Perfect Timing
Right place at right time, Robert MacFarlane’s downtown vision
ome of us have perfect timing. Take, for example, Robert MacFarlane. The land developer arrived in Southwest Florida almost two decades ago, when the business market then in downtown Fort Myers was on life support, as were other older American downtowns. A successful land developer in New York and Dallas, MacFarlane saw in Fort Myers what few others could picture― opportunity. In short order, his firm in 2004 completed the Beau Rivage condo highrise along the Calooshatchee, followed up with others such as the 170-unit St. Tropez and the 160-unit Riviera. The three today are thriving.
Surviving the Great Slump of the modern era, The MacFarlane Group this year completes the remade Campo Felice highrise― a once deserted River District hotel― and then breaks ground on Prima Luce, a two-tower residential highrise on the Caloosahatchee.
Before the largest private investment cycle in modern city history ends, MacFarlane and his partners that include his children will have disbursed hundreds of millions of dollars on land and construction, millions more in payroll and taxes. MacFarlane figures that Campo Felice alone will run $80 million at completion. The 24-story highrise is the former Amtel Marina Hotel, the once pink eyesore that MacFarlane’s company has rebuilt as a senior community.
Always low-key, even MacFarlane seems stunned by the turnaround in downtown Fort Myers, his family’s role in restoring parts of the city. Asked about his vision with so much money at stake, MacFarlane waves off the pursuit of his thinking with “good gravy,” the words summarizing most everything in his world-view.
But others are not as cool. “Robert Mac-
Making Waves is our salute to the residents, businesses and organizations of Southwest Florida’s island coast who make the community special "Robert MacFarlane once told me that he has a great deal of faith in Fort Myers.” —Saeed Kazemi, Fort Myers city manager
Farlane,” says Saeed Kazemi, Fort Myers city manager and the former public works director, “once told me that he has a great deal of faith in Fort Myers, and even during the economic downturn, he kept that faith [in the city].”
The question, then, is why MacFarlane and a few builders, lenders and investors have bet so heavily on Fort Myers, when cities such as Sarasota, for instance, last year processed more than $400 million in new commercial construction permits.
Again, perhaps, it’s timing. As MacFarlane and the others grew, spectacular River District events such as Art Walk/Music Walk, the refurbished Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center, twodozen restaurants, other venues materialized. And Fort Myers in that period was handed millions in federal stimulus money when the president’s brother was Florida’s governor. Yet you wonder if these wonderful things would have begun without a pioneer risk-taker such as a Robert MacFarlane.
The answers circle back to how certain of us are wired. MacFarlane, now in his 70s, endured and survived extreme hardship. He lived with an aunt in a $4.25 per week, cold-water flat near icy Boston, for instance. That kind of poverty builds or breaks you. Certainly worth millions, MacFarlane is still driven, that there are bills to be paid, or “promises to keep,” he says, quoting Frost. “I’m more of a finance company now,” he adds, alluding to how modern builders create their visions.
Today, MacFarlane works from an office on First Street in the River District. The second-floor conference room is awash in architectural renderings of his many projects, staff handing out bottled water or slick marketing folders. Visitors are sometimes greeted by a daughter, Rebekah MacFarlane Barney, The MacFarlane Group’s chief operating officer. In interviews, the elder MacFarlane looks to her for cost specifics. You see that he places great trust in her, which she returns with acute competency. Other of his children are involved in the business, he says, shifting the subject by noting that the governing of Fort Myers has been controversy-free from the beginning of his time here―disruptions, he has learned over the decades, cost money. “God willing, that continues,” he says of the smooth run in downtown Fort Myers. Craig Garrett is Group Editor-in-Chief for TOTI Media.