Urban Gamble

COVER UPDATE

Urban Gamble

Environmentalists and bickering politicians killed

Ron Throgmartin's riverfront condominium project

in downtown Fort Myers. Now, the land's for sale.

The City of Fort Myers got a bad reputation for making life difficult for anyone with plans to develop downtown - a downtown officials were desperately trying to resuscitate.

But that didn't matter too much during the real estate boom. After all, land was appreciating fast, offsetting otherwise thorny legal entanglements with bureaucrats and environmentalists.

Today, the recession has made many projects unfeasible, perhaps handing anti-growth and environmental activists what they wanted in the first place: zero economic activity.

Consider the saga of one developer, Ron Throgmartin. After investing more than $21 million to build a 189-unit condo tower that would also house the nonprofit Edison Sailing School, Throgmartin was thwarted by environmentalists and bickering city officials over the last six years.

The Vue would have been a 27-story tower on the Caloosahatchee River, bringing new residents to a two-acre site next to Centennial Park in downtown Fort Myers. But the city swapped a sliver of parkland to accommodate The Vue's design and that created a backlash from politicians and environmentalists who consider the park sacred land.

By January 2005, Throgmartin had pre-sold most of the condos and had $110 million in financing from U.S. Bank. But the subsequent legal squabbling over the parkland scuttled the project and Throgmartin missed the condo-market cycle.

"It's just a stagnant market," Throgmartin says now. He's listed the property for sale at $20 million and has suggested that the city buy it, though he concedes the municipality probably doesn't have the financial ability to do so. "If they don't, the world goes on," he says.

It's not likely any developer will buy the property because of the issues about the nearby park, which itself has fallen into disrepair and is home to vagrants. "Any developer is going to say: Do I really want this battle?"

But once the recession takes hold, elected officials may welcome any investment. "Politicians change and that will open the door to more reasonable opportunities," Throgmartin says.

As evidence, Throgmartin is working hard to develop a 45,000-square-foot, five-story office building that he wants to build adjacent to the condo site on West First Street.

"We have a really good shot of coming out of the ground in the second quarter of 2009," he says. "We've been working with [an undisclosed] tenant that would occupy half the building."

Even though he has a committed tenant for half the building, securing financing has been the biggest obstacle. He's hoping Orion Bank will finance the project.

-Jean Gruss