County, town officials celebrate groundbreaking for Fort Myers Beach Pier
The finish line is in sight for the rebuilding of the Fort Myers Beach Pier, the destination that Lee County District 3 Commissioner David Mulicka called “the Eiffel Tower” during a groundbreaking ceremony on Friday to start the rebuild of the pier. The pier was destroyed by Hurricane Ian in 2022 and the wait for repairs, as the county navigated a FEMA reimbursement process, has been a source of frustration for many. The county announced earlier this month that the FEMA funding for construction had finally passed its final hurdle and has been approved.
The pier has long been one of Lee County’s most visited tourist spots, for its view of the Gulf as well as the island’s panoramic sunsets.
The ceremony on Friday took place in front of more than 100 people nearby at Crescent Beach Family Park, where the county recently completed a facelift.
The area around the Fort Myers Beach Pier and Lynn Hall Memorial Park has been closed off to make way for the project, expected to take one year. The county is simultaneously working on rebuilding the restrooms at Lynn Hall Memorial Park, which were also destroyed by Hurricane Ian. The parking lot at Lynn Hall Memorial Park has been closed since that work began, and is not expected to reopen until the work on the pier is finished. According to county officials, the county’s parking lot will have 30% more spaces.
“This is a game changer,” said Fort Myers Beach Realtor Alex King of the pier work. “It’s so huge we made it twice as wide,” King said. King credited the vision of Allen Shanofsky who designed renderings for a larger pier in 2023 and brought those plans for a wider and longer pier to the county commissioners along with the group Let’s Go FMB.
“He really deserves credit for making this bigger, wider and longer,” King said. “It’s amazing that they listened,” King said.
King said on the old pier, it was difficult for couples to pass each other, and not enough room if someone was passing with a cooler and fishing gear. “It will be easier for families,” he said.
“We chose to make it bigger and better,” Lee County District 2 Commissioner Cecil Pendergrass said. “This is an icon of Lee County.” Pendergrass said the new pier will be more resilient. Pendergrass thanked the community for their patience.
Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce President Jacki Liszak said she is “absolutely thrilled beyond measure to see this day here.” Liszak advocated for the pier to be rebuilt quicker, going back to a meeting with county officials in 2023.
“I grew up on the island, I grew up walking the pier as a child with a Dairy Queen ice cream cone and fishing off it,” Liszak said. “I am super excited about this. It is a milestone in our recovery, in our resilience, our comeback story. It’s going to be one of our crown jewels in Lee County and Southwest Florida.”
Liszak said the pier helps people “fall in love with Fort Myers Beach.”
Liszak said “I get asked questions every single day” about how long until the pier gets rebuilt. “Now we have an answer,” Liszak said.
In July, the county received the permit approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that it had long been seeking to build the pier. The county had hoped to receive the permit last year. Lee County Commissioner Brian Hamman went to Washington D.C. earlier this year and said he worked on following up on the pier approval process.
Mulicka, whose district includes Fort Myers Beach, said he made the rebuild of the Fort Myers Beach Pier his top priority after being elected to the board in 2024. He believes his work in pushing the county to act quicker has led to the pier construction timeline being as quick as it is. “The very first commissioner request I ever made was ‘bring me everything there is to know about the pier so we can expedite this project,'” Mulicka said. Mulicka said the pier work schedule is 18 months ahead of where it was when he first got on board.
Mulicka said he grew up fishing on the pier with his grandfather. “When I was a little kid, my grandparents would take us over here across the old swing bridge. We would stop and have a treat at Dairy Queen and then my grandpa would buy us shrimp for a shrimp bucket and he would take me fishing at the pier and watch the sunset,” Mulicka said.
Lee County District 5 Commissioner Trish Petrosky said her first memories of the pier go back to when she stopped in Fort Myers Beach on a travel softball trip as a young child during a tournament in Fort Myers. “The little gift shop had these shells they painted them to look like roses and put stems on them. So I bought one of them for my mother,” Petrosky said.
“This is getting us to the mountaintop,” King said.