At the 2017 Florida Redevelopment Annual Conference, the City of Fort Myers Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) was recognized for excellence when it won the Capital Projects & Beautification award. The award recognized the innovative design for their Cleveland Avenue Offsite Stormwater Credits Program.

The Fort Myers CRA has been working on revitalizing approximately 3.5 miles of Cleveland Avenue from downtown Fort Myers southward. Working together with Johnson Engineering, they had had the insight to make the service area for the City’s credits bigger than just the Cleveland redevelopment area. They collaborated with the City’s coinciding golf course stormwater retrofit project, building additional water treatment and storage within the course. The result was a stormwater mitigation bank that not only provides a nutrient-removal system to help improve water quality in the Caloosahatchee River, it also services as an incentive for developers to use these offsite credits, in lieu of building their own onsite treatment systems.

This is one of the earlier municipal offsite credit bank ever permitted by South Florida Water Management District. Due to its success, the City and the CRA can now work together to expand the program in the future to help revitalize other areas throughout the City.

For more information, contact Andy Tilton, P.E. [email protected].