The lazy summer days of shuttered shops and uncluttered streets in season's wake are romantic history. No, these days most merchants stay open all year and the hotels and resorts are filling more rooms. The airport continues to bustle in the summer months, and traffic is still dreadful.

"Clearly we're growing into a metro area with year-round, intense business activities," says Michael Reagen, president of the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce. Reagen and other local officials identify at least two forces behind the change: a population explosion and marketing.

With new residents arriving all the time-40 per day in Lee County, for example-it only makes sense that businesses, particularly restaurants and retailers, stay open all year.

And thanks to groups such as the Lee County Visitor and Convention Bureau (organized a dozen years ago with the goal of attracting people here during the doldrums), tourism has been way up during the historically slow months of May through September. Over the past decade, annual off-season spending has jumped from $170 million to $277 million. "We've seen a big increase in summer and fall business," says VCB's chief, D.T. Minich.

Southwest Florida International Airport has been gaining off-season visitors, too. In June 1983, its first year, the airport handled 73,462 passengers. That number rose to 261,392 a decade later, and to 367,535 last year. "Traditionally after Easter, passengers would drop almost half," says Carol Obermeier, the airport's manager of aviation marketing and development. "Now it's down 15 to 20 percent."