Rezoning and Land Use Planning in City of Fort Myers

Fort Myers is the region's oldest city and its entitlement work is redevelopment work. The questions here are infill questions — how a project fits a street grid and a building stock that predate the code governing them, what happens at the seam between a new building and a hundred-year-old neighborhood, and whether existing nonconforming conditions can be carried forward or must be cured. 

 

The Town has a great variety of distinctive areas from a vibrant historic downtown, midtown area that is developing, historic neighborhoods and through annexations many suburban areas. The land development code allows for a significant amount of density and intensity and is flexible in many areas.

 

The city actively uses density bonuses and redevelopment incentives to get the housing it wants built, and knowing which incentives a site qualifies for often changes the pro forma more than any negotiation over setbacks. 

 

Community redevelopment areas cover significant parts of the city and bring their own plans, design expectations, and in some cases funding tools. Establishing at the outset whether a parcel sits inside a CRA — and what that CRA's adopted plan says about it — is a first-day question. Hurricane Ian recovery also continues to shape what is politically achievable, particularly where the proposal is to replace a damaged nonconforming use with something denser than what stood there.