Officials hold ground-breaking event
Officials from Fort Myers Beach and Lee County as well as project coordinators participated in a ground-breaking ceremony for the No. Estero Boulevard Drainage Improvements Project near Lynn Hall Memorial Park on Thursday, Nov. 5.
Past and present FMB Town Council members and Lee County Commissioners Ray Judah and Brian Bigelow were amongst the dignitaries. Beach Mayor Larry Kiker was the Master of Ceremonies for the event.
“It takes a lot of continuity, planning and implementation to make this happen,” said Kiker. “From a Council viewpoint, it’s not often that Council members work together over the years. I think it was Bill Van Duzer’s work when he was Mayor to approve the first FEMA application for this project. I believe Garr Reynolds when he was Mayor actually began the engineering selection process. Shortly after that, Dennis Boback when he was Mayor approved the final design and began the process for the FEMA funding. This present Council is the one which finished the funding and began the construction.”
Before handling his current duties, Beach interim Town Manager Jack Green held the position of Public Works Director since 2006.
“It takes a lot of people to make a project like this work,” said Green. “The real force behind this project is the Town staff particularly (interim Public Works Director) Cathie Lewis and her assistant Scott Baker. It’s been a chore but we got it done. This culminates it.”
Judah gave credit to all of those who had a hand in the project. He believes the work is an example which will set the tone for future projects.
“The Town of Fort Myers Beach and Councils past and present should be commended for their vision, courage and ability to marshall the resources to be able to move forward with this project,” he said. “The resourcefulness of your team, Mr. Mayor, along with the incredible help from Councilman Bob Raymond (Council representative for the Lee County Metropolitan Planning Organization) provided the leadership along with the rest of the Council and has demonstrated that this can be done and cost effective. It’s time to include the entire project to the Capital Improvement Program budget so that we can, once and for all, address the entire corridor of Estero Boulevard.”
The funding for the project was provided by Fort Myers Beach, the Federal Emergency Management Agency Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and administered by the Florida Department of Emergency Management and the South Florida Water Management District. Project companies include ECT, Inc. of Fort Myers (Civil Engineer); AECOM of Fort Myers (Water Main Engineer); and Southwest Utilities Systems Inc. of South Fort Myers (General Contractor)
“We believe with this project that we can demonstrate that we do know what it is that we want and how we want Estero Boulevard to look in the future,” said Kiker. “We expect in the next five years that we will be having a ground- breaking event for the new Estero Boulevard.”