December 2007 Update:
Well if your reading this I am sure you are interested in when we are opening. As of now we are not open, but I have made the move to work out here full time. Good for cable park progress, tough to live on zero income. Anyway, enough complaining. Here is where we stand. The parking lot is done, the office is done, the new Rixen equipment is here, the excavation is done, all permits are approved, and we just finished planing 250 trees, 60 shrubs, and 4,200 plants. We are currently in the process of building the anchors, and going through inspections. We have run into a few tough issues through the construction, such as unexpected handicapped accessiblity issues to the building, and keeping the new plantings irrigated in a drought. I swear sometimes you can overplan, or think you have every detail nailed down, until you go to build it and find some obscure code or unexpected condition. The good news is there is not much left to do. We are hoping to have the anchors complete by the end of December, and will hopefully get a start on the docks in late december. If all goes as planned we should have the Rixen team here in January and open in February. I should be able to update this site more often now so please check back for new updates, and email me with any questions. My new email address is listed on the home page.
March 2007 Update:
Sorry again for the lack of updates. Please never underestimate the amount of work that it takes to build a cable park. It takes over your life for years. Anyway, we have been moving along through permitting and now construction phases of this project. Most of our permits are now approved. I think we have about 25 different ones to date and maybe 5 - 10 to go. In this area it seems you need a permit for everything. With those permits we have excavated two large pennisulas from our existing lake, resloped about 80% of our shoreline, planted (93) 15 -35' tall trees, seeded the shoreline, mulched the trees, watered the trees to no end, removed some trees in our parking area, brought in 35 dump trucks of fill dirt, another 25 loads of limerock, graded our stormwater detention areas, installed our stormwater pipes, built the mitered end sections, installed erosion protection features, forrmed and poured about 150' of 5 wide sidewalk, installed the septic system, run the potable water line and stubbed it out at the building location, built our dumpster pad and block walls surrouding it, compacted and rolled our parking lot, surveyed in buoys for the future tower locations, and we are currently taking inventory of the parts from the used cable system we purchased. Over the next few months we will doing the final sloping work on the shorelines, working on more permits, hopefully installing the cable tower anchors, paving our parking lot, building the starting dock, installing the building and handicap ramps, and doing the final landscaping. Our hope is, as always, to open as soon as possible and it is now looking like we might pull it off by fall 2007. I appreciate all the interest I have been recieving by email and best of luck to all those out there trying to start their own cable park ventures. Please check back for future updates.
February 2006 Update:
I apologize that we haven't updated the site and that the opening date listed before has come and gone. Building the cable park has been an extremely difficult and time-consuming task. If you are thinking about trying it, good luck and be prepared. As of February 2006 we have successfully completed our zoning requirement, which allows the commercial outdoor recreational use on AG-2 land. We have disassembled a used cable system and moved in to North Fort Myers, FL. We have County, FDEP Permits, and SFWMD approval to excavate, re-grade, and fill our lake shoreline. With those permits and approvals we are required to plant 204 (yes…. two hundred and four) 6' tall native trees and about 4,000 littoral plants. We are just about complete preparing the permit applications for the building, parking lot, septic tank and drain field, landscaping, irrigation system, storm water management system, and storm water erosion and pollution prevention plan. We have started work on the shorelines, and we are battling an issue with storm water pretreatment requirements. Once we have permit approval for the building, bathrooms, and parking area, we will move forward with the final permits for the cable system installation and docks. During that permit review we will be completing the remaining work on the shorelines of the lake. At this point it is too difficult to determine an opening date. Please email me any questions or comments.
