For more than a year, a construction lift sat on the only disability parking spot on Hendry Street between First and Main streets in downtown Fort Myers, raising concerns among local businesses and .
The lift was originally permitted in May 2024 for building renovations, but after the permit expired in June, the city required the building’s owner to move it.
Now, the owner wants it back, with some changes, so he can continue working on a restoration project.
Raimond Aulen, owner of the historic Graystone Hotel property, proposes relocating the disability spot elsewhere on the street, converting the current space into a regular parking spot. That way, if he were to park construction equipment on it again, it wouldn’t take a spot away from people with disabilities.
“We have to negotiate something with the city, because we can’t work on the front of the building unless we have access to the front of the building,” explained Aulen. “And the handicapped spot that’s there is, like, one of the few handicapped spots that are available in the whole area.”
Aulen’s goal is to restore the Greystone Hotel, which he said has been neglected since the 1970s. It’s a multimillion-dollar project years in the making.
“I don’t think it’s been occupied since probably the early 70s,” explained Aulen. “So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”
The exterior requires significant attention.
“There are bricks that need to be repointed. There’s blocks with cracks in them. There’s just a lot of the wood rot on the historic windows,” Aulen said.
Inside, the restoration work is extensive, too.
“Flooring has to be done. The walls have to be redone. All the plaster it needs to be redone,” said Aulen.
Aulen doesn’t just want to fix the place up; he wants to restore the over-100-year-old building with historical accuracy, which has been a lengthy process.
“It’s like restoring an old classic car,” he said. “You know, you gotta do all the prep work. Once you get the prep work done, then you can get in there and paint the thing, and then all of a sudden, overnight, it looks like something.”
Aulen said he has run into several roadblocks, from permitting issues to losing his original crew and the recent hurricanes.
“It’s a challenging project to, not only just to get it done on some kind of a budget, but to keep it, to make it financially equitable at some point, so that you can survive doing a hotel project here,” explained Aulen.
On top of that, he doesn’t want to take any shortcuts when it comes to historical preservation.
“You go to Home Depot and you could buy, you know, $2 square foot tiles… and you can do the project real quick. Or you could do it right, and you could get on the internet and source everything you need.”
Aulen envisions restoring the hotel to its former glory, with around 28 hotel rooms above a lobby and restaurant.
On Monday, he took WINK News inside the building, explaining what it once looked like. The property’s historic mosaic porcelain tile floor is still intact, along with the historic stairwells.
“This mosaic porcelain tile, this would have been the high traffic area for the lobby,” said Aulen, showing the first floor of the hotel. “And if you were checking in a hotel, you would have come in on this tile area. And there probably would have been a receptionist right here and some sort of a desk.”
Aulen aims to complete most of the exterior work by the start of the season. Inside, he hopes to finish the restaurant and at least one floor of the hotel in about a year.
“Overall, the building is as it was, you know, from back in the day,” he said. “So we want to keep it that way and give people, you know, something unique and different that will attract people to stay in the hotel.”
He’s even enlisted a local historian to ensure the decor is historically accurate.
“We actually even have an inventory list of what went in those rooms when the hotel was operating way back in the day,” Aulen said. “(She) helps me figure out what went on in the hotel, what was in the rooms, and different pictures she finds, so we can figure out how we’re supposed to do it and make it look the way it did back when it was originally built.”
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