Captiva’s South Seas Resort wins round 1 of rebuild battle

Reporter: Jolena Esperto
Published: Updated:

The South Seas Resort on Captiva Island plans to raise its building height to 75 feet.

However, local residents are opposing this decision.

Lisa Riordan, president of the Captiva Civic Association, is concerned about the potential impact on the island’s recovery.

“This is a very fragile island that is in recovery mode for now, well over two years since Hurricane Ian, and we were hard hit by Hurricane Milton as well, so the evacuation plan and the ability to evacuate the islands is something that everybody should be concerned about,” said Riordan.

Despite these concerns, the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings ruled in favor of South Seas.

The ruling found that the Captiva Civic Association did not prove that the land development code conflicted with the Lee County Comprehensive Plan.

“We had to prove, basically, what that means, a fairly debatable standard is we had to prove that one could not make a fairly debatable argument that the changes made were inconsistent with the Lee plan, and that’s a fairly deferential standard to the county. We think we did prove that,” said Riordan.

The final order from the Division of Administrative Hearings stated, “On the contrary, the ordinance complies with the policy by updating the county’s building height regulations on Captiva to account for barrier island conditions.”

Copyright ©2025 Fort Myers Broadcasting. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.