Could a Ferris wheel in downtown Fort Myers work?

There are talks to bring a Ferris wheel to downtown Fort Myers, but several things are still up in the air.

Several cities have these Ferris wheels: Orlando, Miami and Myrtle Beach.

There are some big questions right now. One of them is: does it work for our area?

For starters, all of this is just in the exploratory phase.

Is this viable, and is it something the community wants? The big question is, what about hurricanes? Those exploring possibilities were told the wheel could withstand 200 mph winds. The gondolas would be taken down, and the wheel would rotate with the wind.

Two possible locations for this Ferris wheel in downtown Fort Myers would be on land next to the amphitheater or next to the Repertory Theatre across from Oxbow.

The idea for the attraction was proposed by Johnny Streets in January. Since then, Steve Weathers, the city’s director of economic development, hasn’t taken a Ferris Wheel-ers day off! Weathers is in talks with Ferris wheel manufacturers around the world.

“I asked them, when you do this, what’s kind of the opposition side and one of those is what they’d call horizon pollution,” he said. Noise and privacy of homeowners nearby were other concerns.

We asked Weathers what the temperature of our neighbors is at this time.

“I hear citizens out there that support it, hear some citizens that don’t support it,” he said. “I’d say for both of them, we don’t really know that we have enough facts to make a decision either way. That’s why we’re in this kind of fact-gathering mode to figure out and is this even viable for our community? Do we have enough tourism? Tourism drives. Do we have enough tourism activity to even financially support this?”

According to Visit Fort Myers, 4.5 million visitors visit the area annually. Weathers told WINK News that the precedent shows that 10% of tourists will ride an attraction like this, and they project a gross revenue of $9 million a year.

The next step for Weathers is presenting his findings to the historic preservation committee.