Future of City of Palms Park could be decided in court

Reporter: Claire Galt
Published: Updated:
city of palms park
City of Palms park in Fort Myers. Credit: WINK News.

The future of City of Palms Park is likely heading to court.

On Wednesday, the committee the Fort Myers city manager picked to hear a protest filed by the United Soccer Leagues rejected the claim.

USL argued that the city established a set of rules for all bidders, including how council members would score each bid, then failed to follow those rules.

The lawyer for USL warned the committee to reject the protest and get ready to answer a lawsuit.

Plans to revitalize City of Palms and the land surrounding the park have been on hold for most of this month.

Lawyers for USL said Fort Myers councilmen Liston Bochette and Fred Burson broke the city’s own rules by not using a scale of one to five when determining the winning bid.

All day Wednesday, a dispute committee considered USL’s protest and then rejected it.

By a 3-2 vote, the dispute committee recommended the city manager enter into negotiations with Pitch Prime, the developer whose bid the council originally selected.

Chip Barnwell of Fort Myers attended the public meeting. He did not like the result.

“This the city council, and this board today, I think, fell short of delivering an equal, fair and balanced result,” Barnewell said.

Liston Bochette, one of the councilmen who did not stick to the scoring scale, giving zeros in many categories, said that if mistakes were made, the city manager is to blame.

“Whether you’ve voted up, down sideways, the expertise we could have been better prepared to make a decision and hundreds of millions of dollars,” Bochette said.

If the city manager accepts the dispute committee’s recommendation as expected, he could finalize a deal with Pitch Prime in the coming days.

Fort Myers attorney Sawyer Smith represents USL.

He did not do any interviews after the committee made its decision.

WINK did ask Smith if or when he would follow through on his warning to file suit against the city. So far, no response.

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