It means I’m going to be losing $50,000 a year" that he'd otherwise earn. “When the season comes, I’d be working five or six days a week - but it doesn’t look like we’ll have a season this year. It was still the slow season when the hurricane hit, but the busy times for seafood restaurants and fishing excursions were just ahead. “We’re about eight days behind on rent and I've been thinking about calling family for a loan.” I'm doing odd jobs - 50 bucks here, a 100 hundred bucks there,” he said. “Right now, we’re selling stuff, selling stuff we don’t need. With a family to support, including two young children, fisherman Jake Luke can't afford not to be with a job. The study partly blames inflation for that downturn. Tourist tax revenues were down 2% for the region, with Lee County down 4%. However, the number of airport passengers in southwest Florida had already fallen in July 2022, slumping 13% from a year before, according to an economic study of the region by Florida Gulf Coast University. In Fort Myers, the sector added 2,700 new jobs in May over the same month the year before. The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity reported that unemployment in the region had continued to fall since last summer, as the economy rebounded from COVID - with the biggest growth in the leisure and hospitality industries. Census Bureau figures show that more than 60% of the businesses have less than five employees. “That's where our business comes from," Maguire said.Įven before the storm, there were mixed economic signs for Fort Myers and the rest of Lee County, where U.S. Tourists lift the region's economy during winter as do snowbirds with vacation homes to escape the chill in the upper Midwest, the Northeast and Canada. The start of snow crab season in mid-October would usher in brisker business. Bars, restaurants and the many mom-and-pop shops that line San Carlos Boulevard, the thoroughfare into Fort Myers Beach, would usually begin filling. Dust and the rancid smell of hardening muck still fill the air.Īs the winter months approach, business would have been picking up. Fisherman’s Wharf, a heavily touristed area, turned into a dusty and surreal scene, with boats capsized far from their usual moorings. Flooding - including tidal surges of more than a dozen feet - inundated shops, bars and restaurants. People that live in the area are not going to be in shape to go to restaurants."įerocious gusts ripped off roofs, collapsed walls and jolted buildings off their foundations. “It will not be the same,” Maguire said, standing outside the Pinchers seafood restaurant in the Fisherman's Wharf area of Fort Myers. The scenes of destruction in southwestern Florida will keep many winter tourists and snowbirds away as well as tasking local residents with rebuilding for months or more, said Michael Maguire, a manager for a group of family-owned restaurants, including a couple on hard-hit Fort Myers Beach. (AP) - Hurricane Ian might have come and gone but it could deliver prolonged blows to the local economy, walloping small businesses heavily dependent on tourists and seasonal residents.
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