- March 14, 2025
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The owners behind the South Seas resort on Captiva Island are scheduled to go before Lee County officials Feb. 14 for the first of several hearings to determine what the nearly $1 billion project will look like when complete.
The public hearings, which will be held in successive weeks before the county’s Hearing Examiner, will allow the company to put forward its ideas for the historic property. And it also will be an opportunity for those who oppose what the new owners want to do to present their cases before county officials.
This will all happen in the shadow of a pair of court rulings earlier this month that granted each side a victory in what is turning into a bitter fight among neighbors.
On one hand, on Feb. 3 the State of Florida Division of Administrative Hearings found in favor of the ownership group in a dispute over code amendments that exempted South Seas from Captiva density and height limits. Two days later, a Circuit Court judge limited the number of dwellings on the resort’s property to 912, a win for the side opposing the project.
“We will appeal that to the Supreme Court. That's just what you have to do,” says Greg Spencer, CEO of Timbers Co. one of the resort's owners. “I'm not going to go, ‘Okay, all right, you got me.’”
Those fighting the proposal have also vowed to appeal the Feb. 3 ruling, saying in an email that the judge’s “conclusion is just not correct.”
The opposition has formed the Protect Captiva Coalition, a group of “concerned citizens and organizations in opposition to increasing building height and density and opening the door for hundreds of new hotel rooms on Captiva Island.”
The members, according to the coalition's website, “are opposed to this shortsighted plan that will forever change the character and safety of Captiva.”
"There are concerns about this specific project — that the increased density will not only impact the unique nature of Captiva, but the added intensity of use will contribute to a degradation of our water quality, wildlife, and our coastal ecosystems," Matt DePaolis, environmental policy director for the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, says in an email.
"The increase of use on a fragile barrier island will translate to more pollution in our water, more impacts to our wildlife and the ecosystems they need to thrive."
The South Seas resort property is owned by WS SSIR Holdings, a joint ownership group which includes Timbers Co, Wheelock Street Capital and The Ronto Group. The partnership bought the 330-acre South Seas Island Resort (as it was then known) in 2021 for $50.38 million.
Timbers resorts division owns luxury properties similar to what it plans at South Seas in Vail, Colorado, Kauai, Hawaii and Tuscany, Italy.
The date of the purchase is important to all that is happening now.
Spencer, in an interview, says the group closed on the property 364 days before Hurricane Ian hit Southwest Florida, decimating much of Captiva, including the resort’s famed Harborside Hotel, which was damaged beyond repair.
Spencer says because of the storm, which caused extensive damage and created new regulatory requirements, South Seas’ plans for the property underwent significant changes.
In all, South Seas lost 22 support structures, including the hotel, housekeeping facilities, offices, tennis courts and maintenance facilities.
But the storm also led to new FEMA regulations that require properties to be built at higher elevations, making it impossible to rebuild the hotel in its original location. This, Spencer says, has forced South Seas to reconfigure the property layout.
The ownership group seeks to build 43 hotel rooms across two hotels on the property. The north hotel, which is replacing the former Harborside Hotel, will have 225 rooms. The south hotel will have 210 rooms and replace the former conference center, which was also damaged by Ian.
Plans also call for193 multifamily residential units. Multiple three-story structures will be built above parking and will be designed to withstand Category 5 hurricane winds.
Because of the changes mandated by the new FEMA requirements, the total number of dwellings planned have been cut by 79.
South Seas' current zoning already provides for 272 dwelling units and five acres of commercial, the ownership group says in a fact sheet, “so it is incorrect to state that we requested 193 new dwelling units and 435 new hotel rooms.
“In fact, we are reducing the dwelling units by 79 units and are simply clarifying what will be built on the five acres of commercial (the 435 hotel rooms) that has always existed.”
The three-story structures above parking is also important, says Spencer. That’s because of the contentions with the neighbors is that South Seas buildings will be taller than previously allowed.
He argues that the proposed buildings are the same or similar in height — 45 feet — as to what’s already on Captiva and that the difference is that South Seas has to build further inland at a higher elevation to meet FEMA flood rules.
While a lot of the focus, much to Spencer’s displeasure, is on the disagreement with neighbors, work on the resort is moving forward and several large pieces are near opening.
That includes a water park under construction just outside the main gate of the resort; a beachfront restaurant named The Redfish Grill; and a family hangout near a resort pool named Scoops & Slices.
That’s in addition to the 12-hole golf course that opened last year, replacing the previous one damaged during Ian.
These features offer a glimpse of what the resort will look like and offer when it is fully completed by the end of 2027 or early 2028.
With its 2.5 miles of white sandy beaches lining the Gulf of Mexico, the South Seas property is breathtaking. On a cloudless day in February, it’s not hard to see why people sometimes pay up to $1,000 per night.
The property, which takes up about a third of the isolated island, sits on the northern tip of Captiva. On a recent Friday, it took just over an hour to drive the 15.3 miles from the foot of the Sanibel Causeway to the main gate of the South Seas.
South Seas, according to a history of the property in The Sanibel Captiva Guide, dates back to 1923, when Nebraska-born banker Clarence Chadwick established a key lime plantation on the property. He bought the land two years after a major hurricane from a pair of homesteaders — William Langley “Tobe” Bryan and George Washington Carter — who’d moved on to Captiva in the late 1890s.
Chadwick moved to Fort Myers in 1942, leaving the property to family members who were the first to rent to people vacationing in Florida.
The Blackstone Group bought the property in 2006, two years after Hurricane Charley as part of a $397 million portfolio. The previous owner had $28.25 million for the property.
Today, along with the resort’s amenities, privately owned condominiums and homes take up much of the resort’s property.
And those private properties are part of what’s led to the contentiousness that surrounds South Seas’ plans, says Spencer.
For years, when the property was owned by Blackstone, residents and renters were allowed to use the resorts amenities. But not anymore.
Spencer has shut that down, making the property owners pay for the usage. Those who rent out properties through South Seas’ network of rentals get to use the amenities and those who own but don’t rent can join the club — for a $50,000 fee.
But even then, there are limits says Spencer. Those with memberships can’t go out and rent to others “and compete against us.
“If you're an owner and you're a member of our club and if you're a guest with any of the rest. Other than that, you're not going to get access to it,” he says.
“And that gets back to the whole thing. We’re making this investment and trying to get a payback.”
Spencer is confident the ownership group will prevail and says he’s already “seeing cracks” in the ranks of the opposition.
For its part, Protect Captiva says in a Sept. 16 Facebook post that $500,000 in legal work had already been done at the time and that it had raised $750,000 for the fight. (That kind of money isn't necessarily unusual on Captiva: John R. Wood Christie’s International Real Estate,for example, brokered a sale of privately owned home on the resort for $9.67 million late last year.)
The group said in the post that it was trying to raise an additional $750,000 “to make sure we have the resources to continue our work, and to do whatever is legally possible and prudent to protect Captiva from overdevelopment.”
The next step in the process begins with the public hearing scheduled for Feb. 14. It will be continued on Feb. 20 and Feb. 21 and, if needed, Feb. 26 and 27. Once the hearing examiner makes a ruling, the issue will go before the Lee County Commission.
Regardless of how the commission votes, it is nearly certain given the reality of what’s happened in the past couple of years that the losing side will continue the fight in court.
