To the editor

Cape Coral is a mess. If you look at a Future Land Use map and note the city’s property zones you can easily conclude that the Cape is extremely unbalanced. The residential areas are too large and the commercial too sparse. In a city that could be inhabited by an estimated 600,000 people something has to change before it’s too late. The city council has time and time again denied projects that could expand the commercial prosperity of this city and make the Cape a more enjoyable place to live.

Cape Coral is the second largest city in the state of Florida according to land area. With rising gas prices the drive around town can dry up your tank. Worse still many Cape residents work outside the city primarily in Fort Myers. Paying for bridge tolls and gas for this daily commutes can be a major part of a Cape residents budget. Now when this resident gets home from work and say has to go shopping they have to drive to one of the following three commercial zones: Cape Coral Parkway, Del Prado Boulevard, and the Pine Island Road corridor. Most residents might have to drive 20 minutes just to reach one of these zones. These zones also lack the commercial development that Fort Myers has had in recent years. Many take their money over the bridge and away from the few businesses that are in the Cape. This problem has to be addressed now.

The government of the city of Cape Coral needs to have a massive rezoning project that looks at the city of Cape Coral as a whole and balances out the commercial zones among the residential. They have to show potential investors that they would welcome incoming money into the local economy and not shut the door on investors like we’ve seen in recent years. This needs to happen before the city has grown past the point of no return. Unfortunately the current council has shown that they are not planning on changing the zoning and it will probably won’t be until after the next election that we see a council willing to rethink the city’s layout and plan for the future.

Austin Swink

Cape Coral