Fort Myers City Council delays decision on Bruno’s of Brooklyn at old firehouse

A plan for a restaurant, shopping and apartments has been put on hold in the City of Fort Myers.

The project to develop the old fire station in downtown Fort Myers was expected to get the green light as the people at Bruno’s of Brooklyn had already made their proposal.

But the vote by the city council has been pushed back to next month.

The city doesn’t want to start a negotiation without seeing other offers.

Fort Myers will now wait to see if anyone steps up to develop all of Midtown before splitting it off into sections.

“The reason I wanted to table it is that we had put out another proposal for all of Midtown, not only Midtown but to look at all the city assets in downtown Fort Myers, including City Hall that we’re sitting in. So that’s due in four days,” said Fort Myers Councilman Fred Burson, who represents Ward 5 of the city.

Burson said it would be a mistake to agree to a deal before weighing every option.

“I just thought it was premature who started negotiations on just one piece of city property when we’ve got a proposal out to take a look at all of it,” Burson said.

You might recall that firehouse comes with a price tag of about $450,000, then comes in the actual construction force and that alone is expected to cost about $4.4 million.

As of now, Burson doesn’t know if the city’s gotten any proposals for all of Midtown but now he expects several.

“The staff will review the proposals that we get, and if it meets the criteria that we laid out, they’ll bring it to council for us to make a decision on who we want to work with,” Burson said.

The city will revisit Bruno’s proposal on Sept. 19.

By then, council members should know if they have other offers to develop Midtown.