Wedding venue in Blue Ridge, GA for couples in Cape Coral, FL

Keep Lee County Beautiful Inc. recently held its second annual Environmental Stewardship Awards Breakfast at the Riverside Community Center in Fort Myers. The packed event included community members and businesses celebrating their efforts to make a positive impact on the environment.

The mission of Keep Lee County Beautiful is to inspire, educate and engage the Lee County community in improving, beautifying and protecting our environment. The year, 2023, began like no other with a high demand of cleanups in Lee County’s recovery phase from Hurricane Ian. Keep Lee County Beautiful held events across the county removing 85,769 pounds of trash and debris from the environment and 145 trees planted to help reestablish the lost tree canopy. Keep Lee County Beautiful held 179 community cleanups, worked with 3,173 volunteers who dedicated 9,538.50 hours. They also had 30 outreach events educating 6,050 individuals.

The awards breakfast recognized the following groups, individuals and businesses for their environmental stewardship and action which helped make the work of KLCB possible.

The 2023 Environmental Stewardship Award Winners are:

• Outstanding Adoption Group – Julie Yellig

• Community Partner – Nancy Macphee from the Lee County Visitors & Convention Bureau

• Youth Engagement Partner – Susie Hassett from the Lee County School District

• Outstanding Site Captain – Fort Myers Beach Community Foundation

• Business Partner – Beach Talk Radio

• Marine Debris Improvement – Mike Hammond from the Great Calusa Blueway

• Community Champion – Jacki Liszak from the Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce

• Volunteer of the Year – Allen and Chery Day

The 2023 Environmental Stewardship Finalists are:

• Outstanding Adoption Group – The Chouinard Family, Phil Houican

• Community Partner – Cape Coral Code Enforcement, Tunaskin Aquatic Apparel

• Youth Engagement Partner – Florida Gulf Coast University, Lee County N.W. Regional Library

• Outstanding Site Captain – Dave Fox, Harry Phillips

• Business Partner – Waste Pro, College Hunks Hauling Junk

• Marine Debris Improvement – Salty Sam’s Marina, Sarah Burnsed

• Community Champion – Crowther Roofing, Lee County Sheriff’s Office

• Volunteer of the Year – Tami Lupe, Lee Ehrlich

About Keep Lee County Beautiful Inc.

Keep Lee County Beautiful, Inc., established in 1989, is the county’s largest volunteer-based community action and education organization. This local nonprofit forms public-private partnerships and programs that engage individuals to take greater responsibility for improving their community environments. For more information, call 239-334-3488 or visit klcb.org.

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The walls of the large Art Gallery in the Cape Coral Library, located at 921 S.W. 39th Terrace, feature 36 watercolors by artist Kay Foote that will be on exhibit through May 2.

Foote grew up in Davenport, Iowa, where her grade school teacher fostered an interest in art by encouraging her to look for the variety of hues and shades in nature, pointing out that even a blade of grass contains many color variations.

“It is because of my early education that I’ve been inspired to paint watercolors depicting the colorful world surrounding me,” Foote said. “My desire is to paint pictures that uplift people’s spirits and bring joy to their lives.”

Foote continued to take as many art courses as possible including her years at Ottawa University in Kansas. After marriage, she took private art lessons in a variety of media while living in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania until family and work responsibilities occupied most of her time. Later, Foote eagerly returned to artistic pursuits by taking classes and workshops from both local and nationally known watercolorists and volunteering at an art gallery in Tullahoma, Tennessee, where she began exhibiting and teaching watercolor classes to adults.

She also started the Kid’s Art Club on Saturday mornings, grateful for the opportunity to cultivate a love for artistic endeavors in others as her childhood teachers had done for her. Since moving to Cape Coral in 2018, Foote became involved with Harbour View Gallery, where she is currently a managing member and the featured artist director.

The three lighted display cases at the Cape Coral Library are filled with unique fused glass created by Lois Johnston. Born in Westchester, N.Y., Johnston studied art at the Propersi School of Art in Greenwich, Connecticut, and various universities in New York. While working in the corporate community, she continued her training with artists specializing in painting, weaving, stained glass and then fused glass after moving to Florida.

Johnston said she feels that her extensive travels here in the U.S. and to many other countries have inspired much of her work. With experience as a commissioned artist known for her portraits, botanicals and stained glass, Johnston has conducted classes in a multitude of art mediums. She’s taught glass fusing classes at AAE Glass, Cape Coral Art League, Fort Myers Art League and Arts of the Inland in LaBelle. She has been teaching fused glass at the Cape Coral Arts Center for 20 years and teaches group as well as private art and craft classes.

Changing exhibits in the Cape Library’s gallery are sponsored by the Friends of the Cape Coral Library and are designed to afford local artists and artisans the opportunity to share their work in this public forum. For information contact Monica Rahman, Art Gallery chairperson, at “mailto:gallery@capefriends.org” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>gallery@capefriends.org or visit capefriends.org. Follow “Friends of the Cape Coral Library” on Facebook.

Your Community

Owners work to ‘blanket’ the community with ‘pizza done right’

A Midwest chain serving up various styles of pizza, subs, wings and more has firmly settled in Cape Coral.

East of Chicago Pizza now has three different locations throughout the Cape, with the first spot opening in 2023, a second in June of ’23 and most recently, a South Cape location welcoming patrons this past January.

Partners Barry Goettenmoeller and Ted Horstman have brought East of Chicago Pizza to spots along Santa Barbara Boulevard, off of Pine Island Road and now off of Southeast 47th Terrace. The Ohio natives both have ties to the national franchise, including a close relationship with its founder.

Goettenmoeller said the idea to bring a slice of home and “pizza done right” to the Cape has been rolling in the dough for a decade.

“We kind of said if it ever happened — East of Chicago has never been in Florida — it’ll be us,” Goettenmoeller said. “We set out about 2 1/2,/3 years ago to set out and do this, and we found some space and decided to do three of them.”

Goettenmoeller, being a real estate broker, wanted to “blanket” the Cape, choosing three sections of the city to serve.

“It’s been great,” Goettenmoeller said of how business has been in the short time of operation. “The response from the community has been amazing. Clearly, Ted and I are pizza lovers, but it’s more than that. We’ve been in this community for more than 20 years, and we’re both heavily involved in the community and want to give back.”

As many Floridian transplants have experienced, finding a pizza pie up to standard is not always the easiest task in the Sunshine State, though things are getting better.

East of Chicago offers six different crust styles (pan, thin, crispy, square, loaded crust and “Authentic Chicago Style”), with fresh ingredients daily. They even offer a cauliflower crust to help meet an individual’s dietary restrictions.

“Finding good pizza down here has been a challenge over the years,” Goettenmoeller said. “We have a great product, and our consistency is awesome. If you haven’t heard of East of Chicago Pizza, you will soon.”

What is really the key though, Goettenmoeller said, is the water.

“The water in South Florida is a challenge,” he said. “So we’ve put a lot into our water filtration to get that right.

“And what I would say is the quality of our ingredients is what separates us. And the process. Again, part of that is the water filtration to make the right dough. You have to have the right stuff. It all starts with water. And we cut all of our fresh vegetables daily. We make dough every morning. We also have an extensive menu of oven baked wings and subs.”

If you’re not in the mood to build-your-own pie or delve into a specialty pizza, East of Chicago has you covered. They offer no-crusts pizza bowls, six different salad options, a myriad of submarine sandwich choices, unique appetizer-style bites and eight different wing styles from plain to hot.

The new-to-Florida venture has already been involved in community events such as the city’s Bike Night, with plans to be a vendor at various events moving forward.

The partners are also excited to bring the franchise to a fast-growing city like Cape Coral.

“Ted and I, and our families, have been here for so many years. We call the Cape home,” Goettenmoeller said. “We’ve been involved in the community and charitable events over the years, and we hope to continue that. We’re especially excited about our South Cape location.”

The East of Chicago Pizza locations at 1306 Santa Barbara Blvd., Suite 7, and 1260 N.E. 8th St., Suite 8, are for delivery and carry-out. The newest location in the South Cape at 4706 S.E. 9th Place is equipped with indoor seating.

For more information, a full menu and to even place an order, visit eastofchicago.com.

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PAC?needs 21,000-plus ballots to get referendum on the ballot; just over 5,000 collected by volunteers thus far

The Cape Coral Preservation PAC, although mighty with volunteers, still has many more signatures to collect before April 24 to have their Save Jaycee Park initiative appear on the upcoming election ballot.

According to their website, Cape Coral Preservation PAC is sponsoring the initiative to put Jaycee Park on the ballot, which would force the Cape Coral City Council to “maintain the current character of the park as a natural green space and neighborhood park.”

“We have a long way to go, but things are going well,” said Clare Dooley, a member of the Cape Coral Preservation PAC. “People are very excited when we ask them to sign the petition, when we ask them to save the park.”

There are more than 5,000 signatures collected, quite a few shy of the more than 21,000 signatures needed.

They need to receive the signatures of 15% of the city’s registered voters as of the last election.

“I just want to say I really appreciate all of our volunteers; they are doing great work. This initiative process is intentionally very difficult, but we are trying our best to meet the signature requirement and we still have plenty of time to get it done. So, we just would like everybody who cares about the park to help us out,” she said.

The bipartisan group is about halfway through the 90 days to collect the required signatures.

“We are way behind, but we are definitely making up ground. We are really ramping up right now. We have more volunteers than we did at the beginning. Volunteers are putting in more hours,” Dooley said.

She said they are still in need of more volunteers to help the cause.

“Anyone who would like to help us save the park from commercialization, they can sign up at www.ccppac.com,” Dooley said.

The volunteers are out every day collecting signatures at such places as the library, Jaycee Park, the post office, DMV and recently, Farmer Joe’s.

“Farmer Joe’s has graciously allowed us to collect petitions there and we have done really well there,” Dooley said. “Almost everyone we ask will sign the petition. Most people agree with us that it is a great park, and they don’t want to see it destroyed.”

In addition, she said they are trying to hit every major public event by having volunteers with clipboards in hand.

“The message is Jaycee Park is a beautiful natural green space that people from all over the city love. It’s one of the few places you can go, enjoy nature, have a picnic by the river and just enjoy the natural beauty of the park. There are lots of places in the city where there are food trucks, bars, and restaurants. We don’t need more of that if it means destroying the tranquility of Jaycee Park,” Dooley said.

Cape News

The impacts of Hurricane Ian, which slammed Southwest Florida on Sept. 23, 2022, have left many still living in the storm’s aftermath.

The wreckage and the rebuilding process to return to normalcy has been a struggle for many, especially in the Courtyards of Cape Coral South.

“It definitely had a huge impact on us,” said Barbara Clark, a neighbor. The whole community had to pick up and leave, stick all of your belongings into a Pod, if you could afford a Pod, put them in storage elsewhere.”

The Courtyards of Cape Coral South is a residential community with 132 residents, the majority of whom are seniors.

Since the storm, 18 months later, that number has subsided to 82. Meanwhile, 50 people still haven’t returned home due to Ian’s destruction of their property.

“We still have 50 residents homeless or living with family or living on the couches of friends,” said Janet Correa, a neighbor. Fifty people need to come home.”

Many residents in that community say they feel neglected as many still wait for insurance claims to come in.

“It’s definitely had an impact,” said Heather Craig, a neighbor. “I think a lot of people are feeling frustrated, not only because of the situation but just the loss of control.”

Instead of waiting for governmental assistance to come, Heather, Janet and Barbara came up with the idea to start a community fundraiser.

“These ladies came up with a fundraiser idea. I think it puts the control and the positive energy back into the community and allows people to be able to reach out and help themselves and help their neighbors,” said Craig.

To help residents alleviate the struggles of rebuilding from Ian, the fundraiser will help to restore the leftover damage and, most importantly, help the 50 other residents get back home.

“When the devastation hit, and the realization that the insurance is just not going to cover it, the thought is how are they going to pay for it,” said Correa. “I just decided that we were going to do a yard sale and fundraiser. It’s our goal to let everyone know that Southwest Florida is still devastated and are still rebuilding.”

The Courtyard of Cape Coral Bingo Fundraiser will be taking place this Saturday at 3 p.m.

All the proceeds will go towards rebuilding the clubhouse. Any money left over will go back into the community.