Your guide to Lee County neighborhoods: Lehigh to Sanibel

LEHIGH

From Mike Canal in the north to Hendry County in the east; Immokalee Road in the west extending south, from Buckingham Road to Hendry County.

Subdivided by the Lehigh Corpora-tion nearly 50 years ago, Lehigh is a colorful tapestry of post-1950s Americana, with an international mix of residents and Midwesterners. Homes built circa 1960 suggest a Leave-It-to-Beaver society, and one, designed exclusively for the Lehigh Acres Corporation president, resembles the recessed living room set of a Dean Martin-Frank Sinatra movie. Liberace stayed and played in the house, which is now restored.

The median age is 38, according to the Lehigh Chamber of Commerce, and younger first-time homebuyers are boosting business. Demographers predict that in 15 or 20 years the 100 square miles of Lehigh will be as populous as contemporary Cape Coral. Backing that claim is an explosion in lot sales, according to Century 21 Town & Country's Ray Bruneel, who has closed on 225 by fall of 2004. "We hadn't seen much of an increase in value for 20 years, then prices started doubling, tripling, even quadrupling in some cases," says Bruneel. Expect to pay $24,000 for a quarter-acre lot and $28,000 to $34,000 per half acre.

Gated communities have been slow to take off in Lehigh, where the average new home is priced from $150,000. Lakefront homes close to Gateway can occasionally be found for $350,000 to $390,000. We're very affordable," Bruneel says. "That's what brings people here, but houses are getting harder to find." Lehigh offers thousands of single-family homes built during the past four decades on a variety of lot sizes, and a few million-dollar estates exist.

But Lehigh has some problems. Miles of uninhabited properties on and off Lee Boulevard and the Able Canal (roughly bisecting Lehigh from east to west) are unmarked and in many cases for sale, crisscrossed by roads platted years ago and now weedy and overgrown. Near Harn's Marsh and the junction of the Orange River in northwest Lehigh, water-control problems have caused the East Lee County Water Control District to tax lot owners for more than the price they paid for their properties. But land values have been increasing.

PINE ISLAND

An island just 17 miles long by two to four miles wide, Pine Island has several distinct personalities, from the artsy-meets-fishing town of Matlacha on Little Pine Island to the quiet grace of Bokeelia on its northern tip and the more populated St. James City at its southern point. Many homes and yards on the island suffered damage from last summer's Hurricane Charley, but that hasn't dimmed the island's growing cachet with homebuyers.

Matlacha

Matlacha, home of the "fishingest bridge in the world," has a fishy past, indeed. Its origins can be traced to squatters and indirectly to Commissioner Harry Stringfellow, who grew tired of his three-day-by-boat excursions to attend monthly commission meetings, and, according to legend, insisted that a drawbridge be built. The squatters arrived soon after, building fishing camps along Pine Island Road. With Southwest Pine Island Road in their tiny front yards and back bay waters practically lapping at their back doors, these fishing shacks now command prime prices. Considered historic gems, many homes have been renovated since an art movement took hold in the late 1980s, washing the town in tropical rainbow hues of banana, mango, pink grapefruit and papaya. Everything's a canvas, including telephone poles, which now sport whimsical designs of fish, alligators and flowers.

Punctuated with a handful of galleries, bait and tackle shops, warehouses and restaurants where the catch of the day is always just caught, Matlacha is still very much a fishing town. On the north side of Pine Island Road, small villages of trailer parks are set against a portion of the island's fishing fleet moored in neighboring canals. Matlacha won its 15 minutes of fame as the indirect inspiration for Elvis Presley's Follow That Dream, loosely based on the 1959 book Pioneer, Go Home, penned by part-time Fort Myers resident Richard Powell. "We like to think of ourselves as the old Northern Exposure of the south," says realtor Marty Yeatter of Gold Key Properties. "It's like going back in time 30 years or so. We still have the ambience of a fishing village." Buyers, says Yeatter, will find small getaway homes and teardowns priced from $275,000, and move-in-ready homes with views of Charlotte Harbor priced above $2 million. "We're starting to see more and more year-round residents," says Yeatter. One of the area's three mobile-home parks is being con-verted into upscale condos, limited by zoning to just two stories over parking. Livable resale homes, she says, now start at $400,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath home with 1,200 square feet.

Pineland/Bokeelia

The three-point convergence of Pine Island and Stringfellow roads is Pineland, home of one of the country's smallest post offices, a working novelist (Randy Wayne White), marina, Bible college, marine research institute and a unique Indian archaeological site. Visitors can pull into a six-car parking lot, stand on the beach and gaze westward across Pine Island Sound, imagining what the Calusa Indians saw centuries earlier, without the signs of development on the east shore of Captiva Island four miles away.

Few properties exist for sale on the mangrove-lined shores (Pine Island has no real beaches), but virtually everything is near the waterline. Homes along the island's sole golf course, Alden Pines, can run from $250,000 to $750,000. Elsewhere, the variety is enormous-dirt roads crisscross the off-water east side of the island, and prices for houses on several acres there are still in the $250,000 to $500,000 range. Condominiums and less expensive stilt houses can be had for $150,000 to $200,000. Prices in Charlotte Shores, located halfway between Pineland and Bokeelia north on Stringfellow, have nearly tripled in the past four years, to $359,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath home.

Bokeelia, the northern tip of the island, is a quaint little area with a handful of buildings-a local fish estaurant, galleries and a smattering of private homes, including an historic home converted into a bed and breakfast. "It's so picturesque," says realtor Ed Brown, himself a resident. "You couldn't be any farther from Fort Myers and still be in Lee County." White picket fences and trellises pose in front of whitewashed homes adorned with tin roofs, widow walks and wraparound screened-in porches. In Bokeelia, you'll see a cute A-frame home with silk flowers wrapped around its porch railings cozied up to a newer stilt home or neighboring an older clapboard building, built during the days when stone was used to build fireplaces.

Bokeelia's port boasts several fishing piers where shallower waters provide the ideal haven for snook, trout and grouper. Two plastic sharks hang from pilings awaiting posers and picture taking. Homes seem to sit right on the water, including a recent $7.6 million listing-a 3,842-square-foot home right on Charlotte Harbor.

St. James City

Stringfellow Road south from Pine Island Road to St. James City.

About two-thirds of Pine Island's inhabitants live in St. James City, arrived at via an 8.5-mile due-south direction on Stringfellow and past Elks, Moose and fisherman's clubs and co-ops. Mangroves are now off-limits to developers and have affected the price and possibility of waterfront homebuilding. But a number of newer homes near water offer long boardwalks cut through the mangroves to small docks. Buyers can live in St. James City for as little as $87,900, the going rate for a mobile home and homesite. Single-family homes cover the spread from the $220,000s on a non-water lot to the more than $1 million posted by four fall listings. "St. James City has more availability of homes, so consequently prices are varied," says Yeatter. The area also hosts a gated community-the 15-homesite Galt Island, offering homes priced in the $2 million range (when they're on the market) and linked to the island via a causeway. St. James City also has condos priced from the $310,000 (priced around $122,000 in 2000).

NORTH FORT MYERS

The north shore of the Caloosahatchee River from west of Hancock Bridge Parkway eastward to U.S. 31 (Arcadia Road); and from the river north to Del Prado Boulevard in the east, and to the Charlotte County line as far west as U.S. 31.

As development moves north out of downtown Fort Myers, developers are beginning to assemble infill communities in where else, North Fort Myers, where fields and pastures are giving way to rooftops and older neighborhoods-miles of small, aging homes off U.S. 41 (North Cleveland Avenue)-find themselves surrounded by upscale communities. Four-H fairs, small country stores and room to roam can still be found on relatively remote roads. A several-thousand-acre stretch of the Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management Area pushes into Lee from Charlotte County. On Nalle Grade Road, some homes command prices of $800,000 to $900,000.

Developers have recently introduced newer communities such as Button-wood Harbor, Waterway Estates and Crane's Landing. Colonial Homes is parlaying its success in Estero's Colonial Oaks to Moody River Estates, a 310-acre gated community that broke ground in the summer of 2004 along the Caloosahatchee River. And Baltimore-based Continental Realty Corp. plans to build Hancock Harbour & Yacht Club, a two-building complex offering 168 condos, a 12,000-square-foot clubhouse and 50-slip marina. Located next to the Key West-y Hurricane Harry's many of the condos, including eight 4,000-square-foot penthouses, will overlook the twinkle of a growing downtown Fort Myers skyline. "We saw Fort Myers as an emerging market with a demand for high-end, quality homes," says Continental's vice president of development Kemp Demming.

En route to Cape Coral, Martins-Somrak Corp. is developing Vita Serena, a new neighborhood of just six 1.3-acre-plus waterfront homesites. Buyers are promised remote-controlled entry into each home and access to the Caloosahatchee River via canal. The community is located off Orange Grove Boulevard on Pangola Road, with homesites priced from the $400,000s. Pockets of friendly neighborhoods are also located on nearby Bayshore/Pine Island Road as it travels east to Cape Coral.

SAN CARLOS PARK, THREE OAKS

From Alico Road south to Estero Parkway near Estero, between U.S. 41 and I-75.

San Carlos Park is one of a handful of Lee County neighborhoods still priced for first-time homebuyers. But prices are rising. Convenient to I-75, and therefore easily accessible to Naples and Fort Myers, San Carlos Park has seen prices more than triple since Estero Bay Realty's Brown landed here in 1990. Historically mostly a working-class neighborhood of families, with some white-collar residents, San Carlos Park offers homes priced from just shy of $100,000 to more than $200,000. "You can still get a three-bedroom, two-bath for $135,000 and up," says Brown. "But that depends on the age, location and square footage, mostly under 1,400 square feet."

Offering just a smattering of buildable lots that have risen in price from $3,000 to nearly $40,000 in recent years, San Carlos has continued to boom despite its lack of deed restrictions and central water and sewer services. Increasing prices are bound to continue with a proposed new mall nearby at Alico Road and Interstate 75 and the neighborhood's first $1 million home, listed by Donna Mason of ReMax Realty Group in Fort Myers.

Neighboring, newer areas like Three Oaks and its various neighborhoods enjoy central water and sewer services and deed restrictions, factors that have helped drive prices for newly built homes over $400,000 and have pumped up floor plans to two stories and four and five bedrooms. They also benefit from their proximity to the 36-acre Three Oaks Park, plus neighborhood-only amenities that come with association dues.

"Homes in Three Oaks usually have a zero-lot line," says Brown. "Those who don't want a zero-lot line are buying in San Carlos Park." Lower-priced townhomes, offered at around $200,000, are being purchased by parents of students at nearby Florida Gulf Coast University.

Shannon Pines, tucked between San Carlos Park and Three Oaks, is a cul-de-sac neighborhood of 30 Mastercraft Homes-built dwellings priced from around the $250,000s. Calusa Trace, on the northern fringe off Alico, offers 130 sites and custom-built homes.

The southern boundary of San Carlos, Estero Parkway, linking Three Oaks Parkway to U.S. 41, has undergone a personality split of its own-a name change and the conversion of mostly agrarian acreage to several new gated communities (Cascades and Belle Lago), the oldest (Rookery Point) being just five years old. Three Oaks Parkway is also undergoing radical change, with the multifamily villa homes of Villagio and and Copper Oaks next door. Future plans for the corner also call for a flyover-a bridge over Interstate 75 connecting Estero Parkway to Ben Hill Griffin east of the interstate. Estero Parkway welcomes another new community in 2005-Toll Brothers' The Reserve, featuring 492 single-family homes with prices starting at $221,975-located next to the developer's Belle Lago, just two years old this May and already well developed.