LCSO: Lehigh Acres investigation underway
The Lee County Sheriff’s Office responded to a scene in Lehigh Acres early Saturday morning.
Downtown Cape Coral may start to see some improvements to their parking problems soon, as the City of Cape Coral is working to create a new parking plan.
The South Cape Parking Management Plan will make parking easier for Downtown visitors from Southeast 46 Lane to Miramar Street and ultimately improve parking across Cape Coral.
Local businesses along Cape Coral Parkway East said they can’t wait to see these changes.
“It’s gonna help all of us on the parkway, definitely,” Manager of Perk & Brew Nikki Nerritt said. “I mean, if you can get seven cars instead of three, more people are gonna walk into your business.”
Right now, Nerritt said they have public parking out back but only four to five open spaces in front. And they’re typically gone first thing in the morning.
“Some people don’t even walk in because they don’t know where to park,” she said.
Those front parking spots are close to the road, with drivers having to get in and out of their cars into oncoming traffic, and sometimes the back lot gets full — especially in the evenings.
“Oh, this one? No, I mean this one’s always full,” Cape Coral resident Kathy Norris said. “In the evenings, yeah, we avoid a lot of things downtown unless we can Uber down.”
Norris said she’d love to see more parking but doesn’t want more big, tall ramps, and that’s exactly what the City of Cape Coral wants to know.
They want to hear from residents. After asking locals to fill out a survey about what it’s like parking in Downtown Cape Coral, the city found most people have trouble finding public parking spaces.
Out of the 150 responses they received since August, 66% said they couldn’t find parking, and 79% said they had to walk up two blocks from where they parked.
The city has now asked residents to continue to help them by working together to come up with suggestions for parking Downtown at their community meetings.
The first meeting was held Wednesday at 4 p.m. at the Public Works Operation Center, and another one is coming up on Nov. 8.
But with this plan, which the City hopes to finalize by December, they believe it can improve short-term and long-term parking problems in downtown soon.