70 Residents Show Up to Hear About Estero on The River Project

By Elizabeth Wright
NaplesNews.com
February 5, 2007

After a group of about 70 people, many Estero residents, heard more from developers about plans for a project called Estero on the River on land at the northeast corner of Corkscrew Road and U.S. 41, there were plenty of questions.

What sort of public access would there be to the Estero River in the development? Will that public access be guaranteed? How many homes will be built? What will the buildings look like? How would future road projects, including an extension of Sandy Lane north to Alico Road and the widening of U.S. 41 from Corkscrew Road to San Carlos Park, affect plans? When would the project be finished?

Representatives of the D'Jamoos Group, a Naples development business that as an agreement to buy 85 of land that used to belong to a utopian religious group, providing they get county approval and zoning to go ahead with the project, answered many of those questions by explaining it was too early to tell.

Andy D'Jamoos, a vice president with the company, said any timeline for finishing Estero on the River would be a guess -- though maybe some parts could be underway within two or three years.

As it stands now, the project first needs zoning approval. That means the D'Jamoos Group's plan for 530 residences and 300,000 square feet of commercial space on the site is simply a request at this point. The project is scheduled to go to the Lee County hearing examiner March 21.

"We're really early in the project," said Brad Guarino, the development manager with the D'Jamoos Group.

But if the D'Jamoos group is able to go ahead with their current plans he said to expect more public access to the Estero River than there is now, and to expect the buildings to all be a mix of "Southern" architectural styles.

What he and others from the D'Jamoos Group showed to the civic association were sketches of white two and three story buildings with porches facing sidewalks, and older aerial photographs of the property, showing the property boundaries and the spot where they'd like to place the most dense development -- and the planned Gulfshore Playhouse -- on the north side of the Estero River on the half of the property closest to U.S. 41.

© 2007 Naples Daily News and NDN Productions. Published in Naples, Florida, USA by the E.W. Scripps Co.