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July 5, 2026 · The Sunday Brief No. 007 · Cape Coral, FL
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FREE EDITION
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What's being built · What it means
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$100M
Sale price for 1,745 acres at 4101 Burnt Store Road. Largest raw-land transaction in Lee County history.
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3,500
Permitted residential units already approved. Mix of 2,500 single-family and 1,000 multifamily homes.
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2028
Anticipated completion of North 3 UEP, the city utility extension that must reach the site before vertical construction begins.
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Deep Dive · Hudson Creek · Northwest Cape Coral
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D.R. Horton paid $100 million for 1,745 acres in northwest Cape Coral. It will become the largest master-planned community in the city's history. Here is what you need to know.
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In December 2024, Forestar (USA) Real Estate Group, a subsidiary of D.R. Horton, closed on 1,745 acres at 4101 Burnt Store Road in northwest Cape Coral for $100 million. The transaction set a record as the highest price ever paid for raw, undeveloped land in Lee County history. The property already carries full city entitlements. No rezoning required, no lengthy public hearing process ahead. The approvals are in hand. What comes next is infrastructure, then construction.
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The seller was GA-Pinnacle Cape Coral LLC, part of Pinnacle Development Group, which assembled the core of the land in 2016 from the Zemel family for $3 million. Pinnacle spent the next several years navigating the entitlement process, with rezoning finalized in March 2023 after roughly eight years of groundwork. That approved zoning is what gave the land its $100 million value: a permitted master-planned community with a density and mix of uses that does not exist anywhere else in Cape Coral.
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What is actually permitted on this land
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The approved Planned Unit Development covers a scale of uses that is unusual for Cape Coral, a city built almost entirely on scattered single-family lots. The entitlements allow: up to 3,500 residential units (2,500 single-family, 1,000 multifamily); 425,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space; 150,000 square feet of office space; 500 hotel rooms; an 800-bed assisted living facility; and a 3,000-student university. Approximately 622 acres of the 1,745-acre site are designated as wetland and upland preserve, which means roughly 36% of the property stays undeveloped.
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The 200 acres fronting Burnt Store Road are zoned commercial. Five access points off Burnt Store Road are planned between Sand Road and Caloosa Parkway. Chiquita Boulevard will also connect to the development. The site is bounded by Yucca Pen Strand to the north, Jacaranda Parkway and Wilmington Parkway to the south.
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Hudson Creek: project snapshot
Address: 4101 Burnt Store Road, Cape Coral, FL 33982 ·
Size: 1,745 acres ·
Sale price: $100,000,000 (closed Dec. 12, 2024) ·
Seller: GA-Pinnacle Cape Coral LLC (Pinnacle Development Group) ·
Buyer: Forestar (USA) Real Estate Group, subsidiary of D.R. Horton ·
Broker: Justin Thibaut and William Rollins, LSI Companies ·
Rezoning approved: March 2023 ·
Preserve area: approx. 622 acres ·
Construction timeline: not yet announced
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The infrastructure problem that has to be solved first
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Hudson Creek cannot break ground on homes until city water, sewer, and irrigation reach the site. That is the North 3 Utilities Extension Project, and it is not there yet.
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North 3 UEP covers roughly three square miles in northwest Cape Coral, bounded by Burnt Store Road to the east, the Bonefish Canal to the south, the Spreader Waterway to the west, and Kismet Parkway to the north. The project covers approximately 1,900 improved parcels and 3,200 unimproved parcels. Per the city's own project page, 60% design plans were under review as of the most recent published update, with 90% plans expected in late 2025. Construction is expected to begin in 2026, with a two-year build duration and an anticipated completion date at the end of 2028. Design and permitting are being handled by McKim and Creed under a contract that started February 19, 2024.
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Here is the connection that matters: the rezoning approval for Hudson Creek included a requirement that the developer fund and extend utilities north along Burnt Store Road to the city limits as a condition of moving forward. Justin Thibaut of LSI Companies made the point directly when the sale closed: Hudson Creek will accelerate the utility expansion along Burnt Store Road faster than the city had originally projected on its own timeline. That means the development is not just a beneficiary of the UEP; it is partly funding it.
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For the roughly 5,100 parcels inside the North 3 UEP boundary, that has a direct practical consequence: the arrival of utilities triggers a city assessment on each property, typically financed over 20 to 30 years on the tax bill. The city's connection fee structure also kicks in once service is available, with owners generally required to connect within 180 days of the Notice of Availability. Buyers and sellers of northwest Cape properties are already navigating these figures in transactions; the Hudson Creek timeline makes the clock more concrete.
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Who is D.R. Horton, and why does it matter
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Forestar is D.R. Horton's land development subsidiary, responsible for acquiring and entitling lots that Horton then builds on. D.R. Horton is the largest homebuilder in the United States by volume. Forestar's portfolio as of early 2025 covered 106,000 lots across 62 markets and 24 states. This is not a local developer taking a speculative position; this is the country's largest homebuilder acquiring a fully permitted site and beginning the infrastructure work needed to build it out. The scale of the buyer is one reason industry observers describe the deal as a market signal for northwest Lee County, not just a single transaction.
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The concerns that come with a project this size
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Not everyone is enthusiastic. John Cassani, Calusa Waterkeeper emeritus, raised the issue of cumulative water resource impacts at the time of the sale. His position, as reported in the Fort Myers Florida Weekly, is that the development adds wastewater treatment demand and significantly increases stormwater runoff, and that the regulatory requirements on any single development are too narrowly focused to account for the cumulative load on the Caloosahatchee Basin. The developer will be required to meet city and state runoff standards, but Cassani's point is about basin-wide impacts, not just parcel-level compliance.
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Traffic is the other open question. Burnt Store Road widening in the Lee County portion of the corridor has not been completed. If Hudson Creek moves quickly through infrastructure and begins vertical construction before the road work is finished, a significant number of new residents will be funneling onto a corridor that has not been fully built out to handle them. Cape Coral's principal planner noted during the original public hearing that the PUD is designed to accommodate walkers, cyclists, and cars within the development itself; the question is what happens at the edges where internal roads connect to Burnt Store Road.
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What to watch on Hudson Creek
North 3 UEP construction start date: expected 2026, anticipated completion end of 2028. Every quarter this slips pushes Hudson Creek's vertical construction window further out. ·
Forestar construction timeline announcement: none yet on record. ·
Burnt Store Road widening: Lee County project, separate from the city's UEP schedule. ·
Stormwater and wastewater permits: DEP review, basin-level impacts are the watchdog concern. ·
City Council: returns July 15. No Hudson Creek agenda items are scheduled yet; the project does not currently require additional city approvals to proceed.
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For Cape Coral property owners, realtors, and contractors in the northwest corridor, Hudson Creek is not an abstract future event. It is the largest single development project in the city's history, it has a buyer with the resources and track record to build it, and it is tied directly to the North 3 UEP timeline that is already affecting property transactions across thousands of parcels. This is the story the Digest will track through every phase: infrastructure, platting, permits, and vertical construction.
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Sources: LSI Companies press release, Dec. 12, 2024; WINK News, Dec. 12, 2024; Fort Myers Florida Weekly, Jan. 2, 2025; Cape Coral Sun, Jan. 2025; CoStar Impact Awards, March 2025; City of Cape Coral North 3 UEP project page (capecoral.gov). No construction start date has been announced by Forestar. The Digest will report on any city filings, permit applications, or timeline updates as they occur.
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Council is back July 15. Three things are already on the calendar before then.
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The Lee County Property Appraiser sends preliminary taxable value notices in mid-July. Those numbers set the real math on the FY 2027 budget's $3 million structural gap. When they land, the Digest will run the actual millage calculation on a median Cape Coral home so readers know what the proposed 5.1471 mill rate means in dollars, not percentages.
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The CDBG Action Plan goes to City Council on July 22 for approval, ahead of the August 3 HUD submission deadline. The Citizens Advisory Board's recommendations, covered in Issue No. 006, are expected to track closely with staff's figures. The vote is typically procedural; any deviation from the recommended allocations would be the news.
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Seven Islands remains open. The Army Corps permit is in withdrawn status with no resubmission date. DEP has not announced a position on the mangrove clearing. Both agencies are slow-moving by design; when either one acts, the Digest will have it.
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Editor's Pick · Local Business
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caloosa.studio
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Cape Coral, FL
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A Cape Coral-based web design studio building clean, fast websites for Southwest Florida small businesses. If your online presence does not match the quality of your work, caloosa.studio is worth a conversation. Local team, no agency markup, direct to the people doing the work.
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That is The Sunday Brief No. 007. Hudson Creek is a long story. The land is bought, the entitlements are set, and the largest homebuilder in the country owns it. What happens next depends entirely on how fast the North 3 UEP gets out of the ground. The Digest will track every step.
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If someone forwarded this to you and you want it in your inbox every Sunday at 7 PM, subscribe free at thecapecoraldigest.com. Cape Coral is growing fast. This is the newsletter that tracks where and how.
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Cape Coral Digest is published weekly by Blue Skies at the Cape LLC · Cape Coral, Florida
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Cape Coral Digest is an independent publication and is not affiliated with the City of Cape Coral.
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