Lee commissioners get generous with affordable housing and conservation

As the year comes to an end, Lee County leaders look to buy 30 acres for conservation and give out $5 million in grants.

By Louis Llovio
| 5:45 p.m. December 21, 2023
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Lee County in August 2020 approved a purchase of 193.82 acres on Four Mile Cove Parkway, Cape Coral, adjacent to Four Mile Cove Ecological Park, pictured here.

Charlotte–Lee–Collier

You’re going to be hard pressed to find anyone calling the Lee County commissioners Grinch this holiday season, a feat not often accomplished by politicians.

At the final full commission meeting of the year earlier this month, commissioners voted to begin work on purchasing five pieces of land totaling 30 acres in order to set them aside for conservation, and it awarded four local organizations more than $5 million for affordable housing programs.

Four of the properties are 5-acre infill parcels in the southeast Lee and within Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed. The fifth is 10 acres on Pine Island, southwest of the Little Pine Island Mitigation Area and next to Pine Island Flatwoods Bayside, which is east of Stringfellow Road.