CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK)\u2014Cape Coral parents are pushing the city to designate Four Freedoms Park as a historic landmark before a massive re-development project that some fear could strip the city’s first park of it’s family-friendly charm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
City Council will consider whether to nominate the park as a “historic resource” during it’s 4:00 p.m. meeting on Monday. That could make it much harder for developers to change the park, according to city code. However, the resolution asks City Council to decline the nomination. Instead, it directs staff to work with the Cape Coral Historical Society to design and construct a historical monument in Four Freedoms Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This comes after City Council after a final public hearing on Oct. 22. North Dakota-based Crown Development plans to build apartments, townhomes, a marina, police substation, and bandshell in downtown Cape Coral. The project will be located just south of Cape Coral Parkway and west of Coronado Parkway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Several parents raised concerns about the future of Four Freedoms Park, which is included in the deal. Cape Coral’s first park is home to a walking path, playground, and city-run pre-school program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’d love to sit up here and tell you, ‘I’ll never touch Four Freedom Park,'” developer Larry Nygard said during a public hearing earlier this month. “You know, but the reality is, to do what we all are trying to do, it’s gonna get impacted in a lot of different ways.”<\/p>\n
Nygard said part of the marina would be located on the park, calling it an integral part of the development. The company agreed to build a new one-acre park with tennis\/pickleball courts and a children\u2019s playground, according to council documents. Nygard said the same playground equipment would be used.\u00a0<\/p>\n
City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn said Cape Coral is looking into a new location for the pre-school program, which is housed in a building on the park grounds. He said not staff will lose their jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Louis Madden, a Cape Coral father, nominated the park to become a historical landmark. His family has been coming to Four Freedoms for the last decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Save the park,” Madden said. “Keep it the way how it is. It does a lot for the community. Kids love it.”<\/p>\n
Madden drew comparisons to another controversial park project: Cape Coral’s .\u00a0<\/p>\n
It faced fierce opposition from some neighbors who criticized the project’s cost and scale – not to mention the removal of trees along the shoreline.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s going to lose all of its charm,” Maden said of Four Freedoms Park. “You know, you’re going to lose the natural trees.”<\/p>\n
Other parents were more open-minded. Raul Soto played hide-and-seek with his daughter, Aubree, on Sunday afternoon. He’s been coming to the park since she was born. If developers limit the removal of trees and add family-friendly attractions, Soto said he’s supportive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Making it bigger, and, any other little kind of attractions or things that they put inside of here? I think it’d be great for the kids,” Soto said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK)\u2014Cape Coral parents are pushing the city to designate Four Freedoms Park as a historic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[173252,209,211,210,90583,832,3305,7561,10428,28,173251,157982,159145,172387,145663,34829,38979],"class_list":["post-444802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-aubree-murphy","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-cities-in-the-united-states","tag-city-council","tag-city-manager","tag-coral","tag-coral-gables","tag-florida","tag-four-freedoms","tag-geography-of-florida","tag-geography-of-the-united-states","tag-louis-madden","tag-playground-equipment","tag-precious-coral","tag-wink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444802","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=444802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}