When is the new Fort Myers Beach Pier expected to be finished?

The road to recovery is long, but it’s increasingly becoming clearer. WINK News is learning it will take about four years to rebuild the iconic Fort Myers Beach Pier.

We’ve seen different design concepts for the new pier, but WINK News did verify that FEMA will pay for all of it.

The county and community will work together to come up with a new design concept for the pier, and then that design concept will go through permitting. After the approval, the county will bid for a construction company.

“Yeah, we’re rebuilding the Fort Myers Beach Pier,” said Lee County Commissioner Brian Hamman.

It’s going to take between three and four years.

“Just the timeframe to hire a designer could take five months, the concept, the design, with community involvement could take between six to eight months, then for permitting,” said Hamman. “Then you know, to hire the construction company who’s going to build the pier, we’re gonna go out to a competitive bid process for that, that could take another four months.”

Then the work can start. More than a year after Hurricane Ian, the pier is coming back. When WINK News discovered this, we took it to the beach to spread the word.

“We were just talking about the pier hoping like out of everything that everybody’s doing here is to get this pier back together, and then I met your beautiful face today, and you told me not five minutes ago that we are approved,” said Fort Myers Beach resident Cheryl O’Neil.

Let’s Go FMB member Alan Shanoksy told WINK News they look forward to keep pushing to keep the original pier’s history alive.

“We certainly want to be involved in the process. We have a very good finger on the pulse of the community as to their desires,” said Shanoksy. “the history of the pier is extremely important to our group and me personally. All fishing piers or piers started as fishing piers. So we’d like to see that aspect of the pier be incorporated the new design, as well as many improvements.”

While the memory of the old pier still lives on, it’s bizarre not to see it there.

“To walk across there to see the sunrise to see the sunset to fish to have the shops to have this beautiful thing look at this that the clocks here everything is just cheers. Cheers,” said O’Neil.

Getting the green light to work towards building back the pier is the good news many needed to hear.