Two months after Hurricane Ian damaged South Seas Island Resort, the federal government rewrote the coastal flood plain, which further has impaired the resort’s owners from rebuilding their 107-room hotel on the northern tip of Captiva Island.
At 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Lee County Board of Commissioners will hold a public hearing to discuss allowing the county and, specifically, South Seas to build higher than 35 feet.
Under the current height of 35 feet, South Seas would lose about half a story of space, because the federal government now requires the ground floor height to rise from 7 to 18.6 feet.
Greg Spencer, CEO of Timbers Co., one of three investment groups that purchased South Seas in 2021, met with Gulfshore Business last week for a tour of the damaged property.
The storm wrecked the roof of the hotel, allowing rainwater to fall inside, resulting in mold, which deemed the building a loss when considering insurance requirements.
Spencer clarified that his company doesn’t want to build a six- or seven-story structure or up to 75 feet, contrary to rumors circulating on Sanibel and Captiva.
However, Spencer does want to rebuild bigger and taller, and residents fear a boost in height and number of rooms would take away from the islands’ ambiance and add to traffic concerns. They also fear changes would create environmental problems for birds at the nearby J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge.
“If we put massive, new buildings out on Captiva, that’s going to increase light pollution out there,” Matt DePaolis, environmental policy director of the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, said in an interview with WINK News. “That’s going to have an effect on migrating birds. That’s going to have an effect on sea turtles that are trying to nest. That’s going to increase impacts on beaches that might make nesting birds less like nesting shorebirds, less likely to come in and use those spaces. Captiva had some of the first nesting birds that they’ve seen in years this year.”
Spencer said he seeks to build a three-story hotel instead of the current two stories and have perhaps 175 rooms instead of the current 107. Timbers Co. owns luxury resorts around the world, including in Colorado, Hawaii and Tuscany, Italy. He said he wanted South Seas to be up to the standards of the others.
Building fewer than 170 hotel rooms would make financing the rebuild extremely difficult, he said.
The company has lost about $400 million in revenue since being shut down Sept. 28, Spencer said, and it has cut its workforce from about 430 in-season employees to fewer than 50.
South Seas encompasses about 330 acres. In addition to the resort, there are dozens of condo units that are governed by 20 different homeowner’s associations within South Seas.
“I think right now, our focus is rebuilding what we have,” Spencer said. “You know, 55% of residential structures here are three stories. We have no desire to do six or seven stories. Or I’ve heard rumors of 75 feet. That’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make sure the height calculations start at whatever’s permittable.”
Sanibel City Council held an emergency meeting last week to discuss opposing any height requirement changes Tuesday at the Lee County Commissioner meeting.
“We feel strongly that increasing density on a barrier island recently devastated by Hurricane Ian. We think it would make Lee County less resilient for future storm events,” said James Evans, CEO of the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation. “For one, increasing density on a barrier island, where we’ve had massive storm surge and impacts to our communities puts more people in harm’s way. It will have a direct impact on hurricane evacuation.”
So far, South Seas has been demolishing some of the buildings that have been deemed a total loss. It spent $2.8 million on sheet-piling, which fortifies the northern tip of the island with steel to create an underground barrier to waterflow, to improve resiliency for future storms. It hauled off more than 110 tons of storm debris and has almost finished rebuilding the destroyed dock. Crews also have been rebuilding the golf course, which should reopen before the end of the year.
“We do plan on upgrading the resort,” Spencer said. “We’ve made no qualms about that. We want to bring the resort into the 21st century. We want to make it comparable to our other products. Having that level of quality, specific to South Seas, is in the best interests of everybody.”
Spencer plans to attend Tuesday’s meeting and hopes to work with the public on communicating the future of South Seas.
“The problem is, people are so focused on what is a developer doing, they’re not putting themselves in the shoes of what happens if that was my house,” Spencer said. “The issue of height applies to everybody in the county.
“Clearly now, there’s enough, just misinformation and misunderstanding, that we do have to talk to the community. I certainly have no problem being up front and having those meetings and talking with the community.”
