The visual renditions of the Cape Coral Yacht Club rebuild are everything promised \u2014 and more.<\/p>\n
Prepared by Kimley-Horn and Sweet Sparkman Architects, the presentation at Wednesday\u2019s Cape Coral City Council workshop fulfilled the city\u2019s vision of a resort-style complex to include a two-story community center capable of handing everything from small club or business meetings to two large-scale events at once; a resort-style pool and a nearby children\u2019s water feature; an expanded beach; a new marina with 150 boat slips and nearly four dozen boat trailer parking spaces; and yes, the four-level parking garage to accommodate the type of traffic the city hopes its \u201cdestination\u201d hub will attract.<\/p>\n
The wow factor was there.<\/p>\n
The money, from council\u2019s perspective, was not.<\/p>\n
The price estimate for the rebuild ticked in at $196 million, not including the $5 million cost of replacing the pier destroyed by Hurricane Ian. That estimate is lower than the $225 million talked about in October \u2014 and much lower than the guestimate of \u201ccloser to $300 million\u201d then proffered by Mayor John Gunter \u2014 but council had a collective question: How to pay for the dream.<\/p>\n
Put another way, how much debt does the city want to incur and how should that debt be structured \u2014 and let\u2019s not forget \u2014 who pays and how and how much?<\/p>\n
Council\u2019s consensus was to ask City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn to look again at funding strategies and a possible phased-in approach to the project itself.<\/p>\n
We understand council\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n
Last go-around in October, council asked city staff to explore public-private partnerships \u2014 essentially types of concessionaire agreements such as the one the city has with a Kerns Restaurant Group LLC to rebuild the Boathouse Tiki Bar & Grill and operate the planned fuel pumps at the complex \u2014 to offset some of the costs.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s Request for Information effort did not draw any response. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, pols at the state level are pandering to the public with yet more yak of eliminating property taxes, which municipalities rely upon, but not offering \u2014 at least not publicly \u2014 a replacement vehicle because, well, you know, cities and counties can simply just cut the fat.<\/p>\n
The how-to-fund-it ball is back in staff\u2019s hands. <\/p>\n
Taxpayers citywide are waiting to see how they play it. <\/p>\n
Breeze editorial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The visual renditions of the Cape Coral Yacht Club rebuild are everything promised \u2014 and more. Prepared by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-190133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}