- February 12, 2026
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On Sept. 28, 2022, the Allegro condominium building in Naples suffered the same fate of hundreds, if not thousands, of properties along Southwest Florida’s coast.
That’s the day Hurricane Ian struck, bringing unimaginable destruction to the area, practically wiping out entire communities with huge winds and feet of flooding.
The Allegro — its front faces the Gulf, its back faces the Inner Doctor Bay — took on 38 inches of water.
The 14-story condo tower on on Gulf Shore Boulevard, built in 1981, was decimated, says Joni Cline, general manager of the Allegro Condominium Association. It lost its generator, fire panel, electrical panel, all the electrical components on the ground floor, affecting the entire building. Every piece of drywall and flooring had to be replaced.
The community has invested more than $15 million into the building since the hurricane.
But the hurricane did something else. It gave Cline a mission.
She would be damned if her building suffered such damage again. Her focus since the storm has been to do “all that I can to help protect my owners. It is my greatest priority.”
For nearly two years, Cline and the association’s board have been looking at flood mitigation systems that could help protect the building given the likely possibility more storms like Ian hit the region.
What it decided on about a year ago was to install a nine foot AquaFence.
AquaFence, according to the company, “is a modular, deployable flood protection system designed for rapid installation without heavy machinery.”
The system is made up of interlocking panels that surround an entire property to create “a strong and reliable barrier that diverts floodwaters away from critical areas.” Using the pressure from the rising water, the fence becomes stronger as the water rises.
Tampa General Hospital, which sits right on the water just outside downtown Tampa, famously deployed its AquaFence ahead of Hurricane Helene in 2023.
AquaFence Chief Revenue Officer Patrik Hansson says that after Hurricanes Milton and Helene, and the publicity generated by Tampa General’s usage, the company began to see a lot of interest from entities up and down Florida’s West Coast.
In response, the company, based in Norway, opened an office in Tampa in May 2025.
Among those showing an interest was Cline at Allegro.
Cline spent several months after the renovation work on the building was mostly completed researching flood mitigation products. She checked reviews and spoke to companies but “we always came up short.”
The issue was that what she found in the marketplace had to be bolted to the building, which she feared would create cracks during a massive flood event and end up “creating havoc.” Plus, the reality is Allegro was nearly 45 years old.
“The last thing we wanted to do was create more damage by drilling holes in a building that certainly already has fissures and elements in it, as every building does, whether it's built last month or whether it's built in 1981,” she says.
The issue with systems attached to a building, says Hansson, is that they can impede the flow of water and block flood vents, deteriorating the structure of a building.
While Hansson sells a competing product, the National Institute of Building Sciences’ Whole Building Design Guide does recommend that anyone planning to “incorporate flood shields, panels, doors or gates into a building design” is advised to consult with engineers who have experience with the products.
“As a general rule, flood shields, panels, doors and gates should not be attached to building windows, glazing or doors,” the guide says. “Given the potential for large flood loads, they should be attached to exterior walls or the structural frame.”
A full perimeter barrier engineered to encompass the entirety of the building without drilling into the building made sense to Cline.
The Allegro residents agreed.
With a decision made to go with an AquaFence, which comes with a price tag at “just a little bit over a million dollars,” Cline and the board at Allegro applied to the city for permission to install it.
And that created an obstacle of its own.
The City of Naples was initially reluctant to grant the permits needed, Cline and Hansson say. An AquaFence is something no one in the city had seen before, so there were concerns, they say. (A city of Naples spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)
They were pioneers, says Cline. Allegro pushed back, using engineering to make its case, along with months of “relentless communication” with every level of city government.
AquaFence, meanwhile, sensing there may be issues with other localities, stopped its sales push and began working with the city to create a blueprint for future projects. Allegro became a pilot of sorts.
“Their engineer worked with our engineer, our project managers, together with the building department, the planning department, the fire department, to figure out everything, from anchoring to egress to everything,” says Hansson.
Another of the city’s arguments, says Cline, was the aesthetics of the fence. This is Naples after all.
Her response: Was a 14-foot wall of debris — landscaping, uprooted city signs, transformers as well as hundreds of high-end vehicles washed up from condo parking garages onto Gulf Shore Boulevard — that took weeks to remove preferable?
The permits were approved earlier this year and work is underway installing the AquaFence at the Allegro
Cline says it will be ready to be deployed by June 1, the first day of Hurricane season, remaining hidden and unseen until a storm is predicted to be heading for Southwest Florida.
As for Cline herself, her personal mission was to prove she could make a difference — not just for the association and Allegro’s owners who went through so much after Ian, but for any other building looking to protect itself from flooding.
It’s Cline’s hope, she says, that the efforts made to win the approval will help establish an easier path for others.
