FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 The Edison Tavern is making its comeback, and the finish line is finally in sight.<\/p>\n
The historic building has been under construction since 2024, when the city put $2.62 million into bringing the structure back up to code and giving it a fresh start.<\/p>\n
But the road to reopening has not been a smooth one.<\/p>\n
General Manager Kevin King said repeated hurricanes and storms left the building in rough shape, creating challenges that went far beyond a typical renovation.<\/p>\n
“This building took some hits and took some damage. We did have a little bit of a structural issue… The city was on it. They fixed it. It wasn’t a little job. It was a big job. We wanted to ensure that this was going to be something around for the next 20 to 30 years,” King said.<\/p>\n
King said most of the two years were spent securing the structure itself, and he has only been working on the interior for the last 71 days.<\/p>\n
City council member, Lin Bochette, says the city completed its portion of the word on time, which would have been January 2025 based on the original renovation contract.<\/p>\n
“It was not an easy transition. Change is always difficult,” King said.<\/p>\n
The total investment now tops $3 million, with King putting in more than $1 million of his own money alongside more than half a million from the city for additional repairs.<\/p>\n
“There was an investment from both sides, and I was willing to do it if we could keep the tradition in everything that is around this whole area,” King said.<\/p>\n
King says he fought for a longer lease to make the investment worthwhile. The contract has a 10 year initial term with the possibility of two, five-year extensions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Long-time customer Dexter Kelman said seeing the space now makes the wait feel worthwhile.<\/p>\n
“It’s unbelievable what they’ve done to this place from what it was,” Kelman said.<\/p>\n
Katherine Dodge believes the updates will bring more visitors to Fort Myers.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s going to be a great investment for taxpayers. I think it’s going to bring back a lot more people here,” Dodge said.<\/p>\n
The tavern is already opening in phases, with one bar currently open to the public and a banquet hall set to host its first wedding this weekend.<\/p>\n
King told WINK News he hopes to be fully open in October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 The Edison Tavern is making its comeback, and the finish line is finally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,325,115],"class_list":["post-411510","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-lee","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411510","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=411510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}