CAPE CORAL, Fla. — A rapidly growing Cape Coral area is slated to max out its housing limit. Could this mean the end of new homes in the Pine Island Road District?

There are around 2,300 homes in the district right now, but the thousands of housing units planned for the area go beyond the original cap for the district, set at 5,030 units in 2002.

Now, over twenty years later, the city is running out of time to change the district’s plan.

Some of the options discussed at the COW meeting earlier today are removing certain areas of the district, changing the residential cap or removing all other limits on hotel, retail, professional, or office space.

Some people who live in the district think there are already too many homes on Pine Island Road. Others like John Smart, who is the development review chairman for the Northwest Cape Coral Neighborhood Association, said more commercial space needs to be considered to support the district’s growth.

“It’s a lot of units coming, Families and people, but where do they shop at? What’s being built to help our community thrive,” asked Smart.

There are also questions about whether the cap will be exceeded in time to stall the building process for mixed-use developments, potentially pushing crucial projects out.

That’s a worry for Jay Johnson, who owns Bubba’s Roadhouse. Right next to his saloon on Pine Island Road is where a town center called Cape Coral Grove is hoped to bring jobs and businesses to the area.

“I would feel bad for any developer that started based on what they were told in the past and have already started that project and are now being told something different, where they have to go back to the drawing board because that’s going to cost a lot of money and a lot of time,” he said.

The City of Cape Coral is notifying developers about the housing limit. We reached out to the developer of Cape Coral Grove to get their thoughts on the changes but haven’t heard back.

The council has yet to vote on any option as city leaders continue to look at possible strategies for the future growth of the district.

“We don’t want to be a Boca Raton or a Fort Lauderdale, said Johnson. “We want to have our own identity and still maintain a lot of that laid-back Southwest Florida flavor, and the question becomes how do we get that right balance.”