Construction Boom Fort Myers 1980s
GROWTH IS BRINGING PRIDE AND PROBLEMS TO FORT MYERS, FLA., AREA
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May 24, 1981
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It is land that was sold at chicken dinners and in Sunday newspaper supplements across the Middle West: $20 down and $20 a month for a western Florida home site to ponder in the long, frozen Ohio night.
Twenty years have passed, and the people have started to arrive. According to the United States Census Bureau, the Fort Myers-Cape Coral area grew 94.2 percent in the last decade, making it the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the nation. The population of Lee County, the site of both cities, is now 205,266 and is expected to grow 42 percent, to 296,200, by 1990.
The influx is part of a national population shift to the Sun Belt. But the people arriving here are not desperate, as are the jobseekers streaming from Detroit to Houston. For the most part, these people from the Middle West are simply seeking the good life. But the conversion of sandy lots and nameless pine forests into subdivisions called Provincetown and South Pointe says much about the paradox of the American dream: As more people search for it, the good life is harder to find.
''A community like ours has reached the turning point,'' said William Hammond, director of environmental education for the Lee County schools. ''Every new person gets less for his dollars than the person ahead of him. Half the people weren't here 11 years ago. Twothirds of them never experienced a hurricane. They came for utopia and blue skies, but the problems are very near the surface.'' 'Nothing Stays the Same'
Dick Gatrell, 58 years old, who moved to Cape Coral from Canton, Ohio, with his wife, Nancy, seven years ago, said: ''One would have liked to keep it the way it was. But we realized growth has to be; nothing stays the same.''
Like the Gatrells, most of the area's new residents have moved here from the Middle West. ''This is not a small Southern town,'' said Roland H. Eastwood, executive director of the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council. ''One of your neighbors will be from Indiana or Ohio.'' Although some Northeasterners have moved here, the people who come to Florida from the Northeast tend to settle on the East Coast.
Cape Coral, incorporated in 1971, still seems like a city waiting to happen. Of the 138,000 single-family lots that have been sold, only 15,000 have houses on them, kept high and dry on sand and dirt from 400 miles of man-made canals. (''More canals than Venice,'' people say proudly here.) In the meantime, no one intends to let things get out of hand.
''Cape Coral has an ordinance against everything,'' said Jim Price, president of the Cape Coral Voters League. ''But it's the type of town I want to live in. It's exceptionally clean and wellmaintained.'' Rules About Cutting Grass
In Cape Coral, you cannot park a pickup truck in a driveway overnight, leave a garage door open or let your lawn grow above a certain height. Even the miles of vacant lots are mowed regularly to keep the sunburned weeds at lawn level.
''It's scary,'' said Sheriff Frank Wanicka, who has flown over Cape Coral and seen its vast brown emptiness laced with paved roads and bright blue canals. ''What happens in 10 years when we have 400,000 people here?''
Sheriff Wanicka, who was elected eight years ago and who keeps a Bible on his desk and a rifle on the wall, is proud of Lee County's high arrest rate, the highest in Florida, and low crime rate, the lowest in the state. But he worries, as do many of his fellow citizens, that high population growth will bring the worst of all possible worlds: ''Another Miami.'' No X-Rated Movies
''We try to keep a clean town,'' the sheriff said. ''There is no pornography here. There are no X-rated movies here. We've just gotten 32,000 signatures for mandatory jail sentences for burglary, robbery, rape and second-degree murder. The people we keep catching should be locked up.''
Other indications of the desire for safety are the gatehouses built at the entrances to new condominium projects, the 10,000 citizens who have signed up for community patrols and the offhand expressions of relief about living here.
''There's a feeling of safety, as opposed to New Jersey, where you're looking over your shoulder,'' said James Burwell, 37 years old, who has lived here for seven months.
However, safety is not the only subject of conversation. The talk in the luxurious new Fort Myers City Hall, the specialty shops selling everything from ceiling fans to ballet shoes and the airconditioned model homes is likely to turn to two other subjects, money and weather. The Weather is Great
''People don't like the cold,'' said Michelle Thomas, a real estate saleswoman, ''and this is where the money is.'' The weather, everyone here agrees, is gorgeous. In January, the temperature dips to an average of 57.3 degrees Fahrenheit, cold enough to rationalize the fireplaces that seem to be the rage in many new homes; in August, it averages 81.7 degrees.
''Climate is something that's beyond even the ability of developers to destroy,'' said Donald O. Stone, director of research, evaluation, and program planning for the Lee County School Board, whose schools are bursting at the seams.
Although the county has three times the national average of people over 60 years old, Dr. Stone observed, ''for every four to six elderly persons, you have a service family; that's the family that's producing the student increase.'' In the last decade, the school population has grown 50 percent, and the school board budget has mushroomed from $16 million to $81 million. Voters Reject Rise in School Taxes
Voters have not approved a new tax increase for the schools since 1968. After two failures, the board did not try again. Straw polls in the past have indicated that a request for new capital improvement funds would be rejected. The school board's efforts to keep up with the growth are, according to Dr. Stone, falling behind.
Public utilities are also strained. Each new resident uses 100 gallons of water a day in an area that is short of water. And the sewage plants are already at capacity.
The median age in Lee County increased to 41.6 years old in 1980 from 39.3 years oldin 1970 as retired people from the Middle West have settled in the area. The number of mobile homes in the county increased 199 percent, to 15,601 from 5,218 between 1970 and 1976. The number of airline passengers arriving in the area rose to 676,146 in 1978 from 170,878 in 1971.
''Our retirees are not the vice presidents of General Electric,'' said Mr. Eastwood of the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council. ''The typical retiree is a foreman from the Ford Motor Company or a pensioner on Social Security. They're feeling a tremendous pinch with inflation. They're in a very poor position to accept high taxes to pay for roads and sewer plants.'' 'A No-Growth Attitude'
Larry E. Kirby, founder of Nu-Cape Construction in Cape Coral, said: ''Our biggest problem is not this water and sewer. It's the people themselves. They say: 'I live here. I don't want anyone else here.' It's a no-growth attitude. That's impossible, unless they put an armed guard at the top of Florida.''
By all estimates, the growth in the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area will accelerate with the completion of Interstate 75 and a new jetport that will make the region even more accessible.
The area's blacks, many of whom live in Dunbar, expect to share in the prosperity. ''It's going to continue to get better,'' said Veronica Shoemaker, 52, president of the Lee County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. ''We are not going back.''
Mrs. Shoemaker owns a flower shop, ice cream parlor and vegetable stand on Anderson Avenue, which will run into Interstate 75. Blacks Challenge Voting Law
Mrs. Shoemaker, who has ''run for office so many times I can't count,'' is now pressing a court challenge to the way voting districts have been set up.
The black portion of the population, about 16 percent of the total, is shrinking at the rate of one-tenth of 1 percent a year as whites stream in from the North. The percentage of Hispanic residents, mostly Mexican-American migrant workers, is also shrinking as farm land is converted to housing tracts.
The Mayor of Fort Myers, Ellis Solomon, 60, dressed in a white suit and red and white shoes, counts himself among the optimists. ''As long as the sun shines, this is absolute utopia for a family to move and enjoy themselves,'' he said.
Mr. Price, head of the Cape Coral Voters League, relaxed in his home in an area where the price of a lot ranges from less than $8,000 to $100,000, depending on how close it is to the water.
''It's exciting, sitting here and watching it unfold,'' he said. ''It's like the frontier, a city being born. The problems will all be solved.''
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/24/us/growth-is-bringing-pride-and-problems-to-fort-myers-fla-area.html
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