For more than a decade, North Fort Myers was stagnant as a community with little happening in terms of new development, especially with regard to housing.
But three new apartment complex projects — the 160-unit Hermosa, the 320-unit Mast and 283-unit The Alary at Merchant’s Crossing — each have reached three different milestones in their development and are positioning the area for a makeover.
“North Fort Myers had become a pass-through community,” Lee County Commissioner Brian Hamman said. Upon being elected in 2014, he set to work at changing that.
On Jan. 31, Hamman witnessed the results of some of his efforts at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at The Alary at Merchant’s Crossing, 3260 Stockton St., a site that used to be a vacant Sears department store. That very day, the first tenant moved into the complex.
“It’s a huge day for North Fort Myers,” said Hamman, whose District 4 includes the unincorporated area. “I’ve been working on this ever since the moment I got in office. I’ve been trying to help North Fort Myers come back.”
Lee County contributed about $1.7 million to the project, including new signage at Merchant’s Crossing shopping center and demolition of the Sears building.
Eric Moran, executive vice president of residential development at RD Management, said the county investment helped jumpstart the project. The Alary is a market-rate, luxury complex with a courtyard, pool and other amenities, with starting rents at about $1,600 for a studio and about $2,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath unit.
RD Management paid $20.5 million for the shopping center in 2015.
“Sears went dark in 2019, and that’s when we began repositioning the site to see what we could add,” Moran said. “We wanted to create a mixed-use campus.”
Moran noted The Alary as the first of several apartment projects in North Fort Myers to open.
“We’re proud to be a pioneer,” Moran said. “I would say that the population growth throughout the state of Florida and Southwest Florida specifically has been pretty significant over the past four or five years.”
Mast, under construction at 13370 N. Cleveland Ave., at what used to be a shopping center just north of the Caloosahatchee Bridge, has reached the topping off phase of construction. Two private equity companies have combined forces to fund the bulk of that project.
Mast also received some funding from Lee County’s North Fort Myers redevelopment fund.
“This is the culmination of years of work to try and get builders and developers interested in North Fort Myers,” Hamman said. “We worked with our economic development team to try and figure out what can we do to bring in some catalyst projects that will help lift North Fort Myers up, so it joins the rest of Lee County with the amazing success that we’ve seen.”
Hermosa, a 160-unit affordable apartment community at 16341 N. Cleveland Ave., hosted a groundbreaking ceremony the morning of Feb. 5, where ReVital Development Group President Michael Allan thanked a long list of organizations that made funding of the project possible.
“The business aspect is totally different than market rate,” Allan said.
Hermosa will deploy just about every known manner of public financing for the project.
This will be the first apartment complex in Lee County to use funding mechanisms from the Live Local Act, a new state law that helped ReVital secure funding to build 160 instead of the originally planned 80 units, Allan said.
Florida Housing Finance Corporation awarded two grants, both of which flowed through Bank of America.
Ryan Benson, a board member of the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, credited Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature with revitalizing public housing initiatives.
“It wasn’t making a dent,” Benson said of previous efforts to use state funding for affordable housing. “We just weren’t gaining any ground. But now we are fully funded. We’re able to deploy a lot more capital.”
Bank of America awarded $2.04 million in annual 9% tax credits, which will result in a $19.2 million equity contribution.
Bank of America also awarded $1.35 million in annual 4% tax credits for a $12.6 million contribution.
Tax exempt bonds amounting to $14 million were issued.
The project also will receive $2.75 million from the Hurricane Housing Recovery program, $5.5 million from State Apartment Incentive Loan (SAIL, for Phase II), $580,500 from SAIL-ELI (Phase II), $870,000 through National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF for Phase II) and $500,000 from Lee County, among other funding sources.
Bank of America and Citi Community Capital are both paying for some of the debt, said Allan, who used to work on market-rate projects prior to starting ReVital. He started the company five years ago because he wanted to devote 100% of his energies into affordable housing projects.
At Hermosa, rents will begin for qualified tenants making 60% or less of area median income.
Those rents, if based on today’s economy, would range from $1,053 to $386 a month for a one-bedroom and $1,263 to $463 for two-bedroom units.
The current AMI figures for a family of two are: $44,940 (60% of AMI), $29,960 (40% of AMI), $24,717 (33% of AMI) and $16,478 (22% of AMI).
“It’s fee based,” Allan said of how his company makes money. “Market-rate projects can be very boom or bust. Affordable projects are more slow and steady. That fits my mentality on the business side.”
