Florida Trend | Florida's Business Authority

Eyesore Building Hinders Fort Myers' Resurgence

Fort Myers' street
Fort Myers is more than halfway through a $72-million project that includes adding brick streets. [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

By the early 1980s, like many small American cities, Fort Myers found itself with a run-down downtown. Stores had fled to sites in malls, and businesses moved to suburban office parks.

The city, spurred on by then-rookie councilwoman Veronica Shoemaker, began the long slog of revitalization with a series of federal grants that funded the creation of Centennial Park along the Caloosahatchee River and other infrastructure improvements. “There was a lot of blight. Even the yacht basin was run-down,” says Shoemaker. “We took it project by project.”

The city adopted a redevelopment plan and created the Fort Myers Redevelopment Agency, but made slow headway until around 2001. Two factors accelerated progress: The city hired Miami’s Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., the New Urbanism consulting and planning firm, to write a new redevelopment plan. And real estate began booming.

Today, even with the real estate market in the doldrums, the city’s downtown has come a long way. To the north and south of the historic downtown core are some 1,400 new condos in eight towers. The city is also more than halfway through a $72-million utilities and streetscape plan — due to be finished next year — that includes underground utilities and brick streets. To serve the new condo dwellers, a new Publix shopping center opened on McGregor Boulevard last November, just two blocks from the river.

Also downtown, a 10-story criminal justice center is under construction and an Art of the Olympians gallery showing works created by Olympic athletes will open soon. A $4-million project is also under way that’s transforming the city’s old post office into a cultural arts center.

Since the Duany plan was approved, Don Paight, executive director of the Fort Myers Redevelopment Agency, estimates the downtown district has had more than $800-million worth of construction. Soon, he says, the amount will top $1 billion.

Fort Myers - Amtel Lobby
Economic developers say the $25-million asking price is too high. The Thangsumphant family paid $6.7 million for the hotel in 1993 [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

While the real estate bust has cooled condo building for the moment, perhaps the biggest challenge facing the redevelopment effort sits smack in the heart of downtown at 2500 Edwards Drive. Opened in 1987, the 24-story, coral-colored Amtel Ambassador Riverfront Hotel was once an important downtown business, attracting tourists and conventions.

The redevelopment plan envisions a major hotel presence, but the Ambassador has become a thumb in the plan’s eye rather than a catalyst for development. Purchased in 1993 by the Amtel Group of Florida, a company controlled by the resort-developing Thangsumphant family of Thailand, the hotel was once a Sheraton and later a Ramada. It became the Ambassador in 2005.

The family’s operation of the hotel has been less than four-star. Former guests, posting reviews on online travel sites such as tripadvisor.com and expedia.com, rave about the waterfront views but sometimes complain about the hotel being outdated. One example: The rooms still have wall-mounted air-conditioning units. “Was obviously once a GREAT hotel, but staff seems to do the best they can with what they have to work with,” wrote one expedia.com reviewer. A tripadvisor.com reviewer was less diplomatic: “It was clear to me as I entered the hotel that the building had been neglected.”

Joe Coleman
Attorney Joe Coleman represents the head of the Thai family that owns the Amtel Ambassador. “Frankly,” he says, “they just haven’t made the investment in the facility that it requires in order to maintain a high level of service and viability.” [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

Joe Coleman, a Fort Myers attorney who represents Chai Thangsumphant, head of the family, concedes that the property has declined over the years, particularly after the family’s patriarch, Chavalit Thangsumphant, died in a car wreck in 2001. Since then, several family members have been involved in “contentious litigation” over the assets he left behind. “While the father was alive, I think they were making some level of investment into the hotel,” Coleman says. “But upon his demise, the investment has been minimal. Frankly, they just haven’t made the investment in the facility that it requires in order to maintain a high level of service and viability.”

For Fort Myers, Paight says, that means downtown’s biggest and most important hotel is no longer spiffy enough to attract convention business. In fact, the hotel isn’t attracting much business of any kind. Coleman estimates that 30% of the hotel’s 416 rooms are occupied at any given time.

Don Paight
Don Paight, executive director of the Fort Myers Redevelopment Agency, says the city is offering millions of dollars in incentives but doesn’t want to subsidize a buyer willing to overpay for the property.
[Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

Paight and others want someone to buy the hotel, fix it up and bring back the convention business. Downtown has seen so little convention business in recent years, in fact, that a refurbished convention center near the hotel has undergone a name change from the Harborside Convention Center to the Harborside Event Center.

Coleman says the family would be happy to turn the hotel over to a new owner, but the Thangsumphants haven’t been willing to sell the hotel for less than $25 million. Renovating the building, Paight and others estimate, would require another $25 million.

Todd Gates, chairman of Gates, a development, real estate and construction company in Naples, had a contract to buy the property three years ago, but the deal fell through, mainly, he says, because of all the litigation within the Thangsumphant family. Gates says his company would have completely renovated the building and grounds. “It would have looked and felt brand new and would have been a tremendous asset for the city,” he says.

Another potential buyer, YESS Property Group, along with the Empire Hotel Group, both of New York, also had an agreement to purchase the hotel, but that deal fell through when Fort Myers didn’t offer the group enough incentives. “We were hopeful that as things were evolving there, that with the right benefits from the city, it could be a viable project,” says Ed Somehk, a YESS spokesman. “We were going to renovate it into something that would have complemented the events center nearby.”

Paight says the city offered the New York group $3 million in incentives, which he acknowledges fell millions short of what the group wanted. The city, Paight says, would have offered more if the hotel owners had lowered their price. He says the city doesn’t want to “subsidize” a buyer wanting to overpay for the property.

Coleman expects the hotel will sell within a year. He says brokers from as far away as England, India and Southeast Asia have shown interest. Offers have been made, he says, but so far none has been acceptable to the family. Noting that the $50 million required to buy and renovate the hotel is indeed a “significant sum,” Coleman says it’s still a lot less than the $100 million he thinks it would take to buy the hotel, tear it down and build a comparable one.

Meanwhile, Fort Myers waits. “If they can get the right ownership, I’m praying and hoping that it can be renovated into one of the big hotels that we need,” Shoemaker says. “We really need that convention business. That’s the lifeblood of a city.”

Fort Myers - cafe
Fort Myers has undergone almost $1 billion in redevelopment projects this decade. [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]