Ed Dublois bought a rundown car wash off Bonita Beach Road a few years ago with a fellow investor, considering ways to redevelop the property.
They looked at building apartments and condos or a mini strip mall or whatever else.
But they kept coming back to one concept that has been growing in Southwest Florida in industrial areas but certainly not near the beach.
They kept coming back to luxury automobile and RV storage units.
Bonita Breeze Luxury Auto Condos, at 4276 Bonita Beach Road, will have 25 units ranging from 800 to 900 square feet and starting at about $289,000. Each can store up to four cars or an RV and be customized to include a mezzanine level.
Dublois purchased the land for about $750,000 in 2015.
“One of the things that caught our attention, is a lot of these auto storage facilities, we saw one in Naples and said it would be neat to replicate that,” said Dublois, who splits his time between Marco Island and Montana. “What was interesting to us, is we saw that they were in the industrial areas. How can that be? You’re not really in the center of the rooftops, as you call them. It would be nice to be somewhere convenient.”
This will be the only RV storage unit in Lee County west of U.S. 41 other than the ones in Cape Coral.
“It’s very close to all the ‘quote,’ rooftops,” Dublois said. “All the housing, single-family units and high rises and so forth. We felt like we met the market need for this project.”
Dublois has enlisted Lee & Associates brokers Biagio Bernardo, Bill Young and Michael Mahan to book the units, which will be in four buildings that are ahead of schedule in construction because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Waltbillig and Hood were the lead construction contractors, and Southwest Studios did the architecture.
“When the pandemic hit, most of the projects that were slated to come out of the ground were shelved,” Dublois said. “We were one of the few projects in the area that was full speed ahead. As a result, the subcontractors found themselves being more readily available. That translated to an ahead-of-schedule completion date. End of November, beginning of December, 2020. We’re, say, two months ahead of schedule.”
By David Dorsey, Fort Myers News-Press
Credit: Naplesnews.com