The Historic District and FDOT update meeting for Pine Island Road through Matlacha, held 11:00 a.m., Wednesday, May 3rd at the Lee County Administration Building in downtown Ft. Myers.

The various post-disaster concerns of the Matlacha businesses and residents were addressed. Maintaining the "historic" designation was a concern for some. Many answers to these were dependent upon future decisions yet to be determined by other State or Federal departments and agencies.

However, it was categorically stated that there are "no plans to widen the road through Matlacha." Presumably, there are also no planned meetings to the address the issue. There IS some consideration for bike/pedestrian path which would further create additional stress on the through traffic.

The main road through Matlacha is essentially fill dirt anyway, and more fill dirt was added and more to come for rebuilding and repairing the road. Eventually, some buildings, maybe all, will require some amount of relocation & elevation, and some of these are being advertised as million dollar properties, therefore, some consideration for road widening now would seem prudent.

ANY consideration for mitigating stranglehold on Matlacha traffic pass through for the "after Ian" 12,000+ mainline Pine Island residents, or at least do nothing that would lock in this bottleneck for future planning would seem to be obvious and, only for the near future, cost effective.