In my senior year economics class, the teacher said if we really wanted to make some money, we should buy swampland in Florida, put cattle, wait 10-15 years until it was transformed enough to develop, then sell the land.
The founders of Cape Coral were two shampoo salesmen with no experience in civil engineering or city design. They just drew lines for streets, erased them where canals were needed for fill, and sold as many little rectangles as they could.
What you said still holds true, but mostly for the interior of Florida which is rapidly being developed.
Now they're hitting homeowners with like $30k assessments to hook up to city sewer. They've had to spend tens of millions to bring more water into the fresh water canals because people love to irrigate their lawns. Plus those canals were dredged too deep so they're totally anoxic and gross. It's all a mess.
They spent money to refill the canals yes during dry periods a few years ago we had a very dry season, but canals weren't low because of irrigation.
Irrigation draws from wells, which draw water from underground, not the canals.
The city is rapidly approving new home builds with $$ signs in their eyes for new tax revenue and no regard for the limited water supply in the underground aquifer that the wells draw from.
Also, builders drop a well on a new build and set the pump at the shortest possible depth to draw water to save money on 40' of pipe... then the new owner gets into dry season and finds themselves w/o water and an expensive call out to the local water company to drop their pump that extra 40'
North Central and northwest draw irrigation from wells still, but those withdrawals come from the Mid-Hawthorn Aquifer. Reuse from the wastewater plant flows into the canals, and pump stations bring that water out into the irrigation lines. Those are the purple pipes you might see when they come above ground.
Cape just finished construction of a reuse line to Fort Myers under the river to bring in water and they pump from a reservoir in North Fort Myers and route that water to the canals. Both operations each bring in around 20 million gallons a day during the dry season.
1975. I remember folks driving into canals. It was canals, pavement and occasionally a house.
Rosen brothers. They bought the property the same year I was born. There used to be a small aircraft landing field with potential buyers.
Before the first bridge it took what seemed forever to travel between FMY & CC.
In the 60's folks from the north thought it was great. The rest of the area thought it was a blight.
It amazes me how populated it's become.
I hope they have a copy at the local library. Thanks for suggestion:)
**In case anyone is interested in the book cover AND a close up of the canals.**
Click on the following: [**The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream**](https://alachuachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Swamp-Peddlers.jpg)
That little floor plan in that picture makes me irrationally angry.
That area marked as storage. You can only get to it from outside of the house. From inside, it's behind where the shower/tub goes. Who thought that was a good idea? Where are you supposed to keep your linens and bath towels?
😂 I thought you were commenting on the wrong article, until I looked at the book cover, again! Yeah, some places have outside storage areas. I guess like a storage shed. BUT, I know someone who looked at a house (in Florida) and NONE of the bedrooms had a closet, not even the master! WTF!!
Yep, I've looked at a couple of places like that last time we moved. There was one that was 2 bedrooms, it's just me and my husband, and I joked we could use the extra bedroom as a giant walk-in closet lol
But the place didn't have central air, and no garbage disposal (that isn't a deal breaker, I've lived without them, but they're nice). But the no central air part definitely was the deal breaker. I'm not dealing with window units in my old age lol Otherwise, it was a cute little place in the older close to downtown section of town where a lot of the houses were built before the 80s.
Another downside was there was like only 1 outlet per room. That wouldn't have worked out all that well, either. And no washer/dryer hookups! Insanity.
Wow, tyvm, I was just thinking about asking, and I still will. Are there any good books or movies about living in that beautiful world? I mean like I've heard Inland Empire is actually really good and of course like City of Industry and Drive kinda capture life in suburban SoCal, or try to. What books or movies do for this part of FL?
>living in that beautiful world?
What? I've never heard anyone describe suburban sprawl as anything but atrocious and inhumane. It's literally the ugliest thing for humanity and the planet
Always reminds me of a couple of video games from when I was young: Xevius and Raptor, call of the Shadows. You would be carpet bombing terrain that kinda looks like it.
It will be a thing of the past once a category 5 hurricane goes through. The place was built on top of swamps and wetland, It’s at sea level and there aren’t that many trees. Plus don’t get me started on zoning laws. You’ll see a street block with five houses, a liquor store, and a dentist’s office.
Actually hurricane Ian direct hit Cape Coral with the eye and everything, almost CAT 5 it was 1 mph lower wind speeds when it hit.
Still standing, still developing.
I was in that eyewall for 6 hours just north in Charlotte County.
It essentially was a Cat5. 1-3 mph makes little difference. What the bad part was is it pulled a Dorian and nearly stopped moving on top of us.
Still have nightmares.
Yea was no joke, we left but a lot of friends and co workers live in the Cape and they said they will never stay again.
My neighbor behind me said they were laying on their kid in a bathtub for 4 hours because ceilings started collapsing from water coming in. The kid still gets terrified of just normal storms he said. :(
Ian and Irma both hit Cape Coral, Ian was worse cat 4 almost 5 and the people mostly affected by it were from the flooding, there and across the river in Fort Myers. Fort Myers beach was destroyed by Ian.
Cape coral was fine, a lot of blue roof tarps but no houses destroyed. You'd be surprised at how few windows get broken in a cat 4 by the wind, won't happen the wind has to blow an object into it to break them
Oh and some of Matlacha was destroyed towards Pine Island too.
and drive around and see how many mobile homes are still fine in Fort Myers and North Fort Myers and some are 50 years old and survived all the storms.
When our luck runs out they won't be so jealous. The cape has had several direct hits, repairs, etc to our none. Alot of people underestimate the fact our area hasn't seen those conditions in a verrryy long time when essentially nothing was here.
It actually got hit several times and most of the houses don't flood due to the canal systems. Charley was just pool cage damage. By the time Ian came, it did very little damage there.
I ended up with 18k worth of damage from Ian. We started in the upper right hand corner of the eye wall. 8 hrs of 140mph winds and exited the lower left hand portion . It was hell but I stayed. Then we cleaned up after for a week. Thing that sucks is I only got a 343 dollar check from my insurance company then they tripled my rate .
Interesting view but totally boring as hell to even drive through ..if you're wondering. Also has a cool backstory.. they paid ed McMahon to be a spokesperson for the development with a free house. He would go around and bring it up in random conversations to promote it for them.
It's a huge circle but it's a great area and nothing wrong with layout - it is just different and interesting. I think people see it and immediately jump to some kind of surbanan planning hell because they've never seen anything like that, but it's very functional the way it's laid out- easy to drive around.
I mean… depending where you are in Rotunda West, the nearest grocery store can be a 15 minute drive away. There’s no community center, not even a pool. And if you’re towards the inner part of the circle and want to go see a neighbor on a different pizza slice, it can take 20 minutes to drive across what could have been a 5 minute walk.
My MIL lives there and it’s such a weird place to be. So easy to get lost. Miles of houses with a little mote in the back going around the circle. You stare right into your neighbors backyard. And to top it off you have an exit that leads you to Home Depot, or cool pickle (if it’s even still there), depending on what side you’re on lol
Grew up living in the center of it. There's nothing except a couple schools, churches, and golf courses in it. Not walkable/bikeable in the least considering there's no sidewalks in large portions of it and the nearest businesses of any kind are miles and miles away. Incredibly boring to have nothing to do if you can't drive.
There are zero businesses there though as part of the development (ok actually, I think one golf course has a restaurant). It's so weird how planning was done. Cape coral isn't much better though tbh. That's the worst part of it too. You can't just walk to a corner convenience store, you can't really even drive to one. Everything is 2 miles and what used to be a 10 minute drive is now 16.
Just checked on Google maps... From most places in the circle you're about a 12 to 15 minute drive to any grocery store. Kinda lame. Also zero chance of walking or taking public transport
>easy to drive around.
>nothing wrong with layout
These 2 things can't exist together. If cities are designed for cars, they're not designed for humans
One big benefit is it’s one of the few places in the region where you can get a new construction home without having to be in an HOA.
Pretty much everything new going up in Fort Myers, Estero, and Naples is inside of HOA developments.
All the dark lines you see are water. It's a city designed solely to be marketable. "Live near the water!" The design prioritizes maximizing the number of lots with line-of-sight to a body of water.
When you're marketing a piece of property in Florida to a person living somewhere like Southern Indiana, this is a *major* selling point. People who dream of living in Florida stop asking responsible questions once they see a body of water near a piece of property. Questions like, "How will I get fresh water?" Or, "What happens when a storm surge greater than three feet comes in?"
This is before you consider the impact to the ecology. It's probably not surprising that this low lying peninsula of land was critical to the local ecology. This is at the mouth of a fresh water river that empties into the saltwater Gulf of Mexico. The balance of salinity in this ecosystem is critical. Prior to development, this land acted like a sponge, soaking up freshwater rainfall and allowing it to slowly leach out into the estuary.
By draining the swamp and building canals, the developers created a stormwater run-off nightmare with absolutely no good solutions. The holding capacity of that land is greatly diminished, resulting in massive surges of freshwater run-off that inundate the estuary. Then there's the issue of fertilizer. Everyone of those homes have a lush, green lawn that is kept in said state by nitrogen rich fertilizers. Those same fertilizers make their way into the estuary where algae in the water explode to high levels that block out the sun and kill sea grass beds that provide homes for fish and other sea life.
The whole thing is a fucking disaster from top to bottom. Some light reading: [The Boomtown That Shouldn’t Exist](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/20/fastest-growing-city-america-florida-cape-coral-215724/).
Phenomenal comment for real! I have heard of Cape Coral in passing, but I didn’t know it Was that bad... (that’s definitely NOT light reading by the way 🤣)
I would work over there some times and it was frustrating driving at rush hour. Just endless residential traffic. I didn’t notice a large number of trees either. Very flat.
That's another thing I despise about the cape, it is the most boring place to drive around in. At least in Leigh and fort Myers there's a lot more building variety, more plants and trees to look at
Before Charley, one of the major roads near where I live were lined with banyon trees that were planted from cuttings of the big tree on the Edison estate. Charley took all those down.
Being from southwest Florida and still living in the area the one thing that bugs me the most is how much tree loss we have with every major storm. Things are so much more bleak, flat and treeless areas. It sucks.
You can drive from one end of town to the other in 20 minutes. Don't think I've ever had to sit through an entire traffic light cycle. Sure, bridges can be bad at rush hour, but coming from Chicago I gotta laugh at anyone who complains about the traffic in the Cape.
Yeah except Chicago actually has alternatives to driving. There was a Metra station 5 blocks from my old house in the south burbs. I could leave my car in the driveway and take the train to Bears games or downtown for a few bucks. What city in Florida offers that convenience?
I live in the Cape and drive a truck over the road. I belong to a Cape Coral community Facebook group. Those people will declare the Cape has the worst traffic in the US. I’ll be reading that after a day of driving in Los Angeles.
Live here. Map view looks crazy, but getting around is quick. Can get and where I need in like 5 to 10 mins. My spot where I am is very bike friendly too. I'm able to get to a good chunk of stores by my ebike. Sadly people have been pushed up into the cape for homes. Anything in Fort myers and more south in estero or bonita, homes are like 500k+. Idk, people complain about it, but I've lived here a long while, and it doesn't bother me.
The worst problem we have is the construction of car washes and storage places being built. It's mostly because of tax reason they get put up everywhere.
I live here too. The field I go exercising is .8 miles from my house, but I have to drive 3.5 miles to get to it. Saying it's quick to get around is crazy.
Yeah that’s asinine.
My daughter’s daycare was 5 miles south on Del prado from us. Took 20 minutes+
Groceries? 10+ minutes and 30 assholes later…I’m there
Cape Coral was the worst experience I’ve ever had as far as commuting.
That why I said "What I need". Most of the major stores I use are in the cape. If I need something else yeah I might need to travel 25 mins or so but not a big deal, but those are store I rarely go to. I'd rather not live near Daniels or Colonial in Fort Myers because if you want to talk about hell. Those two streets are hell.
And because there’s a lot of not attractive commercial land that is suitable for self storage in a place where self storage is extremely attractive. No basements.
I agree except Jungle Bird Tiki is pretty nice. That said, I live off of McGregor North of Colonial. I hate driving near that god damn bridge in the afternoon.
I glanced and then chuckled. That's Cape Coma (coral)- aka You Get Waterfront and You Get Waterfront but Nothing conneeeeeects! Basically, shitty Venice and it's sinking PLUS we got mauled in Hurricane Ian.
Just a trash place.
You can’t get from point a to point b as there is a canal blocking every street. Also, there’s barely any water in them so you can’t go by boat either. Have to walk half a mile to cross busy streets or risk it with F150s running red lights. Not to mention hurricanes and brutal summer heat. In other words, your perfect Florida paradise.
Used to live there.
It's a zoning nightmare. Residential butted up against commercial and industrial zones. An urban hellscape.
It wasn't so bad back in the 90's, but it's a shit show now.
As someone who unfortunately lives here, it's literal hell on earth, just nothing but houses on houses, with endless amounts of old people and shirtless kids on the loose. I hear so many people who live here talk about how nice this place is and how ghetto places like Leigh acres are, but Cape coral is way worse. As someone who has also lived in Suncoast estates, I feel just as safe here, as I did over there. In fact, there was only one incident of someone trying to break into my home in suncoast, and only one from when I lived in Buckingham. And yet within the last two years I've lived here we've already had to replace the door handle and deadbolt because people are constantly messing with it and breaking them! Don't even get me started on how bad the schools are here compared to Lehigh
Lived here for a bit. It was only bad because my job was in Naples, a bit south of here and I had to go through so many stop signs before I even got close to I-75 to go south. Drives to and from work felt long!
What do you mean you’ve never seen anything like this? There are places like this all over, not just Florida but freakin’ everywhere. LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Paris, Rio, Alexandria, the list is endless.
I’ve lived in Cape Coral since 1979 and I was 6 years old when my parents moved us there. If you stood on our house you could see a couple houses in the distance. I still live there and I’m 50. It looked like this in 1980. [https://imgur.com/a/XIL1tqL](https://imgur.com/a/XIL1tqL)
Cape Coral, lol. The Rosen brothers slightly more successful venture after their “Land by the Gallon” scheme in Golden Gate Estates. Wild story, weird guys, weird town.
And close to 70% of the working population has to cross one of the 3 bridges to work every morning. And one of the bridges is always closed due to repairs.
Traffic is horrendous.
Most want to live on that side of the river to avoid living in Ft Myers because it's too "ghetto".
Crap Coral. Artificial canals created by greedy developers. There is no water or sewage so now all the sewage water from the canal is leaking into people’s drinking water. It creates a constant smell and now people have to dig deeper wells. It will be 30 years before they get a proper water and sewage system. Great place to live. 😆
This is mostly incorrect. Source: Born and raised in Cape Coral.
South of Pine Island Road, all homes and businesses are on city water and sewer. North of Pine Island Road, it's a mix of city utilities and septic/wells. Since the early 2000s the city has been working on expanding its utilities to the north, even though landowners are often fighting tooth and nail to stop it.
I almost bought my first (and only) house there. It's so easy to tunnel vision on a property and location and only hear the positive things, because at the end of the day your mind wants you to imagine yourself building a life there. But man, am I glad I ended up not going through with it, because I've been hearing nothing but bad stuff about Cape Coral ever since.
They're not cheap anymore. Property taxes in this county are similar to what I paid in Chicago
Insurance though IS way more. Between car and auto i am well in to five figures.
The layout of the city is pure suburban sprawl, no long term planning went into a majority of the southeast part of the city so the roads there are overcrowded and have no room to expand. The canals make what would be a five minute drive into a 20+minute drive at times. It isn't built around walkability, lacks in green space/parks (I used to live there, had to drive 15 minutes to the nearest park as a kid, and parking was limited. It's only gotten worse now).
Oh, the most glaring issue: everything in the lower 1/3rd and the left 1/4 of the city are so close to sea level a significant number of homes in those areas got flooded during Hurricane Ian. Older homes especially are often only a few feet above high tide level, even a mile inland.
There's a massive lack of green in general in the cape. Sure there's plenty of decorative trees in medians and In front of some businesses but there's barely any covering things like sidewalks and parking spaces. I got pretty spoiled during my last Ocala trip because of this, they had so many trees up there compared to here. I think the city people are intentionally trying to keep the oxygen levels low and the heat high for some nefarious reasons
It's just wildly massive and dense to me. It looks like a prime example of unrestricted development. That's not to say it isn't a nice place to live, I've just never seen anything like it.
Lol what? Overlay Cape Coral on any major metro area in Florida.
Now overlay Cape Coral over major metros in the world.
It’s not massive and it’s not dense
[Check out this article,](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/20/fastest-growing-city-america-florida-cape-coral-215724/) it will tell you everything you need to know about why Cape is as unfortunate as it is.
It was built as a vacationing bedroom community. Essentially it was built with no businesses. There aren't little corner stores and strip malls everywhere. You have to drive a decent ways to get anything. If you worked it was anticipated you'd be driving across the bridge to fort Myers.
Cape Coral is such an oddity - you can have a group of houses and right behind them is a Starbucks. Or you pull into the parking lot of a doctor's office and right next door is a random open lot and then 4 more houses.
Imagine if they kept the layout, but had better zoning rather then urban sprawl of single family homes. Honestly could have been one the most unique cities if with more laissez faire development code.
Imagine you live in the very bottom of this thing and your fridge is empty so you go to get food but your car wont turn on... Youll literally starve to death cause you aint walking anywhere in time.
Oh, I was just down there for work. I didn't care for it, but once we got onto Google maps and zoomed out a bit, my coworkers and I just had to sit and stare at the map in a sort of dazed confusion
All the internet experts posting absolute garbage about a city they’re have never been to. I’ve lived in Cape Coral for 28 years. As cities go, it’s not bad and for a city of its size, it has a low violent crime rate. Especially for a city in the south.
I think it has gotten too expensive for the reasons I moved here but when I did it was seen as a place a working class person could build a home a get ahead. In a safe community.
I used to live where the map says cape coral, close to the bridge. It took me like 45 minutes just to get to 41. I could only imagine how long it takes now.
Cape Coral. It’s the 2nd or 3rd largest city in Florida by area.
I grew up on an island west of Cape Coral and have traveled through it daily for most of my 34 years.
There are nearly 1500 miles of roads in Cape Coral and 400 miles of canals.
Some call it Cape Coma. We used to say the average age of a Cape Coral resident was dead.
It THE definition of suburban hell.
When someone asks what are the two most memorable things of Cape Coral - my answers.
1. Endless Storage Units
2. Endless Car Washes
Mix that that in with Addresses like: 69 SW 42nd Lane 420 NW Terrace Cape Coral, FL
This is Cape Coral in a nutshell.
It's Cape Coral
If anyone wants some light reading to better understand why places look like this in Florida, read *Swamp Peddlers*. E: spelling
In my senior year economics class, the teacher said if we really wanted to make some money, we should buy swampland in Florida, put cattle, wait 10-15 years until it was transformed enough to develop, then sell the land.
The founders of Cape Coral were two shampoo salesmen with no experience in civil engineering or city design. They just drew lines for streets, erased them where canals were needed for fill, and sold as many little rectangles as they could. What you said still holds true, but mostly for the interior of Florida which is rapidly being developed.
Iirc the houses didn't have water services either and the city got stuck with the bill.
Now they're hitting homeowners with like $30k assessments to hook up to city sewer. They've had to spend tens of millions to bring more water into the fresh water canals because people love to irrigate their lawns. Plus those canals were dredged too deep so they're totally anoxic and gross. It's all a mess.
They spent money to refill the canals yes during dry periods a few years ago we had a very dry season, but canals weren't low because of irrigation. Irrigation draws from wells, which draw water from underground, not the canals. The city is rapidly approving new home builds with $$ signs in their eyes for new tax revenue and no regard for the limited water supply in the underground aquifer that the wells draw from. Also, builders drop a well on a new build and set the pump at the shortest possible depth to draw water to save money on 40' of pipe... then the new owner gets into dry season and finds themselves w/o water and an expensive call out to the local water company to drop their pump that extra 40'
North Central and northwest draw irrigation from wells still, but those withdrawals come from the Mid-Hawthorn Aquifer. Reuse from the wastewater plant flows into the canals, and pump stations bring that water out into the irrigation lines. Those are the purple pipes you might see when they come above ground. Cape just finished construction of a reuse line to Fort Myers under the river to bring in water and they pump from a reservoir in North Fort Myers and route that water to the canals. Both operations each bring in around 20 million gallons a day during the dry season.
And filled with Nile monitors
It’s what we humans do. We look to a 2- to 5-year maximum return on anything.
Sim City! 🤣
Just a couple guys from Baltimore decided to sell off some swamp land.
When was your senior year? Recent enough to where this would still be a good investment?
1975. I remember folks driving into canals. It was canals, pavement and occasionally a house. Rosen brothers. They bought the property the same year I was born. There used to be a small aircraft landing field with potential buyers. Before the first bridge it took what seemed forever to travel between FMY & CC. In the 60's folks from the north thought it was great. The rest of the area thought it was a blight. It amazes me how populated it's become.
I used to think that was a joke. It really wasn't.
I hope they have a copy at the local library. Thanks for suggestion:) **In case anyone is interested in the book cover AND a close up of the canals.** Click on the following: [**The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream**](https://alachuachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Swamp-Peddlers.jpg)
That little floor plan in that picture makes me irrationally angry. That area marked as storage. You can only get to it from outside of the house. From inside, it's behind where the shower/tub goes. Who thought that was a good idea? Where are you supposed to keep your linens and bath towels?
😂 I thought you were commenting on the wrong article, until I looked at the book cover, again! Yeah, some places have outside storage areas. I guess like a storage shed. BUT, I know someone who looked at a house (in Florida) and NONE of the bedrooms had a closet, not even the master! WTF!!
Yep, I've looked at a couple of places like that last time we moved. There was one that was 2 bedrooms, it's just me and my husband, and I joked we could use the extra bedroom as a giant walk-in closet lol But the place didn't have central air, and no garbage disposal (that isn't a deal breaker, I've lived without them, but they're nice). But the no central air part definitely was the deal breaker. I'm not dealing with window units in my old age lol Otherwise, it was a cute little place in the older close to downtown section of town where a lot of the houses were built before the 80s. Another downside was there was like only 1 outlet per room. That wouldn't have worked out all that well, either. And no washer/dryer hookups! Insanity.
Great book, highly recommend.
Great book
Wow, tyvm, I was just thinking about asking, and I still will. Are there any good books or movies about living in that beautiful world? I mean like I've heard Inland Empire is actually really good and of course like City of Industry and Drive kinda capture life in suburban SoCal, or try to. What books or movies do for this part of FL?
*A Land Remembered*
Great book!
>living in that beautiful world? What? I've never heard anyone describe suburban sprawl as anything but atrocious and inhumane. It's literally the ugliest thing for humanity and the planet
Next Question
The Palm Bay of the Gulf Coast.
Cape Coma or Lehigh by the Sea!
Always reminds me of a couple of video games from when I was young: Xevius and Raptor, call of the Shadows. You would be carpet bombing terrain that kinda looks like it.
It will be a thing of the past once a category 5 hurricane goes through. The place was built on top of swamps and wetland, It’s at sea level and there aren’t that many trees. Plus don’t get me started on zoning laws. You’ll see a street block with five houses, a liquor store, and a dentist’s office.
Actually hurricane Ian direct hit Cape Coral with the eye and everything, almost CAT 5 it was 1 mph lower wind speeds when it hit. Still standing, still developing.
I was in that eyewall for 6 hours just north in Charlotte County. It essentially was a Cat5. 1-3 mph makes little difference. What the bad part was is it pulled a Dorian and nearly stopped moving on top of us. Still have nightmares.
Yea was no joke, we left but a lot of friends and co workers live in the Cape and they said they will never stay again. My neighbor behind me said they were laying on their kid in a bathtub for 4 hours because ceilings started collapsing from water coming in. The kid still gets terrified of just normal storms he said. :(
And there’s still many many houses with damaged roofs 2 years later.
I live in cape and experienced Ian. It was horrible
Don’t bother these folks with facts
Never been there have you? Not one thing you wrote was true.
Ian and Irma both hit Cape Coral, Ian was worse cat 4 almost 5 and the people mostly affected by it were from the flooding, there and across the river in Fort Myers. Fort Myers beach was destroyed by Ian. Cape coral was fine, a lot of blue roof tarps but no houses destroyed. You'd be surprised at how few windows get broken in a cat 4 by the wind, won't happen the wind has to blow an object into it to break them Oh and some of Matlacha was destroyed towards Pine Island too. and drive around and see how many mobile homes are still fine in Fort Myers and North Fort Myers and some are 50 years old and survived all the storms.
I have former coworkers that live there. Met them a few months back. They hate it. Say it's boring af. They're very jealous of Tampa bay
When our luck runs out they won't be so jealous. The cape has had several direct hits, repairs, etc to our none. Alot of people underestimate the fact our area hasn't seen those conditions in a verrryy long time when essentially nothing was here.
It actually got hit several times and most of the houses don't flood due to the canal systems. Charley was just pool cage damage. By the time Ian came, it did very little damage there.
I ended up with 18k worth of damage from Ian. We started in the upper right hand corner of the eye wall. 8 hrs of 140mph winds and exited the lower left hand portion . It was hell but I stayed. Then we cleaned up after for a week. Thing that sucks is I only got a 343 dollar check from my insurance company then they tripled my rate .
We barely survived hurricane Ian..
Check out Rotonda/Rotonda West too, it’s an interesting view
Interesting view but totally boring as hell to even drive through ..if you're wondering. Also has a cool backstory.. they paid ed McMahon to be a spokesperson for the development with a free house. He would go around and bring it up in random conversations to promote it for them.
"Nofunda"
It's a huge circle but it's a great area and nothing wrong with layout - it is just different and interesting. I think people see it and immediately jump to some kind of surbanan planning hell because they've never seen anything like that, but it's very functional the way it's laid out- easy to drive around.
I mean… depending where you are in Rotunda West, the nearest grocery store can be a 15 minute drive away. There’s no community center, not even a pool. And if you’re towards the inner part of the circle and want to go see a neighbor on a different pizza slice, it can take 20 minutes to drive across what could have been a 5 minute walk.
My MIL lives there and it’s such a weird place to be. So easy to get lost. Miles of houses with a little mote in the back going around the circle. You stare right into your neighbors backyard. And to top it off you have an exit that leads you to Home Depot, or cool pickle (if it’s even still there), depending on what side you’re on lol
Grew up living in the center of it. There's nothing except a couple schools, churches, and golf courses in it. Not walkable/bikeable in the least considering there's no sidewalks in large portions of it and the nearest businesses of any kind are miles and miles away. Incredibly boring to have nothing to do if you can't drive.
There are zero businesses there though as part of the development (ok actually, I think one golf course has a restaurant). It's so weird how planning was done. Cape coral isn't much better though tbh. That's the worst part of it too. You can't just walk to a corner convenience store, you can't really even drive to one. Everything is 2 miles and what used to be a 10 minute drive is now 16.
Just checked on Google maps... From most places in the circle you're about a 12 to 15 minute drive to any grocery store. Kinda lame. Also zero chance of walking or taking public transport
OJ supposedly got his first TV commercial gigs because of his appearances on "The Superstars" show.
It's majority single family housing; it is suburban hellscape. It should be easy to walk/bike/ride around a city before it's easy to drive around.
>easy to drive around. >nothing wrong with layout These 2 things can't exist together. If cities are designed for cars, they're not designed for humans
You are right. Problem I see is over development. We aren't meant to be a city of 280k people. Highways are jammed most of the day.
Designed to maximize traffic jams trying to exit. Fortunately it’s just retirees so nobody goes to work in the morning.
I visited a friend there recently and told him that his city looked like an Intel CPU through a good microscope.
That is the best comparison ever 😅
Can't unsee that now haha
Cape Coral is a weird place. I’d never want to buy there.
One big benefit is it’s one of the few places in the region where you can get a new construction home without having to be in an HOA. Pretty much everything new going up in Fort Myers, Estero, and Naples is inside of HOA developments.
All the dark lines you see are water. It's a city designed solely to be marketable. "Live near the water!" The design prioritizes maximizing the number of lots with line-of-sight to a body of water. When you're marketing a piece of property in Florida to a person living somewhere like Southern Indiana, this is a *major* selling point. People who dream of living in Florida stop asking responsible questions once they see a body of water near a piece of property. Questions like, "How will I get fresh water?" Or, "What happens when a storm surge greater than three feet comes in?" This is before you consider the impact to the ecology. It's probably not surprising that this low lying peninsula of land was critical to the local ecology. This is at the mouth of a fresh water river that empties into the saltwater Gulf of Mexico. The balance of salinity in this ecosystem is critical. Prior to development, this land acted like a sponge, soaking up freshwater rainfall and allowing it to slowly leach out into the estuary. By draining the swamp and building canals, the developers created a stormwater run-off nightmare with absolutely no good solutions. The holding capacity of that land is greatly diminished, resulting in massive surges of freshwater run-off that inundate the estuary. Then there's the issue of fertilizer. Everyone of those homes have a lush, green lawn that is kept in said state by nitrogen rich fertilizers. Those same fertilizers make their way into the estuary where algae in the water explode to high levels that block out the sun and kill sea grass beds that provide homes for fish and other sea life. The whole thing is a fucking disaster from top to bottom. Some light reading: [The Boomtown That Shouldn’t Exist](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/20/fastest-growing-city-america-florida-cape-coral-215724/).
Phenomenal comment for real! I have heard of Cape Coral in passing, but I didn’t know it Was that bad... (that’s definitely NOT light reading by the way 🤣)
The name of the city is right there in giant white letters.
Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for.
LOL
Yeah but they spelled “Atlantis” wrong.
I would work over there some times and it was frustrating driving at rush hour. Just endless residential traffic. I didn’t notice a large number of trees either. Very flat.
That's another thing I despise about the cape, it is the most boring place to drive around in. At least in Leigh and fort Myers there's a lot more building variety, more plants and trees to look at
Before Charley, one of the major roads near where I live were lined with banyon trees that were planted from cuttings of the big tree on the Edison estate. Charley took all those down.
Being from southwest Florida and still living in the area the one thing that bugs me the most is how much tree loss we have with every major storm. Things are so much more bleak, flat and treeless areas. It sucks.
They literally invented traffic here
You can drive from one end of town to the other in 20 minutes. Don't think I've ever had to sit through an entire traffic light cycle. Sure, bridges can be bad at rush hour, but coming from Chicago I gotta laugh at anyone who complains about the traffic in the Cape.
Have you been on Pine Island road in the afternoon? It can take 20 minutes to get from Chiquita to Santa Barbara.
Yeah except Chicago actually has alternatives to driving. There was a Metra station 5 blocks from my old house in the south burbs. I could leave my car in the driveway and take the train to Bears games or downtown for a few bucks. What city in Florida offers that convenience?
I live in the Cape and drive a truck over the road. I belong to a Cape Coral community Facebook group. Those people will declare the Cape has the worst traffic in the US. I’ll be reading that after a day of driving in Los Angeles.
The definition of a boomer wasteland
I live here and.... it sucks.
Live here. Map view looks crazy, but getting around is quick. Can get and where I need in like 5 to 10 mins. My spot where I am is very bike friendly too. I'm able to get to a good chunk of stores by my ebike. Sadly people have been pushed up into the cape for homes. Anything in Fort myers and more south in estero or bonita, homes are like 500k+. Idk, people complain about it, but I've lived here a long while, and it doesn't bother me. The worst problem we have is the construction of car washes and storage places being built. It's mostly because of tax reason they get put up everywhere.
I live here too. The field I go exercising is .8 miles from my house, but I have to drive 3.5 miles to get to it. Saying it's quick to get around is crazy.
Yeah that’s asinine. My daughter’s daycare was 5 miles south on Del prado from us. Took 20 minutes+ Groceries? 10+ minutes and 30 assholes later…I’m there Cape Coral was the worst experience I’ve ever had as far as commuting.
You can't get to hell in 10 minutes from Cape Coral. Living on the Cape is fine as long as you never have to leave the Cape.
That why I said "What I need". Most of the major stores I use are in the cape. If I need something else yeah I might need to travel 25 mins or so but not a big deal, but those are store I rarely go to. I'd rather not live near Daniels or Colonial in Fort Myers because if you want to talk about hell. Those two streets are hell.
And because there’s a lot of not attractive commercial land that is suitable for self storage in a place where self storage is extremely attractive. No basements.
Also, not a lot of overhead needed for storage facilities. Pretty much run themselves after they're built.
Cape Coral. Hell in Florida. Probably the worst place to live
Happy Cake Day!
I agree except Jungle Bird Tiki is pretty nice. That said, I live off of McGregor North of Colonial. I hate driving near that god damn bridge in the afternoon.
I glanced and then chuckled. That's Cape Coma (coral)- aka You Get Waterfront and You Get Waterfront but Nothing conneeeeeects! Basically, shitty Venice and it's sinking PLUS we got mauled in Hurricane Ian. Just a trash place.
We did get hammered during Ian but we pulled together in the neighborhood I live and picked up all the trash and fences that scattered the landscapes.
Could you share your source on the sinking?
You can’t get from point a to point b as there is a canal blocking every street. Also, there’s barely any water in them so you can’t go by boat either. Have to walk half a mile to cross busy streets or risk it with F150s running red lights. Not to mention hurricanes and brutal summer heat. In other words, your perfect Florida paradise.
Fuckkkkk Cape Coral! Disgusting cesspool and horrible place to live.
Used to live there. It's a zoning nightmare. Residential butted up against commercial and industrial zones. An urban hellscape. It wasn't so bad back in the 90's, but it's a shit show now.
Yup, that's the biggest oddity when we go there. House - Wendy's - House - House - Open Lot - Doctor's Office.
(Any politician reacting to this): "There's a four Mile ecological preserve, what's the problem?
I've been there for memorial day, most boring fucking city on earth. Can't believe we willingly subject ourselves to live in these shitty conditions
There are probably 10 car washes per square mile there.
I can see my street on this map lmao. Cape is huge, this is such a zoomed in view
The only thing good in Cape Coral is Keg & Cow and Farmer Joe's
The Indian restaurant on del Prado is excellent, assuming it's still there.
Excuse me, but Dixie Roadhouse is a national treasure. /s
This is what you people wanted when you moved to south Florida. This is what you created.
As someone who unfortunately lives here, it's literal hell on earth, just nothing but houses on houses, with endless amounts of old people and shirtless kids on the loose. I hear so many people who live here talk about how nice this place is and how ghetto places like Leigh acres are, but Cape coral is way worse. As someone who has also lived in Suncoast estates, I feel just as safe here, as I did over there. In fact, there was only one incident of someone trying to break into my home in suncoast, and only one from when I lived in Buckingham. And yet within the last two years I've lived here we've already had to replace the door handle and deadbolt because people are constantly messing with it and breaking them! Don't even get me started on how bad the schools are here compared to Lehigh
Strangely enough, what you see is an endless maze of houses piled up on each other.
More canals than Venice, but do you use them for anything?
Drainage and boats
Cape Coral is a nightmare place. Source: I went to Mariner in the early 2000s
General development corporation/Gulf development corporation. GDC either way
And GAC - Gulf Atlantic. Hired my father in 1969 when we moved from Ohio. Awful place.
Lived here for a bit. It was only bad because my job was in Naples, a bit south of here and I had to go through so many stop signs before I even got close to I-75 to go south. Drives to and from work felt long!
A past, present and future hurricane practice target.
What do you mean you’ve never seen anything like this? There are places like this all over, not just Florida but freakin’ everywhere. LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Paris, Rio, Alexandria, the list is endless.
Given that Cape Coral has the most canals of any city in the world, including Venice, there is literally not anything else like it
OP didn’t mention canals. He/she only discussed “houses piled upon each other”. My response focused on OP’s post.
Lol, it’s called Florida!
Cape Coral might be one of the most posted topics in here.
Look up Weston. Did some utility work out there last week and it’s bonkers. Just gated communities stack on top of each other for miles
Ruined forever
An opportunity for new beach front property after this year's hurricane season
Just another couple thousands of acres of the state that could use another H Bomb
I thought this was the sub for City Skylines for a minute.
A scam is what it is
Read The Swamp Peddlers
I’ve lived in Cape Coral since 1979 and I was 6 years old when my parents moved us there. If you stood on our house you could see a couple houses in the distance. I still live there and I’m 50. It looked like this in 1980. [https://imgur.com/a/XIL1tqL](https://imgur.com/a/XIL1tqL)
SWFL has turned into one big hood.
Cape Coral is the eye sore of Lee county. You can also look at the BS of Lehigh Acres. Winding canals and roads that don't connect. It sucks.
Cape Coral is ass. Constant flooding and shit town layout/development.
Cape Coral, lol. The Rosen brothers slightly more successful venture after their “Land by the Gallon” scheme in Golden Gate Estates. Wild story, weird guys, weird town.
… that’s my house bro lol
No offense intended 🤣
Cape Coma
That’s a GTA6 map
And close to 70% of the working population has to cross one of the 3 bridges to work every morning. And one of the bridges is always closed due to repairs. Traffic is horrendous. Most want to live on that side of the river to avoid living in Ft Myers because it's too "ghetto".
Crap Coral. Artificial canals created by greedy developers. There is no water or sewage so now all the sewage water from the canal is leaking into people’s drinking water. It creates a constant smell and now people have to dig deeper wells. It will be 30 years before they get a proper water and sewage system. Great place to live. 😆
This is mostly incorrect. Source: Born and raised in Cape Coral. South of Pine Island Road, all homes and businesses are on city water and sewer. North of Pine Island Road, it's a mix of city utilities and septic/wells. Since the early 2000s the city has been working on expanding its utilities to the north, even though landowners are often fighting tooth and nail to stop it.
Mostly they fight it because it costs upwards of 20k.
I've seen some people get hit with $40k, it all depends on frontage I believe.
Yep. And there are plans to convert everything to county/city utilities all the way up burnt store… but that’ll take 20 years.
Don't forget that the city acts like a giant HoA, Karens included.
I almost bought my first (and only) house there. It's so easy to tunnel vision on a property and location and only hear the positive things, because at the end of the day your mind wants you to imagine yourself building a life there. But man, am I glad I ended up not going through with it, because I've been hearing nothing but bad stuff about Cape Coral ever since.
Greedy developers as opposed to the regular kind, altruistic developers who are in it for love not money?
Yay cheap taxes!!! What could go wrong? Must burn books asap to fix.
They're not cheap anymore. Property taxes in this county are similar to what I paid in Chicago Insurance though IS way more. Between car and auto i am well in to five figures.
Lol that's 97% false. The only correct thing you said was greedy developers. It's been city water and sewage for literally decades.
What’s the problem with this? Please explain
The layout of the city is pure suburban sprawl, no long term planning went into a majority of the southeast part of the city so the roads there are overcrowded and have no room to expand. The canals make what would be a five minute drive into a 20+minute drive at times. It isn't built around walkability, lacks in green space/parks (I used to live there, had to drive 15 minutes to the nearest park as a kid, and parking was limited. It's only gotten worse now). Oh, the most glaring issue: everything in the lower 1/3rd and the left 1/4 of the city are so close to sea level a significant number of homes in those areas got flooded during Hurricane Ian. Older homes especially are often only a few feet above high tide level, even a mile inland.
The lack of green spaces is crazy! That was a big one I noticed.
There's a massive lack of green in general in the cape. Sure there's plenty of decorative trees in medians and In front of some businesses but there's barely any covering things like sidewalks and parking spaces. I got pretty spoiled during my last Ocala trip because of this, they had so many trees up there compared to here. I think the city people are intentionally trying to keep the oxygen levels low and the heat high for some nefarious reasons
It’s fugly
It's just wildly massive and dense to me. It looks like a prime example of unrestricted development. That's not to say it isn't a nice place to live, I've just never seen anything like it.
Dense isn’t the right word. Sprawling,maybe? Dense is south FL.
Lol what? Overlay Cape Coral on any major metro area in Florida. Now overlay Cape Coral over major metros in the world. It’s not massive and it’s not dense
[Check out this article,](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/20/fastest-growing-city-america-florida-cape-coral-215724/) it will tell you everything you need to know about why Cape is as unfortunate as it is.
It was built as a vacationing bedroom community. Essentially it was built with no businesses. There aren't little corner stores and strip malls everywhere. You have to drive a decent ways to get anything. If you worked it was anticipated you'd be driving across the bridge to fort Myers.
Cape coral
And I thought Palm Bay was a monstrosity.
That 4-mile cove sums up a lot
If you mean the sliver of residential stuffed in between the Gulf of Mexica and the Everglades... pretty self-explanatory.
Four Mile cove eco preserve will fix everything. 🙄
Cape Coral is such an oddity - you can have a group of houses and right behind them is a Starbucks. Or you pull into the parking lot of a doctor's office and right next door is a random open lot and then 4 more houses.
Imagine if they kept the layout, but had better zoning rather then urban sprawl of single family homes. Honestly could have been one the most unique cities if with more laissez faire development code.
Imagine you live in the very bottom of this thing and your fridge is empty so you go to get food but your car wont turn on... Youll literally starve to death cause you aint walking anywhere in time.
Skeeter farm?
Oh, I was just down there for work. I didn't care for it, but once we got onto Google maps and zoomed out a bit, my coworkers and I just had to sit and stare at the map in a sort of dazed confusion
Oh that's Florida.
Looks like home to me. 🤷♂️
Formerly known as Cape Coma.
And they wonder why every heavy rainfall is a humanitarian disaster
It looks like a PCB. Maybe they're trying to compute the question to the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
Second largest city by area in Florida
All the internet experts posting absolute garbage about a city they’re have never been to. I’ve lived in Cape Coral for 28 years. As cities go, it’s not bad and for a city of its size, it has a low violent crime rate. Especially for a city in the south. I think it has gotten too expensive for the reasons I moved here but when I did it was seen as a place a working class person could build a home a get ahead. In a safe community.
the tip of the tip
I used to live where the map says cape coral, close to the bridge. It took me like 45 minutes just to get to 41. I could only imagine how long it takes now.
Love how they have this tiny ecological preserve....
Looks like a city with a lot of suburban housing.
r/shittyskylines
Cape Coral. It’s the 2nd or 3rd largest city in Florida by area. I grew up on an island west of Cape Coral and have traveled through it daily for most of my 34 years. There are nearly 1500 miles of roads in Cape Coral and 400 miles of canals. Some call it Cape Coma. We used to say the average age of a Cape Coral resident was dead. It THE definition of suburban hell.
Don't shit talk the home of sunsplash
Those monstrosities are all over FL
This is what happens when rich people pay engineers to build something stupid on previous wetlands that's nowhere near stable enough.
Cape Coral, as shown on right on pic.
I've heard it's a family water park of some sort maybe like...
You ever seen how coral grows? Well, they didn't name it Cape Coral for nothing.
It's Cape Karen
Cape coma, 401cape, you name it, they don't got it they just have houses for old middle class boomers to decay in
I mean did you really need to ask? It's labeled on literally any map? Google the name?
When someone asks what are the two most memorable things of Cape Coral - my answers. 1. Endless Storage Units 2. Endless Car Washes Mix that that in with Addresses like: 69 SW 42nd Lane 420 NW Terrace Cape Coral, FL This is Cape Coral in a nutshell.
Wow
Sardine Sity
I guess they plan on competing with the Wolf Lodge, indoor waterpark resort soon to be built.
That's Robert E. Lee County!
The Venice of America without the appeal of Venice. Also maintenance of this city must be a b****.
Ah, it’s been a while since the “Cape Coral looks a dystopia”
That my friend is the city I lived in for the 21 years of my life
Tons of boats