Marty Lawing said during almost seven years as the Guilford County manager in North Carolina, he saw both successes and failures. Entering his second full year as the city manager of Fort Myers, he’s hoping to learn from the missteps as he looks to improve the quality of life in the City of Palms.
Lawing gave what amounted to a state of the city address Thursday morning at the Collaboratory in Fort Myers at the Downtown Property Association’s monthly meeting.
“A healthy downtown is the key to a strong community,” Lawing said. “It provides the sense of place for residents and visitors to gather.”
In Guilford County, Lawing saw a privately funded minor league baseball stadium work in downtown Greensboro, and a publicly-funded one not work as well in High Point.
“I’ve seen a lot of successes, and I’ve seen a lot of failures,” Lawing said. “What works well in one city might not work well in another.”
Those were lessons he will bring to the table, with the city facing a deadline this fall to receive up to $1 million in funding from the Lee County government to demolish City of Palms Park. The City Council could decide to push past the deadline as it may need more time to consider future plans for the athletic facility, Lawing said.
“We don’t want to rush it or make a bad decision over a million dollars,” he said.
Lawing gave a rundown of some of the immediate tasks he tackled upon taking the job, including converting one-way streets, such as First and Second streets, into two-way traffic flow. In addition, he hopes to establish regularly occurring public events and make public land available for private development.
While the new playground at Centennial Park downtown is nearing completion, Lawing will seek to improve public parking, create a downtown entertainment district and establish a ride-sharing program which could include public bike rental kiosks.
Lawing praised those in attendance and other downtown business owners for doing their part to make Fort Myers more vibrant.
“We’ve got some high-quality tenants. We have a really good mix of businesses, restaurants and retail. People come from other places to visit downtown Fort Myers,” Lawing said.
The city has become safer with the installation of surveillance cameras, he said. “It’s a pretty sophisticated system,” he said. “It’s helped us solve quite a few cases. It was a significant investment to the city’s benefit. It was smart.”
Besides City of Palms Park, there were two other large, city-owned properties that, for now, have uncertain futures. One of them is city hall itself. “We’re running out of space at city hall,” Lawing said. Options to turn that over to the private sector and develop a new city hall are conversations that have been happening.
And then there’s 2442 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., the former News-Press building, which the city owns. The city received an unsolicited offer earlier this year from a developer to acquire the property, which is about 12 acres.
The city then opened it for tours and bids. There were about 30 people representing eight-to-10 companies who took the first tour, Lawing said, and about a dozen people representing three-to-four development companies during the second tour. There is a July 1 deadline to submit bids and proposals to the city.
The city also has received 25 applications for an economic development director. The person hired for the role will be recruiting businesses and companies to Fort Myers, including the downtown area.
“I want to talk about the cool factor,” Lawing said, in closing. “I think it’s cool to be downtown. It’s clean. It’s safe. There’s a lot of good restaurants. There’s a lot of good activities – for the young, the old, the in between.”
