| Another major residential development
in Cape Coral – this one nearly 1,000 units on 370 acres
in the city’s northeast – will be gearing up to
start construction if the city approves the developer’s
plans next month.
It’s the second major housing project announced in the
past week in Cape Coral. Bonita Bay officials said last week
they would build about 1,300 residential units on 524 acres
in the western Cape.
The northeast development, Sunset Lakes, will be a mix of
single-family homes, condominiums and villas surrounding almost
72 acres of manmade lakes. But this project is outside the
traditional “hot” areas of the Cape, the south
and northwest.
“We were looking to where the growth is coming not to
where it is,” said John Kinsey, owner of Boca Raton-based
NBD Development. “That area of the Cape is picking up
quickly.”
Kinsey’s project, coupled with about 1,700 homes slated
for developer Will Stout’s Entrada project, is making
buyers and sellers take notice of the scarcely developed region
that abuts North Fort Myers. Some reports have homesites purchased
last year on freshwater canals for $8,000 selling for more
than $40,000.
“Both off-water and freshwater property is taking off
(in the northeast),” said Jeff Miloff, a broker with
Miloff-Aubuchon Realty Group. “There’s a lot of
speculation because of Entrada.”
And Stout’s got plenty of interest in Entrada.
His company has a contract to sell 224 acres in the 730-acre
project to Ryland Homes and is in negotiations to sell 225
acres to KB Home. Earlier this year, Stout sold about 175
acres to Engle Homes. All are national builders with solid
reputations, Stout said. He wouldn’t reveal the selling
prices.
Stout said the northeast is becoming attractive because “other
areas are already developed and
|
builders and developers believe
in our vision for the area,” as a gateway to the Cape.
The northeast Cape has always been the forgotten outpost.
It’s a part of the city where homes pop up in random
patterns like weeds peeking through cracks in the sidewalk.
And it’s more the norm than the exception to find unusual
items, such as a car motor found this week, discarded in a
street.
But now developers are eying that region for expansion.
Publix Supermarkets has purchased a site for a grocery store
at the corner of Kismet Parkway and Del Prado Boulevard Extension,
said real estate broker Greg Eagle. And a recent 300-unit
condominium site, on Del Prado Boulevard Extension, sold for
about $69,000 per acre. That’s more than 72 percent
higher than what the city contracted for when it agreed to
purchase 171 acres for an academic village – at the
northwest corner of Kismet Parkway and Del Prado Boulevard
Extension – in February.
“Del Prado (Boulevard Extension) is getting some energy,”
said Dennis Fullencamp, a Cape real estate broker. “The
strong residential coming in will help spur commercial growth.”
The Sunset Lakes project – 980 residential units coupled
with 37 acres for commercial development and 45 acres for
light industrial – is in the final development order
stage according to public records and is expected to be heard
by the city’s zoning and planning commission in mid-July.
The city council gets the final say on the project usually
within a month of the zoning hearing.
If the council approves the project, Kinsey said they hope
to start building homes in about a year. “There’s
a lot of development work to do first,” he said of the
heavily wooded property.
He wouldn’t reveal what the homes would sell for but
did say they would be “competitively priced.” |
