact. After that investment we saw a lot of change in the people interested in coming into Fort Myers."
It sounds like the Fort Myers CRA is definitely on a roll, so we can continue to look forward to, and appreciate, each of its projects as it unfolds in the City of Fort Myers.
Karen Moore is a contributing partner for WGCU and the publisher of SWFL Business Today.
