CAPE CORAL, Fla. — A disaster, a terrible idea and a failure.
Those are just some of the words Cape Coral residents used to describe the state of the Jaycee Park project.
“They couldn’t care less,” said David Kalish. “They have their own agendas and it’s not right.”
Cape Coral residents had plenty of strong opinions to share with Fox 4 community corespondent Stephen Pimpo about the city council’s next steps in the Jaycee Park project:
Wednesday night, people peppered the Cape Coral City Council after it ended the city’s agreement with the concession vendor for the project. Monday, the city announced that it was ending its agreement with the Reef LLC, which was going to sell food and drinks at the park, because they have not paid the $1.3 million they said they would, in a signed contract.
“The $1.3 million that the Reef was responsible for will now have to come from us if we want to continue with this project,” said Cape Coral resident Julia Ettari. “You can’t just arbitrarily spend taxpayers money.”
City Councilwoman Laurie Lehmman made a motion to repurpose that spot where the concessions would be.
“Not have a concessionaire at all at Jaycee Park, move the volleyball court and the lawn games over to where that building was,” she said.
But that motion did not pass.
Mayor John Gunter said he doesn’t want to cost the city more money by making changes to the contract.
“We have an issue where, we do not have a leasing for that particular structure in that building,” Mayor Gunter said. “There’s a multitude of things that could occur. We could put it out as an RFP to invite other organizations and businesses to bid on being a concessionaire.”
Some residents believe it is time for someone else to step in.
“This clearly needs to be investigated from the top down,” Ettari said.
