BTS: There's a Ring to It

Amy Fletcher-Smith remembers Bell Tower Shops as the place to be and be seen when she was a teen growing up in Fort Myers. That it was the early ’90s, when the area’s shopping and hangout choices were limited to Bell Tower and Edison Mall.

Today, in her role as director of marketing for Bell Tower Shops, Fletcher-Smith sees her once-favorite teen haunt being overshadowed by the newer, mega-retail centers of Coconut Point and Gulf Coast Town Center. 

While she understands the lure of something new, she’s optimistic that a summer-long refurbishment and rebranding campaign at Bell Tower—which is still 97 percent occupied—will entice patrons to return to the Fort Myers shopping center.

The state of the economy is hurting the center more than the infiltration of the new malls. Still, Bell Tower has lost only one tenant, Island Pursuit, says Fletcher Smith. Open storefronts are filling quickly, though, with Caché, a ladies’ designer boutique, recently coming in and talks continuing with another women’s clothier.

“Shoppers are fickle,” says Becky Thompson, Bell Tower’s general manager. “It’s just good business to keep your business fresh.”

After two years of intense research and planning, Bell Tower Shops is undergoing a transformation. Now called BTS as part of a marketing and rebranding effort, it is trading in its yellow stucco walls and bright green awnings for rich chocolates, creams, tans and varying shades of pink, intended to reflect historic Palm Beach hotels like The Breakers. The ADP Group, an architecture firm in Sarasota, designed the redevelopment plan based on customer input. “The competition has blown Bell Tower out of the water with its scale, but our surveys revealed that customers desire more intimate settings,” says project designer Jesse Balaity.