Emails show beginnings, contradictions of South Seas resort amendment

Author: David Dorsey, Gulfshore Business
Published: Updated:

South Seas resort ownership group’s engineer proposed a land-use amendment for Lee County’s government at least six months before the first public discussions and at least seven weeks before the county’s official timeline began, emails between the resort’s representatives and county show. 

The timeline contradicts what county government officials and South Seas resort owners and contractors said at public meetings, where they said county staff initiated the Land Development Code amendments Jan. 17, 2023. The resort proposed a draft of one of the amendments for the county as early as November 2022 and inquired about doing so in February 2022, emails obtained by Gulfshore Business show. 

For more than 100 years, periodic and devastating hurricanes have reshaped Captiva Island. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 struck and destroyed a lime tree farm when Clarence Chadwick owned the northern tip of the island. Chadwick regrouped by redeveloping that land into a fishing resort. 

Hurricane Ian struck Sept. 28, 2022, about one year after Timbers Company, The Ronto Group and Wheelock Street Capital purchased most of those same lands. Just as Mother Nature forced Chadwick to change a century ago, the new landowners have said the same about the century ahead. 

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