City manager: Forecast bright for Cape Coral
The latest U.S. Macro Forecast by Cushman & Wakefield is predicting commercial real estate property markets and the U.S. economy will perform well in 2017 due, in part, to a new U.S. Presidential administration promising to deliver fiscal stimulus measures, tax cuts and spending multipliers.
Economic and commercial growth over the last few of years in Cape Coral is expected to continue its climb along with the national predictions as well.
“When I got here in 2012 this city was on the verge of financial instability,” said City Manager John Szerlag in a telephone interview “We have worked to create a three-year budget and toward pension reforms so now we have reached economic sustainability for many years to come.”
On Tuesday, Szerlag spoke to the New Residents Club at the Cape Coral Yacht Club and presented many of the city’s achievements, investments, improvements and components that attracts new residents and development.
“I needed a concise presentation,” said Szerlag. “There are a lot of positives about Cape Coral from rankings on top lists to investments in the community, commercial and big ticket projects right down to environmental protection.”
He began by looking back at many of the lifestyle ranking lists the Cape earned in 2016.
Forbes, for instance, placed Cape Coral No. 1 in the country on its Top 10 metro areas for job growth and best cities for future job growth. Cape also is on the Top 10 lists for top housing investment cities in the U.S. and Top 10 best places to retire.
“Clearly Southwest Florida has grown by leaps and bounds as the population growth of Cape Coral and Fort Myers is the third fastest in the nation and in job creation,”said CEO/Broker of Commercial Property of Southwest Florida Gary Tasman of Cape Coral. “That translates into new businesses and the need for more homes and apartments. The exciting part is that Cape Coral benefits exponentially by having the land ready for construction. That’s a distinct advantage over other regions.”
A sampling of other top lists include a No. 1 ranking of the Cape Coral/Fort Myers area by the Colorado-based research firm IHS Global for anticipated job gains. Cape Coral is No. 3 on the Livability.com list of the six most affordable cities in Florida. It’s No. 5 on the top 10 cities for boat owners ranking by Smartasset.com. Business Insider lists Cape Coral No. 17 on it’s 25 safest cities in America. Cape is ranked No. 4 by Allstate Insurance on its America’s best drivers report.
“All of the points of the presentation were well received and positively reinforces their decision to move to Cape Coral,” said Szerlag. “With the top lists, most of it was not known by most of the new and even many existing residents.”
The New Residents Club has about 1,000 members and Szerlag estimated about 300 of those attended the “Moving Forward” presentation. He went on to highlight the city investing in the community, making many improvements to the community and city services, welcoming new business and protecting the environment.
Those include spending millions on local road paving and resurfacing, new vehicles and capital equipment, a new fire station, street light installations and median improvements. Then there are major projects in the works like the Seven Islands “destination,” Bimini Basin, Parks Master plan, Bike-Ped Master plan and the South Cape Streetscape project.
“Those are big ticket projects and we will be bringing many of those to a conclusion in 2017,” said Szerlag.
He also told the club about the North Cape utilities expansion, a land use development regulations rewrite aimed at providing a fair and fast planning and permitting process, and an economic development master plan to attract target industries.
“Being a pre-platted community, our residential to commercial property numbers are somewhat skewed, but we have made inroads,” Szerlag said. “We are now at 12 percent commercial tax base, which is up from 8 percent. We will never be at 40 percent, but we are shooting for 20 percent in the next decade.”
Commercial permits have increased by 62 percent with a number of multi-million-dollar residential and commercial projects being developed. The Cushman & Wakefield forecast projects a growth in the U.S. GDP of 3 percent over the next two years will generate more than three million net new jobs.
“There is great optimism over what the new Trump administration has infused into the market,” said Tasman. “It has caused people to start moving on constructing homes and commercial space. It makes the area more business friendly and will have a great impact on our region.”
As far as the environmental protection issues, Szerlag said the city is fighting the effects of blue-green algae blooms in our waterways connected to Lake Okeechobee water releases, a proposed shallow injection well for wastewater disposal in North Fort Myers threatening our drinking water supply, surface water discharges contributing to increased nutrients and contaminants producing algal blooms, red tide, fish kills and other problems.
The city and the Florida League of Cities environmental committee support legislation to protect and enhance surface water and drinking water aquifers.
“I never thought that I would need to be known as an environmental manager,” said Szerlag. “Environmentalists are viewed as lousy neighbors, but excellent ancestors.”