FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. — Fort Myers Beach’s Red Coconut RV Park, a staple on the island for nearly 100 years, was sold to Seagate Development Group for $52 million on Tuesday.
According to a press release from Spiro & Associates, owner Fran Myers and her family agreed to sell the 10-acre property located at 3001 Estero Boulevard which fronts the beach and Gulf of Mexico.
The park suffered significant damage from Hurricane Ian and it would’ve been deemed too costly to restore the popular campground. At least 250 concrete pads for the RVs would need to be replaced; an entire infrastructure system, including power and drainage, would need to be rebuilt. All the buildings would need to be restored. The cost would rise into the millions and take more than two years to complete.
“My Tom never wanted to sell the park,” Fran said. “And it would have been very hard for me to do that. Then, the storm came along. We tried to find out how much it would cost for all the stuff underground and it would have cost $3 million to put it all back in.”
Seagate Development Group, a local construction company, inherits the property with a distinguished history. Red Coconut RV Park, which opened in 1925, was one of the first commercial locations built on the beach. It was the site of the first post office and the first voting precinct on Fort Myers Beach. The first religious gatherings were hosted there as well as bingo fundraisers for the first school on the island, Fort Myers Beach Elementary.
Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Charles Lindbergh, Alex Carrel and James Newton — along with their families, frequently visited friends staying at this iconic site. Mina Edison, Thomas Edison’s wife, often had tea parties for her friends at the park, the press release stated.
Fran said Seagate was the only choice to sell the property because of how much family means to the company. She and her late husband, Tom, first leased the park in 1981 and bought it in 1982. The park has been family-run ever since.
“I am one of the people that believes in using your local people to do your business with,” Fran said. “I just felt that they are a family-run operation the way Tom and I ran the park and so the choice was pretty simple. There were other local people, but they seemed the most substantial and the one I found had family values.”
The Myers family has continued to take care of their residents, even after Ian, returning over 5,000 deposits for reservations made from Sept. 28, 2022, through Oct. 15, 2023.