Bruce T. Grady

Mention the words economic development, and City of Fort Myers Mayor Bruce Talford Grady listens.

"The best part of my job is economic development," says the 47-year-old mayor from his office atop city hall during a Tuesday, May 11 interview. "The most fun I have in a day is meeting with people who talk about bringing a new company to our city or a new development."

Grady's mission is ambitious, to say the least. He's looking to pump new life into the city of Fort Myers, making it a first-choice Florida vacation and convention destination while maintaining a Southern small-town historical feel.

"We're interested in trying to redevelop the older parts of our city," he says. "You can't do that by raising taxes. You can only do that politically and financially successfully by building new economic growth, and I think the city has set a well-earned reputation over the last 10 or 20 years to being receptive to quality development."

City Problems

Grady readily acknowledges the city's long-standing problems of poverty and crime. "We're the classic urban city that suffered from suburban malls, subdivisions on the outskirts that were newer and prettier and cheaper," he offers.

He says he is continuing to bulk up the city's police force to reduce crime. "I increased the police department budget from $10 to $12 million this year," he says. "I plan on increasing it another $2 million this year. We will have the highest per capita expenditure in the state of Florida for police. I expect a lot of results from it."

Grady also says that lingering pockets of poverty have made for a relatively low education rate and rate of growth in the last two decades. "While the city did well in the seventies," he says, "we kind of came to a screeching halt in the eighties. It's really been dormant -- stagnant is the accurate word - for about 15 years."

He remains optimistic, however, with regard to the new residential areas that have recently annexed into the city in return for impact fee waivers. "With two projects, 2600 homes, it's at least 9 percent - probably more than 10 percent -- of our population," he says.

And that residential growth will hopefully translate into economic growth trickling into the city. "Now Fort Myers is too much of a 12-hour economy," he says. "What we need is a much higher increase in growth of residential rooftops that will provide people twenty-four hours a day to our economy."

The city is also grappling with "lurking" financial problems, Grady says, but is on the way to recovery. He predicts the city will reduce its debt service from about $650,000 a year to about $500,000 or $450,000 a year, and the last of the costly special-assessment districts will soon be sold off. "I think it will be short lived," he said. "We really have gotten all the debt problems in order except for Omni. I have no doubt we will solve that in six or seven weeks."

Coming Attractions

Accompanying efforts to redevelop downtown, the city is now getting ready for Buquebus, a high-speed Key West ferry service company building a new Hendry Street passenger terminal near Harborside Convention Hall. In November the company is scheduled to launch a 147-foot, 300-seat catamaran from the port. In 1999 a second boat is planned to join it.

A passenger teminal for the Buquebus ferry service is planned for the river's edge in downtown Fort Myers.

Buquebus Inc., a South American newcomer to the U.S. market, originally sought to operate from Naples but was turned down out of fears of congestion. Grady saw the opportunity, stepped in and began to negotiate. "I knew from the beginning what kind of company they were -- very well planned, very good reputation," he says.

He managed to win over Buquebus, convincing the company that pleasant scenery would make up for time lost in the extra distance down the Caloosahatchee River to downtown Fort Myers. "Key West to Fort Myers is a classic ferry route," he says.

The city is spending $800,000 for part of the Buquebus terminal and surrounding road improvements. There is also a possibility for a new parking garage. The city will receive parking fees and a .50-cent per passenger surcharge, amounting to an estimated $1.2 million in direct revenues. In six years, Fort Myers will also begin to collect a per customer port fee.

What the city is really counting on, though, is a new stream of tourists traveling through downtown looking for accommodations, food and/or entertainment. Grady says the target Buquebus market will be tourists from Orlando to Tampa to Naples -- those who want to avoid hours of driving and traffic to Key West. According to market estimates, the Buquebus passenger count could reach 800,000 travelers a year. And if Cuba ever opens to the United States, he adds, service could very well be extended there through Key West.

Grady doesn't want to stop with the Buquebus, either. The city is currently negotiating a lease with developer Flordeco to build the Pleasure Pier, a restaurant and retail complex, on a lot adjacent to the Buquebus terminal. The Pier would be built in a Spanish Moorish style to imitate the original Fort Myers Pleasure Pier, popular in the 1920s to 1940s. In another project by Flordeco, nearby Lofton Island may also be developed into Pleasure Key, a recreational island that would include a bed-and-breakfast, a maritime museum and an upscale restaurant.

Conventions, High-rises and Hoops

Grady says there's another market not yet realized in Fort Myers -- that of lucrative conventions and trade shows. He likens convention-goers to college students who spend plenty of their parents' money while in town for the short term. "Unless you're really in the industry," he says, "you don't really appreciate the economic impact of someone coming in your city for four nights, three days and dropping $1400 dollars."

He contends the city's Harborside Convention Hall simply isn't large enough to attract the big-ticket conventions -- it can only accommodate about 45 percent of the market now. But the problem can solved with two expansions -- one in the near future to double the hall's size to around 60,000 square-feet and one in the longer term that will take it up to more than 100,000 square-feet.

"If we want to be able to compete for 80 or 85 percent of the trade shows and trade conventions in the United States," Grady maintains, "we'd be able to do that with this next expansion.. The final expansion will give us just a little more ability to be world-class and attract that last fifteen percent."

He blames poor management for Harborside's disappointing revenues thus far, but says that restructuring -- for example, providing an in-house catering system and collecting direct profits from food and beverage sales - has helped the financial situation. The hall is also beginn