FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 Nearly four years after Hurricane Ian destroyed the Fort Myers Beach Pier, Lee County officially broke ground Friday on a replacement that neighbors and local leaders say marks another major step in the island\u2019s recovery.<\/p>\n
For people who remember what this stretch of Fort Myers Beach looked like after Ian, the sound of shovels hitting the ground carried a different meaning.<\/p>\n
Ron Fleming has lived on Fort Myers Beach since 2013 and was among those who returned to the island shortly after the storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looked like a Hollywood set,\u201d Fleming said. \u201cI mean, you just… I couldn’t imagine it. You know, I’m looking and just, this is unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fleming said it took him about an hour to travel less than a mile to his home because of the debris. His house took on about three feet of water, despite sitting roughly 10 feet above ground.<\/p>\n
Almost four years later, Fleming stood in a crowd at Crescent Beach Family Park watching ceremonial shovels hit the ground for a new pier.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsidering what we all experienced that day, I think our recovery is amazing,\u201d Fleming said.<\/p>\n
The replacement pier will extend roughly 1,000 feet into the Gulf and measure about 12 feet wide. Lee County says that will make it more than 70% longer and 50% wider than the pier Ian destroyed.<\/p>\n
The new structure will include reinforced concrete piles, a concrete deck, aluminum railings, an entry gate and three shade structures.<\/p>\n
Lee County Commissioner David Mulicka said the goal is not only to rebuild the landmark, but to make the next version stronger.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe engineering and the structure is so much bigger and stronger,\u201d Mulicka said. \u201cThe pilings are bigger. It’s higher. It’s thicker. All more rebar, more concrete, more everything to make this really a superstructure, more bridge-like than it used to be than a pier.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mulicka said he believes the new design will hold up for generations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe won’t have to worry about this for the next 100 years,\u201d Mulicka said.<\/p>\n
The project will cost $14.4 million for design and construction. Lee County is paying for it through a combination of FEMA Public Assistance, Tourist Development Taxes and RESTORE Act grant funding.<\/p>\n
Getting to Friday\u2019s groundbreaking took years.<\/p>\n
Fort Myers Beach Mayor Dan Allers said the same area where people gathered to celebrate Friday was once used by search and rescue teams looking for people after Ian.<\/p>\n
\u201cUp until a year ago this was a sand pile, and before that it was a debris pile,\u201d Allers said. \u201cBefore that, it was a place where the USAR teams were staging to find residents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, Crescent Beach Family Park has reopened, nearby Lynn Hall Memorial Park is under construction and work on the pier is beginning.<\/p>\n
Allers said those visible changes are the result of years of work people could not always see happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’re getting to see now four years of work that has been done in the background starting to finally come to fruition,\u201d Allers said. \u201cAnd I think people are feeling the momentum and they’re excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
That progress also means something to people who do not live on the island but have spent decades returning to it.<\/p>\n
Dennis Morrell has been visiting Fort Myers Beach from St. Louis for about 30 years.<\/p>\n
He remembers taking the trolley to the Times Square area, walking to the end of the old pier and watching people fish over the Gulf. His daughter learned to walk during one of the family\u2019s stays and later attended Florida Gulf Coast University.<\/p>\n
After Ian, Morrell said returning to Fort Myers Beach was difficult.<\/p>\n
During one of his first visits back, he remembers sitting down with food, looking around at the damage and suddenly breaking down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just lost it,\u201d Morrell said. \u201cI just completely broke down. Things just hit you in a way that you just can’t prepare for.\u201d<\/p>\n
He later began volunteering during his visits to the island.<\/p>\n
For Morrell, Friday\u2019s groundbreaking was another sign that Fort Myers Beach is slowly getting pieces of itself back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s just another step in getting a little more back to normal,\u201d Morrell said.<\/p>\n
He knows the island will never look exactly the way it did before Ian.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously it won’t ever be like it used to be, but I think when you can get a little piece or a few pieces that kind of bring it back to what you remember, that just helps,\u201d Morrell said. \u201cIt’s real special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mulicka, a lifelong Southwest Florida resident, has his own memories of the old pier.<\/p>\n
He said his grandparents and parents would bring him to Fort Myers Beach as a child, where his grandfather would take him to the end of the pier to fish and watch the sunset. He said he wants future generations to be able to make those same kinds of memories.<\/p>\n
Mulicka called the new pier a \u201csymbol of resilience and progress\u201d for Lee County.<\/p>\n
For Fleming, recovery does not mean Fort Myers Beach will look exactly as it once did.<\/p>\n
It means continuing forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to move on,\u201d Fleming said. \u201cYou can’t say, \u2018Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish.\u2019 … It’s time to move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new Fort Myers Beach Pier is expected to be completed in late summer 2027, weather and unforeseen circumstances permitting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 Nearly four years after Hurricane Ian destroyed the Fort Myers Beach Pier,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,28,9149,897,1695,1697,6027,356,1521],"class_list":["post-378388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-florida","tag-florida-gulf-coast-university","tag-fort-myers","tag-fort-myers-beach","tag-fort-myers-beach-pier","tag-hurricane-ian","tag-lee-county","tag-southwest-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378388","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=378388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}