Fred Pezeshkan and Jerry Starkey’s company Metropolitan Naples LLC completed the purchase of land in the Bayshore Gateway Triangle from the Collier County Redevelopment Agency (CRA) on Nov. 13. Starkey and Pezeshkan won a CRA design competition to create a community that would be transformative and stimulate redevelopment and entered into an agreement to purchase the property in 2016 contingent upon receipt of entitlements and relocation of an existing 190-foot communication tower on the site. The community will be known as Metropolitan Naples and will be comprised of three mixed-use buildings. Humphreys & Partners Architects will serve as the master architect and coordinate the overall community design and building vernacular. Each building will have ground-floor retail and restaurants that will conceal internal structured parking. On top of the retail and parking will be luxury residences, Class A office space and potentially a luxury hotel.

Lee County commissioners on Tuesday approved the use of E-ZPass transponders on Lee County’s toll bridges. The E-ZPass toll network includes 18 states throughout the Northeast and Midwest. The agreement would allow people who already have those transponders to use them on Lee County toll bridges, WINK News reports. The agreement that allows the use of E-ZPass in Lee County is with the Central Florida Expressway, which joined the E-ZPass group in 2018. The Central Florida Expressway would process transactions with no transaction fees charged to the county. The transponders will be accepted locally starting early next year. Local drivers also can continue to use LeeWay and SunPass transponders. For more information about Lee County toll programs, go to leewayinfo.com.

 

A new 45,000-square-foot Gulf Coast Museum of Military History & Veterans Advancement Center is planned on a 4.5-acre lakefront property under contract at Alico ITEC Park in Fort Myers. The growth and expansion initiative was announced Monday at the Naples Airport, where the Naples Museum of Military History has outgrown its longtime location. The local museum’s collection of more than 13,000 military artifacts from all branches of the military from the Revolutionary War on will be relocated to the new Gulf Coast Museum of Military History when completed. The future home of Florida Gulf Coast University’s Museum Studies Program also will call the museum home. The adjacent Veterans Advancement Center will include multiple local and national veteran’s assistance programs and has been developed to provide aid, support, guidance and treatment to service members and veterans. 

From orange groves to tomato fields, farming is no stranger to Southwest Florida, and neither is fishing. And now, aquaculture – or seafood farming – is coming to the southern Gulf Coast. “It’s the idea of growing fish, shellfish, like oysters, and mussels, and clams, as well as algae, seaweed,” says Danielle Blacklock, director of the Fisheries Office of Aquaculture at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “We haven’t found any of those spaces yet. We’re just starting to have that conversation.” NOAA is checking out four different study areas around the Gulf of Mexico for closer analysis and will be looking for public input, WINK News reports. Comment on the project through the Federal Register until Dec. 22, by clicking here.

Naples-based NCH Healthcare System hopes to be at the forefront of getting the COVID-19 vaccine out to the community once it’s available. Because the proposed vaccine needs to be stored at -94 degrees Fahrenheit, Pfizer says dry ice can keep its vaccine cool during transport, but it’s up to the health care providers after that. Those facilities could use dry ice as well, but because of the pandemic, CO2 has faced a shortage and bottleneck, which is used in the making of dry ice. And that could impact who gets the vaccine and when. NCH has two new freezers being installed this week specifically for the new coronavirus vaccine. NCH said each freezer cost about $15,000, and the hospital system put in the orders about two months ago in anticipation of the vaccine’s arrival. The health care system has also been working to obtain Regeneron, the same drug used to treat President Trump, once it becomes available, WINK News reports.

 

 

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