City of Palms Stadium, which has been closed since 2012, may soon come down for good. Fort Myers city leaders say they are ready to move forward with a full demolition after a new engineering report found keeping any part of the stadium would be costly and limit future redevelopment plans.<\/p>\n
For years, residents have shared their opinions about the stadium\u2019s future. Many have called it a waste of space and money, while others have suggested repurposing it for community use.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous \u2014 it\u2019s wasted space,\u201d one resident said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish they could repurpose it for something,\u201d another added.<\/p>\n
\u201cTear it down,\u201d said a third.<\/p>\n
Even with no games or events, taxpayers have continued footing the bill for maintenance and security.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just wasting, and they\u2019re wasting taxpayer money,\u201d one resident said.<\/p>\n
On Monday, city leaders reviewed an engineering report that assessed whether partial demolition of the stadium would be feasible. The report found that keeping any portion of the building would be expensive, require significant reconstruction, and reduce the space available for future development.<\/p>\n
That led council members to one decision: complete demolition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we should move forward with the complete demolition, with the attempt to salvage whatever we can that\u2019s historical to be consolidated into the new project,\u201d said Mayor Kevin Anderson<\/p>\n
While the stadium will come down, the city plans to salvage pieces of the structure \u2014 including plaques, lettering, and brickwork \u2014 to preserve some of the stadium\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city manager has pointed out some lettering that he thought would be great. There is some stuff inside that could still be salvaged,\u201d the city engineer said.<\/p>\n
The next steps include gathering demolition proposals and holding a final vote. Mayor Anderson said he hopes to have the work completed by the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City of Palms Stadium, which has been closed since 2012, may soon come down for good. Fort Myers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,43003,3305,24131,1375,43002,10315],"class_list":["post-76130","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-city-engineer","tag-city-manager","tag-kevin-anderson","tag-mayor","tag-palms-stadium","tag-westside"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76130","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=76130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}