2010 Downtown Plan - Fort Myers Business Development

DOWNTOWN FT. MYERS, FLORIDAEXECUTIVE SUMMARYalternative zoning ordinance described below, which shall beused as a guide to creation of new Growth ManagementCode regulations for the downtown area. The SpecificInterventions, in contrast, are the pilot projects and othersometimes-flashy ideas that get most of the attention, butthese are most useful not as mandatory construction effortsbut rather as illustrations of how new construction can occuralong the lines of the General Controls. While it would indeedplease us to see all of these projects built as designed, theirreal value is to communicate the types of projects that the cityshould encourage in its efforts to improve the downtown. Thistoo will be discussed below.The General Controls can be broken down into the followingdocuments:· The A/B Frontage Assignment: One key to asuccessful downtown is to acknowledge that notevery street must correspond to the highestpedestrian-friendly standards. Some streets willinevitably provide sites for muffler shops, fast-fooddrive-throughs, and other automotive-orientedbusinesses. Rather than dreaming that such placescan be eliminated entirely, our plan will locate thesestreets in a way that they do not undermine theintegrity of the downtown pedestrian network.A-Streets, serving pedestrians as well as cars, will beasked to correspond to the highest frontagestandards of the SmartCode, while B-streets will beavailable for those businesses that focus primarily onautomotive traffic. Both are profitable uses; the keyis keeping them separate in order to create acontinuous network of high-quality pedestrianfrontage for the downtown.· The Street Reconfigurations: As discussed in theStreet Reconfigurations section of this report, mostof the streets in downtown Fort Myers are currentlyconfigured to speed automotive traffic through thedowntown -- or divert it entirely -- at the directexpense of pedestrian and commercial life. Over theyears, the widening of travel lanes to higher-velocitystandards, the removal of parallel parking, theimplementation of one-way pairs, and the diversionof traffic from First Street have all contributed to thedowntown’s demise. Central to our plan is areconfiguration of streets within the study area to amore pedestrian-friendly design. In many cases,such reconfiguration can be accomplished for thecost of paint alone (through re-striping), but othermore significant changes can be implemented overtime in conjunction with the planned replacement ofunder-capacity downtown infrastructure that willrequire major street excavations, and throughregular public works maintenance required of thedowntown streets, curbs, sidewalks and street trees.· The SmartCode: As mentioned above, theSmartCode (provided under separate cover) is aguide to recommended changes to the City’s zoning,Comprehensive Plan, and Growth ManagementCode that are currently in effect. Such an alternativeis necessary because the existing ordinances includeregulations that work against the realization of arevitalized, pedestrian-friendly downtown. TheSmartCode, in contrast, focuses on the creation ofmixed use, walkable neighborhoods. As part of theimplementation of the Downtown Fort Myers plan,the SmartCode will be used by the City in evaluatingplans prior to adoption of the final amendments to theCity’s Comprehensive Plan and Growth ManagementCode. Following final adoption of the ComprehensivePlan and Growth Management Code amendments,the final regulating ordinance shall governdevelopment in the downtown area.· The Regulating Plan: The SmartCode is organizedon the basis of the urban-to-rural Transect, a tool thatis used to create internally-consistent environmentsof varying urban intensity. For example, an area inthe Urban Center zone would have taller buildingsthat would be spaced closely adjacent to one anotherto form a pedestrian-friendly street wall, with widersidewalks and more intensive downtownstreetscaping, while an area in the Urban Generalzone would be composed of low rise, detachedbuildings and possess a more residential character.Clearly, an instrument is needed to distribute thesedifferent Transect zones in an organized fashionthroughout the downtown, and this instrument is theRegulating Plan. The Regulating Plan for DowntownFort Myers is presented in the General Controlssection of this Plan.If they were implemented quickly, the four documents abovewould probably be enough to produce dramatic positivechange within a few years. However, our time spent in FortMyers allowed us to discover a large number of additionalopportunities for improvement. Some of these improvementswere already partially underway, others were suggested to usby citizens or business people, and many came from thedesign team. The most promising were developed into theSpecific Interventions that make up a large part of the plan.The Specific Interventions include the following types ofprojects:· Private Development of Private Land: Manyprivate properties within the study area are currentlylaying fallow because their owners are unable to finda profitable way to develop them according toexisting zoning ordinances. For the largest of theseproperties, such as the Edison Ford Plaza, the sheersize of the site demands a scale of investment thatcould have a significant impact on the dynamics ofthe downtown. For this site and others, the planrecommends subdividing the area into smallerblocks and lots, so that smaller investors mayimmediately begin to build along the lines of theSmartCode. In other areas such as the EastRiverfront, the scale of investment is already healthy,and a Specific Intervention is provided simply toillustrate the sort of development that the SmartCodewould encourage.· Private Development of Public Land: it has beenmentioned many times how Fort Myers’ greatestmaterial asset is the large amount of (non-park)riverfront land under city ownership, which becameknown as the “Gold Coast” during the charrette.Rather than laying empty, of no use to anyone, theseproperties should be leased on a long-term basis or,in the case of condominium development, sold to builderswho are prepared to develop them along the pedestrianfriendlylines of the SmartCode. In the second case, astrong developer agreement would be an essentialcomponent of the ownership transfer. This is a strategy thatcities such as West Palm Beach and Boca Raton haveemployed with great success in recent years, and has thebenefit of catalyzing development without selling off theCity’s prime assets. For each of these sites, the DPZ teamproposed a Specific Intervention, such as a Hotelsurrounding the Exhibition Hall. These proposals should beput forward by the city in the form of public Requests forProposals, where the terms of the lease and theopportunities for public/private partnership would encouragedevelopers to create projects similar to those proposed inthe plan.· Public Works on Public Land: No smart downtownrevitalization plan relies on public funding to accomplish itsgoals – the money simply isn’t available. However, it isexpected that the leasing of public land for private projects,and the tax revenue from those projects, will eventuallygenerate a pool of funds large enough to support a widerange of public improvements. In addition to the streetreconstruction already mentioned, this plan has proposed anumber of Specific Interventions directed at public land,such as a reconfigured Centennial Park and Fishing Pier.· Public Works on Private Land: Finally, there are a numberof locations within the downtown where private property canbest be used to serve public functions. For example, thecreation of a landscaped entry to downtown where HendryStreet meets Martin Luther King (MLK) Boulevard wouldrequire the city to work cooperatively with privatelandowners. In the same way that the city would jointventurewith private developers on its own land, the city isalso encouraged to collaborate with these individual partiesto convert certain private lands to public through theoutright purchase of property, a land swap, transferof development rights, property tax breaks ordevelopment bonuses involving the mix and densityof the project, so long as the bonuses are consistentwith the master plan.I.2