Article by Chuck Myron - Ft. Myers News-Press - Sunday, October 01, 2006

Dirt mining plans rile residents - East Estero land aim spurs doubts

Another development group with plans to mine fill dirt before it builds houses on a swath of east Estero land is meeting with concern from residents.

The owners of the 1,152-acre Cypress Bay property on the south side of Corkscrew Road want to excavate dirt to sell as fill for other construction projects for five to 10 years before building a residential community with 105 homes on lots of 1 to 2 acres.

"To recoup their investment they have to be able to utilize the land according to its highest and best use," said Rock Aboujaoude, a civil engineer working with the developers on the project.

That doesn't sit well with residents already fighting three proposed mines in the area — Corkscrew Excavation, Estero Group and Golf Rock.

East Estero resident Kevin Hill attended a recent meeting during which representatives of the Cypress Bay developers presented their proposal to about 60 neighbors.

"The reaction was immediate and unanimous," Hill said. "They're dressing up a sow and trying to make a silk purse. They call it estate living, but they couldn't say who is building it or the cost of a lot.

"They didn't know because they want to build a mine. This is not what we call compatible.''

The Cypress Bay development group is a partnership between Regwin LLC and Coral Creek LLC. George Winslow, one of the partners, said it's too early to determine lot prices but said the land was acquired in increments about three years ago for as much as $30,000 an acre.

"There are neighbors out there that are just running on fancy and rumor," Winslow said. "We'd happily sell it to them and then they could figure out what they want to do."

Aboujaoude said the two-step use was a compromise solution they came up with after a meeting with Lee County officials in August 2005.

Chip Block, principal planner for Lee County, said the latest application for the property is for a rezoning request to turn the agricultural land into an industrial planned development, which would not allow for residential use.

"In order for them to develop residential uses, they're going to

have to rezone the residential development and get the master concept plan for residential planned development," Block said.

Winslow doesn't plan to follow up on that rezoning request and wants to keep the land zoned for agriculture. He said the excavation and low-density housing would meet the standards for agricultural and developing in the groundwater recharge area.

"We're not going to put 500 homes or 1,000 homes out there," Winslow said.

Aboujaoude said the impact of increased traffic on Corkscrew Road should be minimal during the excavation stage, with most trucks heading east toward Lehigh Acres instead of west toward Interstate 75 and U.S. 41.

"The way we have devised this is at the end of the day when the homes are built out, the 100 residents will create about 1,000 cars on the road, and the trucks will be less than that."

Residents remain skeptical. Cypress Bay representatives offered them free fill dirt to help with area flooding problems in an attempt to appease them at the meeting, but that move was not well received.

"They're trying to buy our support,'' Hill said.

Although plans call for fill-dirt mining without blasting, there's no guarantee they won't sell the land to someone else who would then apply for more intensive rock mining, Hill said.

"No matter what they initially say, there's no covenant that holds them to that,'' Hill said, referring to the nearby Westwind mine now wanting to mine rock.

Aboujaoude said full-scale mining is unlikely.

"All they have on this site is at best fill, just some fill material," he said.

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