Placida Road apartment project appears stalled
A proposed apartment building set to be located behind Cape Haze Plaza, appears to be stalled as a development.
In 2022 before Hurricane Ian, a 108-unit multi-family housing project was in the planning stages. The nine-acre property had been proposed to the county as “Cape Haze Multi-family Property” and originally submitted May 26, 2022. It consisted of a four-story, 92-unit structure and 16 townhouses, for a total of 135 residences. The developer was the Tennessee firm Hutton Development.
The project appears on the Hutton website, but the expected date of completion listed on the site was the second quarter of 2023. The Beacon reached out to Hutton at press-time but had not heard an official update on its status. On January 17, 2024, Charlotte County has denied the official Site Plan Review for the project. Charlotte County Zoning Coordinator Maryann Franks said Thursday that she had received an email from the project’s engineers that the project was terminated.
Meanwhile, and to the immediate right of Cape Haze Plaza, is an empty seven-acre piece of property at 8509 Placida Road, owned by The Gasparilla Inn. In May of 2022, Gasparilla Inn Inc. purchased the parcel of land from HAS Commercial Investment Properties LLC for $988,000. HAS Commercial Investment Properties in turn had bought the land from the South Carolina-based Palmetto Bank for $328,000 on July 31, 2013.
Rumors have gone around about possible uses for the property, including a residential facility, but The Inn’s General Manager, Jon Reecher, said emphatically this week that they had bought the land with “zero plans” for it. The Inn is simply “out of space” on the island.
“We have no idea what we are going to do with it,” Reecher said.
The property is zoned CG, for commercial general, and would allow a wide variety of retail and commercial uses, from retail to restaurant to dry cleaner to pharmacy.
Because of the Gasparilla Island Conservation District Act, the state restricts any new commercial development on the island, except land that was zoned for such use prior to the effective date of the Act.
Reecher said that the Inn is “nowhere near” deciding on what to do with it.
There have been no filings with Charlotte County related to the property since the Inn’s purchase.
