NORTH FORT MYERS, Fla. — Thousands of cars drive past the Hancock Bridge Square Plaza every day on North Cleveland Avenue.
The drivers may get stuck at the light on Hancock Square but if they glance at the shopping center, built in 1984 but mostly empty for years, they will see another place where people used to go. Used to shop.
Now potholes and weeds fill the parking lot, along with hurricane recovery trucks that park there overnight.
As recently as 2021, FOX 4 reported on people sleeping in tents around and behind the building as the tenants had just about all left. The Office Depot closed in 2014 and, before that, the Walmart in the same anchor store left to become the North Fort Myers Walmart Supercenter, about a mile north on Cleveland and Pine Island Road.
"For the first few years, as we started to look into what we can do to re-develop North Fort Myers, we noticed thaat a lot of the development was going to the south part of the county," said Brian Hamman, Lee County Commissioner whose district covers North Fort Myers. "People wanted to be in between Fort Myers and Naples but the market prices got so expensive for land in that area that it drove investors to look to the north."
With a land price of $12.8 million, Mast Capital and a Miami-area company are planning to redevelop 14 acres of the shopping center into the Hancock Bridge apartments, with the end goal of 320 units for apartments or condominiums. The application on file with Lee County states the applicant as Coconut Grove-based M-ICMC Hancock Bridge Owner, LLC with a style marked as "florida venacular" in the architectural design style.
In a time where real estate is going quickly and location matters, this could be a prime spot. A left turn onto Cleveland Avenue gets a driver in downtown Fort Myers in about three minutes. The county re-zoned the land the shopping center sits on to try and facilitate it.
Hamman does not have a timeline for when demolition crews would take down most of the buildings (the former Kash 'n Karry grocery store on the eastern end is not part of the end) and notes these housing units would be "market rate".
"I'd like to see them get underway as soon as possible," said Hamman. "Specifically, this Hancock Square Plaza has been dragging down the rest of the community, the eyesore that it is right now because it has fallen into such disrepair."
One man from North Fort Myers told us, on scene, that he had been homeless before and that people have camped out near the vacant buildings for some time.
"It's been sitting here for years and, maybe, they can use it for something else," Johnny Fenlon told us this week. "They should open it for the homeless, a place for the homeless people to go. They come over here when it rains and they find shelter for the night and go to sleep."
Plenty of plans and proposals have taken us airtime and newspaper space on what to do with the shopping center. Hamman hopes this talk will finally lead to action with a long-lasting impact at this corner and North Fort Myers, as a whole.
"I think this can create the destination that will drive even more people to also look across the river and say, 'hey, they look at the same river, the same sunset," said Hamman. "Maybe we can do business on both sides of teh river here. I think it's a great synergy."
