Fort Myers City Council at its regular meeting Aug. 4 tabled staff’s recommendation to begin negotiations with Hoyt Architects for the city’s major Midtown development plans. Council plans to revisit the decision at a future meeting after further discussion and vetting of Hoyt. While city staff picked Hoyt as its first choice, its second-ranked pick was The Image Network (Dover, Kohl & Partners). The 240-acre Midtown district south of downtown, city staff wrote in a report, is “an ideal candidate for redevelopment.” The area counts the now largely unused City of Palms Park among its underutilized property. City staff anticipate that Midtown will be developed using the existing “Smart Code” that was adopted in 2008 as part of The Duany Plan, a strategy used to develop the downtown River District by the New Urban architect Andrés Duany and his Miami-based firm.