| Commercial activity
areas shaped By Pete Skiba |
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| In an old-style city neighborhood a resident could pick up some Italian rolls at a bakery, go next door for some Genoa salami and take a break for lunch at the park across the street. Times have changed, but the concept of convenient neighborhood stores within walking distance of homes in Cape Coral is alive and well. Two years ago, city planners came up with the idea of putting a combination of business and residential centers in areas that were predominantly residential. They called their idea a Commercial Activity Center. "The idea is to combine commercial use with some residential and public use. Public use is something like a park," said Wyatt Daltry, city planner. "The commercial use has to be regulated by zoning, first we have to change the land use." A land-use change to the city planning map has to be adopted by the Cape Coral City Council and then forwarded to the state Department of Community Affairs. The next step would be to narrow down what that land use means by zoning.
People who have turned up at Cape Coral City Hall meetings for discussions of the proposed commercial centers have not opposed the concept of stores in their neighborhoods. They just want assurances that the stores won't intrude on their lifestyles. The convenience of restaurants, small grocery stores, a barber and a tailor shop, as well as other amenities pleases people. The problem is that without the right regulations a neighborhood could end up with a mega-supermarket with a sea of parking lots. That upsets people in their single-family home neighborhoods. "Without a definition of permitted use, we are being asked to buy into something that we really don't know what will be allowed," said Nate Bliss, former president of the Northwest Homeowners Association. There's the rub. People don't feel secure until they know the rules, and not just some of the rules, but all the rules. "We've been waiting for two years for definitions from the city," said Gene Wolfe, city Planning & Zoning Commission chairman. "They should have done it by now." Planners in the city planning department have come and gone in the past two years. Continuity has been a problem, said Norm Standerfer, the department's new director at a 3 p.m Aug. 7 meeting.
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Setting the permitted land uses would become a priority for the Department of Community development, Standerfer said. "It would be good to have the zoning regulations telling us how high buildings could go. What kinds of businesses are allowed," said John Cataldi, president of the 784-member Northwest Cape Coral Neighborhood Association. "The new concept is supposed to be for a community friendly commercial area of stores for residents." Cities don't thrive as sprawling residential tracts. People want convenience to live, work and shop in their own city. The property tax burden on an all-residential area also looms over residents. "Our tax base is 91.5 percent residential," said Mike Jackson, the city's economic development director. "It is important to make these land use changes now, because the supply is low and the demand is high due to population growth. If we don't make the commercial changes now the land could be built as residential, increasing the cost of commercial land to unworkable." The Cape continues to report more than 10,000 new residents a year. Like most people they want shorter commutes to work and shop. A possible framework for the concept of a neighborhood commercial remains the project under construction at the Realmark development, Cape Harbour. "What Will Stout has done there is build a CAC," said Wolfe. "It is what we would want." Credited with rebirth of development in the Cape by many Realtors and builders, Will Stout's $750 million project at the southernmost end of Chiquita Boulevard boasts a marina, two 15-floor condominium towers, a low-rise 58-condominium building and the popular Rumrunners restaurant. Nearing the end of construction, the project has an alley, more a promenade, with stores for artisans, offices, shops and restaurants where people can walk to view and as Stout has put it, "Hang out." Other neighborhoods might not want the high-rises but people spoken to were in favor of the neighborhood feel, the walkability and the restaurants at Cape Harbour. They could welcome similar development in their neighborhoods. "We love that Cape Harbour area. We take our relatives
there and others from out of town," said Bliss. "It
is a first-class neighborhood attraction."
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