Lee County Commissioners will be discussing an extension of the contract for beach renourishment that Gasparilla Island has with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at their meeting on Tuesday, May 17. 

Artist, environmentalist, lover of people and nature, longtime Boca Grande institution Carroll Swayze is moving. She is closing her Englewood studio and moving somewhere not too far away. She can’t be too specific because the deal is still in process, but she is looking forward to whatever is around the next corner.

Among those items that were discussed were solar panels. Board members had asked Lee County at their last meeting to do some research into how other counties and localities deal with the visual impact of solar panels, to which Lee County Attorney Amanda Swindle responded.

Now is the time to be diligent in picking up all furniture, toys, tents … pretty much everything from the beach. Turtles – both adults and hatchlings – can get stuck on or in these items and cannot turn around. If left out of the water too long, they will die. That includes trash, so please pick up after yourself if you are spending the day on the beach.

It’s difficult to get your bearings when you first see the old Fishery property without the shops, the fish house, the restaurant and the charter fishing buildings that used to be there. The only things left to remind you at this point are the concrete platform the restaurant once stood upon, the old docks and the last two Albritton houses still standing on the southernmost tip. The view is breathtaking, with the alcove and docks for Gasparilla Marina on your left and the old railroad trestle over to the right. The old memories are still there, but new memories are to be made.

“Joe will be conducting activities for our guest families during season,” he said, “and when The Inn is closed for the summer, he will be conducting a camp for employees’ children. We needed a family program: It’s one of the things that was missing here. We had kids’ activities, but not as much for families. Kids are coming more and more throughout the entire season, not just for spring break, and Joe is a perfect fit. He spent more than two decades with Lee County and we know how well he deals with kids through our own experiences with him, and watching how he interacts with our own kids and how much they love him. So many families have built relationships with Joe on island, so we knew it would work out very well.”

The truth about the cost of living in this area is brutal right now. While income has barely – if at all – increased for most employees in many years, the costs of groceries, gasoline, utilities and, of course, rent have vastly increased in the last 18 months. When droves of people started moving to Florida during the height of the pandemic, real estate went through the roof. Many people who owned rental homes realized they could easily get hundreds more in their pocket with the supply-and-demand situation this area was facing, while others decided to take full advantage of the market and sell their rental properties. Not only did they leave the worry of being a landlord behind, they had a lot more money in their pocket from buyers paying an inflated price for their property.