City of Fort Myers looks for upgrade on landmark restaurant

The city of Fort Myers is looking for an upgrade of the Edison Restaurant.

Now, they have three options to choose from.

On Monday morning, city leaders listened to three different proposals but didn’t make any decisions.

Leaders said they want to hear from the community, but the goal is to make the Edison Restaurant a place where customers can score a hole-in-one.

While nothing is close to final, golfers think some changes would be nice.

“Because of its location, and the history of it, I think it should stay the same,” said Don Blackburn, country club member. “Let’s just clean it up. This is high quality food. Keep it reasonably priced.”

In all three proposals, they agreed that the building is old but an asset to the city.

“What I’m a little worried about, though, is as somebody who’s not a local, it doesn’t understand the depth of involvement in the community that this place has, is going to try to start from scratch,” said Roger Desjarlais, golfer and just retired manager of Lee County.

The city understands the history and the community the restaurant surrounds. Sharing this gem, as well, is something they want to promote.

“You want to try and get that balance, because if you’re going to go strictly on attracting tourists, well, we know they’re only here a certain part of the year or the part time residents,” said mayor Anderson, “so we want to make sure we have something that is attractive to those areas, year round residents as well.”

On Monday’s city council meeting, each councilmember will rank their top three choices.

This is not for any decisions to be made. It is more so for everyone to see where their heads are at with the process.