Almost 20 years have passed since the last riverfront condominium project rose along the Caloosahatchee River in Fort Myers.
That appears set to change, as the investors behind One, a luxury condominium project, officially broke ground Feb. 7 on a vacant lot at 2581-2585 First St., adjacent to what’s known as The Heitman House. In the meantime, a sales office for the project that is about 30% sold is located at 2214 First St., just across the street from Ford’s Garage.
One will be 21 stories with 34 units and luxury amenities, with units starting at about $1.25 million in price and ranging up to $5.5 million for a penthouse suite.
“What a wonderful location,” said Eduardo Caballero, owner of Jaxi CMD, which has owned the lot since 2016. His other company, Jaxi Construction, will be the contractor. “You can see it all the way around. Beautiful weather, water, nice view. Great people. What else do you want to have?”
Caballero and Jaxi wanted to have a sales team with a national platform and hired real estate broker Ryan Serhant’s Serhant, which has a tagline “reimagining real estate today for the neighborhoods of tomorrow.”
Serhant, a realty TV star, appears in “Million Dollar Listing” on Bravo and “Owning Manhattan” on Netflix. He attended the groundbreaking in Fort Myers wearing a designer, dusty pink-colored sport coat and slacks over a black T-shirt. He explained why the long-delayed One is finally getting ready to break ground.
“You had the Great Recession,” Serhant said. “You had the financial crisis of 2008. It set real estate markets back by about 10 years.”
By the time the market in Fort Myers recovered, the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, Serhant said. But in 2021, a mass migration to the region also began, which boosted the timetable of One.
“COVID-19 changed it all into both need and want purchases,” Serhant said. “And you have to wait for certain markets, like Naples, like Miami, like Palm Beach, to get too expensive, to then provide relative value to markets like this.”
Jaxi recently completed Botanika, a low-rise, three-building condo in Bonita Springs with 75 units, and Majestic Palms in Iona, which has 44 units.
Everything’s relative in value, Serhant said of what is expected to be a $40 million construction project. That $40 million price for 34 units would fetch only one or two units in some parts of Manhattan.
One will give buyers a chance to get top-floor prices in Fort Myers that would be bottom floor units in other markets, Serhant said.
“I just sold a three bedroom in New York City on Central Park South for $11 million dollars — per bedroom,” Serhant said. “Our blended prices per square foot are, let’s say, $850 dollars. The penthouse here, which is about $5.5 million that we’re actively marketing right now, that’s $30 million dollars in Naples, 40 minutes to the south. It’s $50 million dollars in Miami.”
