Drive a mile of Estero Boulevard on Fort Myers Beach right now and you'll pass two properties that started from the exact same place. Hurricane Ian took both, nearly four years ago. Today, one has thirty pilings drilled into the ground, concrete columns rising, and an owner expecting to move in by early 2027. The other is still an empty lot, its owner three years into a fight over what can replace it, a fight that just changed direction entirely.
That gap is the story for anyone shopping pre-construction on this island. The developer's name on the sign, the renderings in the sales office, the price per square foot: none of it tells you how fast a project actually reaches closing. What tells you is whether the project needs the town's permission to exist in its proposed form, or whether it's already allowed to be built.
What's Actually Moving
At 718 Estero Boulevard, Royal Corinthian Homes is finishing its first full ground-up rebuild on the island, an all-concrete single-family home standing on 30 pilings with a deck and full Gulf views. The construction superintendent has described the goal plainly: build it from the pilings to the roof entirely out of concrete so wind and water can't take it down again. It's one of six new homes going up on that block, where a cluster of cottages stood for decades before Ian erased them. Local Realtors Alex King and Marc Taglieri, who have watched the block since the storm, point to this cluster as proof the market is finding its footing again.
A few blocks away, the Cottages of Paradise Point are coming back too. The Greenspon family said in 2022 they'd never rebuild their rental cottage community. By January 2026, construction had started on the first of what will eventually be new homes across 12 lots, built by Marvin Homes under Richard Durling. These won't be rentals from day one. They'll be sold, starting around $2.6 million, with buyers free to continue the rental tradition if they choose. One of the planned homes runs 3,607 square feet with a pool tucked beneath the structure.
Neither of these projects needed a rezoning. Neither needed a Comprehensive Plan Amendment. They fit the lot's existing single-family designation and the post-Ian elevation code, so the path from permit application to vertical construction has been measured in months, not years.
What's Stuck at 6200 Estero Boulevard
Down the road sits the former Outrigger Beach Resort, a 144-room property with one of the island's widest beaches and views, bulldozed after Ian by its new owner, London Bay Development Group. London Bay paid $38.2 million in 2023 for the Outrigger and Charley's Boat House Grill across the street. First plans went public in 2024 and were shelved that August. The reworked version needed something the concrete rebuilds up the street never did: a Comprehensive Plan Amendment and a rezoning to build a hotel and condo tower reaching 195 feet, in a town whose code caps buildings at three stories.
The Local Planning Agency hearing on April 14, 2026 ran six hours before members granted a continuance. A second hearing on May 8 pushed the matter further, to May 12, while London Bay reworked its plans. When the board finally voted on May 12, the developer had agreed to cap every building at 172 feet, down from the original 195, and had already dropped the restaurant, tiki bar, and public beach access it once offered as a community benefit. The board rejected the plan anyway, voting 5-2 against the original request and then 4-3 against the revised one. LPA Chair Anita Cereceda cited concerns about height and told the developer she was surprised they hadn't presented the project's scale more visually before asking for approval.
London Bay CEO Mark Wilson had said that if the project were approved, construction wouldn't start until 2027 or 2028, with completion in 2030 or 2031. That timeline assumed the town's normal approval path. It no longer applies.
Why a Beachfront Developer Invoked a Workforce Housing Law
On July 29, 2026, one week before its scheduled hearing with the Town Council, London Bay asked to cancel that hearing and told the town it would instead pursue a development order under Florida's Live Local Act, a path that bypasses Council review entirely if a share of the units, 40 percent under the law, are set aside as workforce housing. London Bay's land use attorney, Richard Yovanovich, had told the LPA back in May that the option existed regardless of that meeting's outcome. His reasoning was direct: the company owns the land, so it will use it for something.
Fort Myers Beach Mayor Dan Allers responded that he has always welcomed those who want to invest in the town, whether commercial or residential.
The pivot isn't a change of heart about affordable housing. It's a legal bypass valve. A law built to spur workforce units in expensive markets also happens to let a developer route around a Comprehensive Plan fight it was losing. For a buyer, the lesson isn't about that one project. It's that the building you saw in a sales rendering can change its legal path, its unit mix, and its amenity package after you've already put down a deposit on the idea of it.
Worth remembering too: an LPA vote is not always the last word. A separate large-scale project from Seagate Development Group faced a similar LPA rejection, 4-3, on height concerns roughly two years before the Outrigger vote, and Town Council overturned that recommendation and approved it anyway. Two projects, two boards, two different outcomes. That variability is exactly why the entitlement history of a specific parcel matters more than the reputation of the company building on it.
Three Projects, Three Very Different Clocks
| Project | Entitlement path | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Royal Corinthian rebuild, 718 Estero Blvd | Fits existing single-family zoning | Under construction, occupancy expected early 2027 |
| Cottages of Paradise Point | Fits existing zoning, no rezoning needed | Construction underway on first cottages, more planned through the year |
| Gulfside Twelve, near 6200 Estero Blvd | Delivered as a luxury condo tower | Completed and occupied in recent months; residents now weighing in on the Outrigger fight next door |
| Outrigger site, 6200 Estero Blvd | Comprehensive Plan Amendment denied; now pursuing Live Local Act bypass | No groundbreaking; timeline reset |
The tower next door to the Outrigger site, Gulfside Twelve, tells the other half of the story. It's already built, already occupied, and its residents are the ones showing up at LPA hearings to object to a tiki bar being placed near their pool. One project delivered on schedule because it carried entitlements that predated the current fight. The other is still negotiating its own legal identity.
What This Means If You're Looking at Pre-Construction Here
- Ask whether the project needs a Comprehensive Plan Amendment or rezoning, or whether it's permitted to build as-of-right under current zoning. That single fact predicts the timeline better than anything in the sales brochure.
- Pull the Local Planning Agency and Town Council meeting record for the specific parcel address. A project can be years into the approval process before a single foundation is poured, and the public record shows exactly where it stands.
- Understand that an LPA denial doesn't always end a project. It can also trigger a legal pivot, as with the Live Local Act filing, that changes the unit mix, height, and amenities from what was originally marketed.
- Don't assume Council will follow the LPA's recommendation either way. Precedent on this island runs both directions.
- For any tower still in entitlement, treat the delivery date in the marketing materials as a best case, not a commitment.
The Resale Market Isn't Where the Risk Lives
None of this shows up in the broader resale numbers, and that's the point. A market snapshot published in early July 2026 put the broader Fort Myers area's median sale price around $339,000 with roughly 731 active listings, homes averaging 96 days on market, and about 4.9 months of supply, a fairly balanced picture. Beachfront and canal properties in that same snapshot ran $450,000 to $560,000. None of those figures capture the risk that actually determines whether a pre-construction condo on this island closes on schedule. That risk lives in planning agency minutes, not in median price data.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign
Does a Local Planning Agency vote end a project for good? No. The LPA makes a recommendation. Town Council can approve a project the LPA rejected, as it did with Seagate's development two years before the Outrigger fight.
Why would a luxury beachfront developer invoke an affordable housing law? Florida's Live Local Act allows developers to bypass local zoning approval if 40 percent of units are set aside as workforce housing. For a developer facing a Comprehensive Plan denial, it's a legal alternative route to building something on the land, not a change in the project's original intent.
Is there a real completion date for the Outrigger site yet? Not right now. The 2030 to 2031 estimate the CEO gave in May assumed Council approval of the original plan. That plan is no longer the one being pursued.
If you're weighing a pre-construction purchase on Fort Myers Beach, the entitlement file matters more than the floor plan. Peggy Siebert has spent years inside the builder side of these transactions and can walk through a project's actual approval history with you before you write a deposit check. Let's Connect.
