FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 A Fort Myers property that once served as an Old Florida oasis now sits damaged and abandoned after Hurricane Ian.<\/p>\n
Rock Lake Resort, a five-acre property on Palm Beach Boulevard, was built in the 1940s as a vacation spot. Hurricane Ian’s storm surge heavily damaged the resort in 2022.<\/p>\n
The property was sold later that year. Since then, it has looked abandoned and unkept, catching the attention of neighbors who pass by daily.<\/p>\n
“I would just like to see it restored, the buildings restored, and go ahead and turn it back into those rentals that they used to be,” neighbor Bob Swinker said.<\/p>\n
WINK News reached out to the City of Fort Myers to find out what’s planned for the site. The head of economic development said no plans have been announced yet.<\/p>\n
Because the property sits in a flood zone, future development will look very different from the original resort. That’s not what Swinker was hoping to hear.<\/p>\n
“Right out there, high rise stuff, and they’re turning small town USA into some big luxury place, and it’s not what it was whenever I came down here 40 something years ago,” Swinker said.<\/p>\n
WINK News reached out to the new owners of Rock Lake Resort for information about their plans but has not yet received a response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 A Fort Myers property that once served as an Old Florida oasis now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[28656,160583,209,211,210,28,897,157982,160581,160582,1694,130101,38979],"class_list":["post-403706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-aircraft","tag-bob-swinker","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-florida","tag-fort-myers","tag-geography-of-florida","tag-hawker-hurricane","tag-head-of-economic-development","tag-ian","tag-thomas-edison","tag-wink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403706","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=403706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}