Lack of progress for City of Palms Park negotiations

Do you remember the scene from Charlie Brown, where Charlie goes to kick the football and Lucy yanks it away at the last second?

Well, in this scenario, Charlie Brown is Pitch Prime, the City of Fort Myers is Lucy and the football is the City of Palms Park.

• RELATED: City of Palms Park negotiations anything but easy

The City of Palms Park was set to be pitch prime’s blank canvas, where they were expected to bring an MLS Next-Pro soccer team here, along with multi-family housing, retail space, restaurants and more.

But then, something unusual happened.

The city manager ditched Pitch Prime and began negotiating with the council’s second-choice group, the United Soccer League.

“I don’t want to assume that they’re interested in negotiating, but it’s worth reaching out to them to see if they are,” said Marty Lawing, city manager of Fort Myers, “and since there is a lawsuit that they filed against the city, the other condition would be that they would dismiss or drop that lawsuit before we begin negotiations.

The city manager said USL had to drop its lawsuit against the city over the botched selection process.

Three days later, USL did drop their lawsuit, and the next day, the two sides began negotiating.

“For a period of negotiations of four and a half hours of total meetings, for a project this large, I mean, I spent more time negotiating to buy a car. I find it quite disturbing that we weren’t at least allowed to be heard tonight,” said Bill Gramer, Pitch Prime representative.

Pitch Prime representatives got emotional at the council meeting on April Fools Day.

“At first, I thought this was an April Fools prank, but apparently it was not,” Gramer said.

They came with a group of 20 people, ready to present their updated proposal alongside developers, engineers, and even the president of MLS Next-Pro.

But the council voted 5 to 2 to not even let Pitch Prime present their updated final proposal. Pitch Prime reps say it’s not right, the community deserves better, and they pointed out that the council has sided with Pitch Prime throughout this process.

So, why deprive them of the opportunity to present their final proposal and prevent the community from hearing what they’ll be missing out on?

The city manager did get back to us and said the revised proposal submitted by Pitch Prime was not acceptable. Read the full statement below:

The proposal of Pitch Prime did not meet the expectation of the City Council at their meeting on March 18^th.  The proposal was intended to be their best and final offer.  The City Council suggested that they be given an opportunity to upgrade the proposal but if it did was not elevated significantly to a level that I thought would be acceptable to the Council that I should move to the next group and initiate negotiations.  Pitch Prime was given until March 25^th to present another best and final proposal.  The revised proposal terms were submitted and again did not rise to the level of something that would be acceptable, so at the work session on March 25^th I informed the city council that based on the revised proposal terms that were submitted that I believed that we should initiate negotiations with the USL if they were still interested and if they would dismiss the lawsuit that had been filed.  There were no objections to my recommendation.    At his point, meetings with the USL have begun.

We did ask Pitch Prime if they plan on taking legal action against the city of Fort Myers, just like USL did.

They said it’s too soon to know that since they still haven’t received anything official from the city of Fort Myers indicating they’re out of the running for this project.

Attorneys representing USL also never answered our call.

Pitch Prime shared with us their final proposal, View below: