The Cape Coral City Council will discuss upland canal rights of way in a workshop meeting set some time in March, city officials said Monday.
The topic was pulled from a previous workshop meeting on Feb. 10 because of time constraints.
At the heart of the issue are Cape Coral’s aging bridges.
Mayor John Gunter said those bridges are going to have to be dealt with at some point.
“There’s a process where you can vacate that property. The city has a desire to keep control of that area,” Gunter said. “I would much rather approach it in that fashion rather than vacate a lot of those properties if we have to go back and enlarge or something else.”
According to a staff presentation, the city has 159 bridges that are all nearly 50 years old and so will require maintenance, rehabilitation, replacement, or even widening of the canal.
Staff recommends the city retain full control of the upland areas of canal rights-of-way as an alternative to vacating these ROWs.
As directed by the previous council, staff is working with the City Attorney’s Office to establish a process to allow adjacent property owners to encroach into the canal ROW to construct seawalls and marine improvements.
Establishment of a new process requires amendments to the Land Development Code.
There are 456 parcels abutting 114 bridge locations. From 1987-2018, 131 parcels were quit claimed with easements, from 2018-2020 six parcels were vacated with easements, leaving 322 parcels, or 71 percent, controlled by the city.
Past practices used quit claim deeds with partial or full easements to convey upland canal ROW. Recent practice uses the vacation process with partial or full easements to convey platted ROW.
A quit claim deed, or a vacation, relinquishes all city interest and control of the ROW unless the city retains specific control through ROW easements.
The city will need to reestablish partial or full control in the future for bridge maintenance, rehabilitation, replacement or widening of the canal.
For the city to regain control of these areas, the city will need to obtain an easement, purchase the land, or exercise eminent domain.
Some upland canal ROWs are improved with homes and pools not just seawalls, marine improvements and landscaping.
Councilmember Tom Hayden said he has no issues with allowing those property owners to utilize that land.
“If the city needs to use that right of way for bridge repair or replacement, that flexibility would be there. In most cases, residents should be able to use that land,” Hayden said. “It brings it in uniform with other cases we’ve had in the past and it only seems fair.”
Bridges are inspected every two years, with the westbound span of the bridge on Diplomat Parkway over the Zanzibar Canal scheduled for replacement in 2026 as that road becomes a major thoroughfare.
When bridges need replacement, they typically are wider, higher and longer to accommodate increased vehicle traffic, sidewalks, utilities, and elevation clearance above the canal water level. The canal may also require widening. Bridge improvements can also allow larger boats to pass under.
The big unknown to that would be the cost, which is expected to be very high.
Councilmember Rick Williams sees other problems.
“Some of the bridges don’t need to be replaced. We can take them out, and if we can, it will save us lots of money. On Yucatan in the Northwest Cape, they’re forming U-shaped neighborhoods,” Williams said. “Raising the bridges is a lot of money and it causes blind spots on the road. Clearance is 10 feet now. To get the bigger bridges through you have to raise them four or five feet.”
“A lot of the bridges were built around the same time. The fear is that they’re all going to come up at the same time,” Gunter said. “Hopefully, every bridge will deteriorate in some form or fashion where they don’t all come due at the same time.”
Staff recommends the city retains control of the upland areas of canal ROWs as an alternative to vacating these ROWs.
Staff is working with the City Attorney’s Office to establish a process to allow adjacent property owners to encroach into the canal ROW to construct seawalls and marine improvements. Amendments to the land development code will establish this alternative process.
“We’ll have to take a look at it, get staff’s recommendation and collectively, as a council, make that decision,” Gunter said.
Council will meet next this Wednesday at 3 p.m. in Conference Room A200, at the Nicholas Annex, 815 Nicholas Parkway.
Among the agenda items at the non-voting meeting are a 2021 State Legislative update; a joint discussion with the city’s Budget Review Committee and a sustainability plan for the city’s municipal charter school system.
Meanwhile, the workshop, or Committee of the Whole meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, March 31, has been advanced to Friday, March 26, at 9 a.m. in Council Chambers. City Hall is at 1015 Cultural Park Blvd.
Editor’s Note: This story is updated to reflect that the canal rights-of-way issue will not be on Wednesday’s agenda. City officials expect the issue to come back to Council for discussion in March.
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