Most affordable and workforce housing projects focus on rentals, but a developer plans to change that with a proposed 141-unit condo community in Fort Myers\u2019 Dunbar neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It already has the support of Fort Myers officials but will need a Lee County grant to make it happen.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fort Lauderdale-based real estate developer Fuse Group took a step toward realizing its plans Oct. 22 when the Fort Myers Community Redevelopment Agency awarded $5,662,906 in tax increment financing for owner Eyal Peretz of Towles Garden Lender Asset SPV LLC.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The single-family condo project, Towles Garden, would sit at 3360 Veronica S. Shoemaker Blvd. and offer condos for sale to buyers making 80% or 120% of the area median income in Dunbar. It is a long-planned development in the CRA\u2019s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard district, one of four designated redevelopment areas in Fort Myers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the project will not move forward unless Lee County also grants the developer $19.5 million from its Community Development Block Grant \u2013 Disaster Recovery funds, which were awarded after Hurricane Ian in 2022. The county has used the funds to help pay for other affordable housing projects, but in the past, the Towles project was not a priority, said Fuse Vice President of Real Estate Stylianos Vayanos.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vayanos told the Fort Myers CRA Board that Lee County staff is now working with his company to bring their request before the Board of County Commissioners, so they can vote to approve or deny the funding.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vayanos hopes that will happen before the end of the year, but it could take longer. Before construction begins, the county needs to conduct an environmental review of the project and get authorization from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to release the funds. Lee County Communications Director Betsy Clayton said that as of Oct. 22 no CDBG-DR grant proposal has been submitted for Towles Garden.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lee County funding is a crucial part of the \u201ccapital stack\u201d that Fuse needs to finish the estimated $53.4 million project. In addition to the CRA tax increment financing and potential county grant, Fuse is rounding out funding with its own equity, along with $23.4 million in construction financing that the company said is already secured.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Plans for Towles call for well-lit sidewalks and common areas, bike paths, the inclusion of green spaces, a clubhouse and other amenities. The developer estimates the project will have direct and indirect economic impacts worth $88.5 million over a 10-year period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to do affordable housing and not just have it all rentals but incorporate the opportunity for people to have home ownership in a townhouse setting,\u201d CRA Board Chair Teresa Watkins Brown said. \u201c[Not] only will it provide generational wealth to the persons that will purchase the home, but it gives them the pride of ownership instead of rentership. When someone has the opportunity to own something \u2014 I\u2019m not saying rentals are bad \u2014 but it gives them a different sense of pride.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most affordable and workforce housing projects focus on rentals, but a developer plans to change that with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1571,209,211,210,15842,897,15843,7797],"class_list":["post-19439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-affordable-housing","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-condo-ownership","tag-fort-myers","tag-home-ownership","tag-real-estate-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19439","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=19439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}