We are heading back to 1999 in our blast from the past today! Today, we are taking a look back at Pleasure Key an island in the middle of the Caloosahatchee River between North Fort Myers and Fort Myers which is back in the headlines today!
Back in 1999, we worked with Fowler Construction on a design for this island using a different technique than we usually employ. Our President, Bob Taylor explains, “To get this project I wrote a story about pirates and a deserted island.” His different approach worked and he brought that idea of telling a story through design into the process of this project. He took an idea from someone you may know of, Walt Disney, who practiced this type of sketching with his theme park, Imagineering.
To use Imagineering in this process, we assembled the developers, clients, and owner to talk through their ideas of what they wanted to construct on this island. As they were having these conversations, we brought in an artist to sketch their ideas, in the moment. This was the way that Walt Disney compiled the ideas for his theme parks, he worked with designers to create Cinderella’s Castle or Space Mountain in the same way. Sadly, Pleasure Key never came to fruition and the project was abandoned in the early 2000’s and the island was sold in 2009 to another development group. Fondly, we remember the out of the box thinking that came from this project in 1999 and you can see the sketches of some of the structures in this article.
If you would like to read the News-Press article about the island being sold, it is attached here.
