They leased the park for a dollar and called it removing blight. I know the sentence. It is what a city says when it has spent years buying up a neighborhood after a hurricane, found a developer to take the land off its hands for roughly half of what it paid, and needs a word for the transaction that sounds like hygiene instead of a discount.
Here is the record. On Wednesday night, Oct. 21, 2026, after a long final public hearing, the Cape Coral City Council approved the $500 million Bimini East redevelopment, WINK News reports. North Dakota-based Crown Development and the Bimini Basin Redevelopment Company plan up to 900 apartments and townhomes, about 250 hotel rooms, medical and office space, retail, a 50-slip marina, parking garages, a police substation and a bandshell on roughly 34 acres downtown, south of Cape Coral Parkway and west of Coronado Parkway. The Cape Coral Breeze laid out the money at the first hearing on Oct. 7. The city bought the core site — 47 individual properties — site by site after Hurricane Ian, for some $45 million; WINK puts it at $45.2 million and notes it forced out some families, who were offered up to $6,000 in rental assistance if they qualified. The developer will pay about $24.3 million for the land, prorated as it pulls permits or sells parcels, with the balance due at 10 years, on a promissory note the Breeze describes as no-recourse. The city’s redevelopment agency also funds two more acquisitions totaling $11 million, the Trumbull Apartments and George’s Garage. On top of that: a tax-increment rebate at 95 percent, capped at $45.75 million and running through 2042; impact-fee credits up to $5 million; demolition help up to $200,000 a structure for eight structures; and cost-sharing on a promenade and streets. And then the line in the lease agreement: Four Freedoms Park, on the Bimini Basin with direct access to the Caloosahatchee — “the first park of Cape Coral,” as one resident told WBBH — goes to the developer on a 99-year lease at $1 per year. The city keeps ownership, the name and a public-recreation covenant; the developer takes over utilities, taxes, repairs and maintenance, and the park “will be altered,” in the assistant city manager’s words. The city-sponsored preschool program in the park has to move; the city says it is still looking for a location.
Now the defense. City staff estimated construction alone would generate $750.9 million in economic output and more than 3,000 jobs. Councilwoman Jennifer Nelson-Lastra said the redevelopment agency’s purpose is to remove blight, “and that’s exactly what we’re doing.” Councilman Joe Kilraine said no relationship “just goes completely on trust,” but, looking at the incentives in the contract, “I think we’re on the up side on this thing.” The tax rebate is pay-as-you-go: no building, no rebate. Crown’s president, Larry Nygard, told council at the first hearing, “I want to do what is right and what is good for the city, but I have to run a business too.” From the podium, David Hulsey said staff had negotiated for more than a year and then gave residents about 20 days. Speakers asked the council to wait until after the November election. It did not.
Deb asked what the dollar is for, and Buck said it’s so somebody can say it wasn’t free. Taryn wants to know if the twins can lease the playground for 99 years at a dollar, and whether the dollar can be in quarters. I love them. They are seasoning.
“Blight” is the alibi. The dollar is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. A government that knows to the penny what my house is worth cannot find a price for its own first park above one dollar a year, for 99 years, which is longer than anyone at that dais will be alive to regret it. I do not need the developer to be a villain; a man who says he has to run a business is telling the truth, and that is exactly why the public should not be the one carrying his land on a note with no recourse. And I do not need the council to be crooks; they are something more ordinary, which is believers. They believe in the multiplier. They believe the rendering. The handshake is the oldest machine in local government: the public buys the risk at full price, sells the upside at a discount, rebates the taxes the upside was supposed to pay, and calls the residue revitalization. Both parties are the help. One holds the gavel. One holds the term sheet. The preschool holds a moving box. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask, out loud, who in Cape Coral gets to lease anything public for a dollar, and why it is never the people who were already there.
Sources:
- WINK News, Hunter Walterman, “Cape Coral approves massive Bimini East redevelopment,” Oct. 22, 2026
- Cape Coral Breeze, Meghan Bradbury, “Bimini East moves to final public hearing,” Oct. 8, 2026
- WBBH / Gulf Coast News, “Cape Coral City Council to decide fate of Bimini East project,” Oct. 21, 2026
— Theo Ashford-Lindström
Leave a Reply