Meeting canceled proposing adding over 300 apartments in The Estates

A public meeting for a proposed apartment complex in Collier County is canceled due to capacity.

The meeting is yet to be rescheduled. It’s likely it won’t be rescheduled until the engineering firm can find a venue large enough to accommodate the hundreds of people that showed up.

Adam Ricciardiello lives in The Golden Gate Estates. He says, “I think they don’t understand how much people care about the Estates and the zoning and why we moved out here and why we live in this area.”

There’s a proposal on the table to develop more than 300 apartments, that’s the problem. Low-density housing is important to people living in The Estates. It’s a big reason they bought here.

Agnes Tabor sold Ricciardiello his house in The Estates. “This area of Golden Gate is part of The Golden Gate area master plan,” Tabor says. “Which was specifically created to say that we want large lots, we want estates in Collier County, in Naples. So to go against that now is it destroys the whole premise of that plan.”

Tabor explains what this means to her and others at The Estates. “We just don’t want that stuff we don’t want commercial. We don’t want apartments. They want to put 300 apartments on 15 acres.”

The apartments would be built along 7th Avenue. A quiet street with families who say their way of life is at stake.

“If they do it on Seventh Avenue,” Ricciardiello says. “They can do it on Fifth Avenue, they can do it on Third and we can’t let it happen.”

Neighbors are passionate about this. Also, they understand there is a process for this and right now, they’re calling on elected officials for help.

Ricciardiello says “Our county commissioners need to step up and tell these developers that we don’t want apartments in the Estates it’s not what it is zoned for.”

Neighbors are worried about a lot more than just the zoning deviations being requested. They say there are infrastructure concerns from traffic to water. A lot of questions still but until the meeting is rescheduled they won’t be getting those answers.