Fort Myers council may dump McCollum Hall contractor

Bill Smith, Fort Myers News-Press
·4 min read

The Fort Myers City Council might be asked to fire the contractor hired to redevelop McCollum Hall, an iconic gathering spot for Black residents during the days when strict racial segregation was a fact of life in the city.

The city Community Redevelopment Agency may formally recommend that the city council open a search for a new developer to restore the Dunbar building to the status it held when it was built more than 80 years ago.

In August, the current developer, McCollum Development Associates, was given a Dec. 15 deadline to get work underway to restore the building.

From earlier: McCollum Hall contractor told to get to work or be fired from rehab project

Read more: McCollum Hall project could fall through if developer does not acquire financing by Nov. 15

Related: Murals at Dunbar’s McCollum Hall

But that latest deadline came and went last month with no progress on the project, according to the Community Redevelopment Agency's legal counsel.

McCollum Development previously missed a start-work deadline in May and sent an emergency request for more time at 10:39 p.m. the night before the city council was to meet as the CRA board of commissioners.

The Art Deco-style McCollum Hall used to be home to concerts and businesses in Dunbar. Renovation inside the historic building could start as soon as May.
The Art Deco-style McCollum Hall used to be home to concerts and businesses in Dunbar. Renovation inside the historic building could start as soon as May.

In August the deadline was extended to mid-December.

At a CRA advisory board meeting this month, there was no support for keeping McCollum Development's project alive.

In a presentation, CRA attorney Berk Edwards gave what could be considered the last rites to McCollum Development's role in the project.

Edwards told the board that nothing got done during the four-month grace period the developer was given.

"There has been complete noncompliance with everything that was agreed upon," Edwards said.

He ticked off a list of steps that were expected to have been taken but were not, including such basics as keeping the building permit alive.

The building permit expired months ago, Edwards said.

Dunbar's McCollum Hall used to host concerts with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and more touring acts in the 1940s and 50s.
Dunbar's McCollum Hall used to host concerts with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and more touring acts in the 1940s and 50s.

The board attorney ticked off a list of elements that the CRA needs to see in place to continue the project with the current development team.

"A general contractor would need to be retained, permits would have to be pulled and actual dirt would actually have to be moved on the property," Edwards said. "That did not transpire, the site work utility permit has been canceled because the fee was never paid; the actual building permit expired Nov. 20 of 2020 ... as of now the status of that permit is expired."

City council members, sitting as the CRA board, extended the deadline to Dec. 15 at its August meeting.

Dancers inside McCollum Hall in an undated historic photo. The Dunbar building housed an upstairs dance hall that drew touring acts such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and B.B. King in the 1940s and 50s. The dance hall remained open through the late 1970s.
Dancers inside McCollum Hall in an undated historic photo. The Dunbar building housed an upstairs dance hall that drew touring acts such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and B.B. King in the 1940s and 50s. The dance hall remained open through the late 1970s.

Don Patterson, who has been the lead spokesman on the McCollum Hall project, asked for more time, claiming that the pieces for financing the ambitious rehabilitation work will be falling into place.

"We accepted Dec. 15 (as the deadline) with the idea that we were going to be working with community development," Patterson said, referencing a Department of Housing and Urban Development loan program he said will provide $2.2 million to get the project rolling.

"It fills out all the funding that is needed to make this," Patterson said.

The loan program, called Section 108 loans, are described by online HUD documents as a loan intended to give recipients of funds allocated through its Community Development Block Grant program "the ability to leverage their annual grant allocation to access low-cost, flexible financing for economic development, housing, public facility, and infrastructure projects"

Patterson contends that intensive renovation work can begin once the contract has been approved for the loan.

He expressed confidence in the HUD financing and said that REVA Development, McCollum Development Associates' partner in the project, is willing to make a good-faith investment of $150,000 in site work needed to move the project forward.

Renovation inside Dunbar's McCollum Hall include plans for a downstairs food hall. Developers plan to keep the building's exposed brick and cement floors.
Renovation inside Dunbar's McCollum Hall include plans for a downstairs food hall. Developers plan to keep the building's exposed brick and cement floors.

"We are just around the corner in terms of getting funding in place," Patterson told the advisory board. "If we can't get it in four months, we're done."

CRA Executive Director Michele Hylton-Terry told the advisory board that the HUD loan is to fill in gaps while waiting for permanent financing and "is not intended to be your main source of funding."

The city council will meet as CRA commissioners on Jan. 26 to decide what to do next.

"The next steps would be to determine that we are ready to go forward and put it back out to find a developer that is able to complete the project," Hylton-Terry said. "It will probably not be what was proposed by REVA and Mr. Patterson, however we will have to wait to see what the market brings."

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Fort Myers agency may seek new company for McCollum Hall restoration