Today we talk to Trish Leonard about the wonderful things happening in Downtown Bonita Springs. You can follow the Bonita Springs Downtown Alliance on facebook and see for yourself what the people are doing to make this area a great shopping and playing area for the locals and our yearly tourists.
You can reach out to Trish at 239-398-9999
BonitaSpringsdowntownalliance.com
To learn more:
https://barefootbungalowrealty.com/
Barefoot Bungalow Homes
9200 Bonita Beach Rd SE, Suite 100
Bonita Springs, FL 34135
(239) 350-5535
Today we talk to Trish Leonard about the wonderful things happening in Downtown Bonita Springs. You can follow the Bonita Springs Downtown Alliance on facebook and see for yourself what the people are doing to make this area a great shopping and playing area for the locals and our yearly tourists.
You can reach out to Trish at 239-398-9999
BonitaSpringsdowntownalliance.com
To learn more:
https://barefootbungalowrealty.com/
Barefoot Bungalow Homes
9200 Bonita Beach Rd SE, Suite 100
Bonita Springs, FL 34135
(239) 350-5535
Welcome to the live your best life barefoot podcast with your host Mary Morrison and the team at barefoot bungalow
Speaker 2:Realty. Good morning. Um, welcome to the next episode of live your best life barefoot. I'm Ruth and I'm here with Mary
Speaker 3:Today. Good morning, Ruth. Good to be here with you.
Speaker 2:Good morning. It is it's great Monday.
Speaker 3:Yes, we're excited. We have a closing today. Woo woo. We crossing the finish line so excited. Thank you. And we are excited to have our guest on today. Do you wanna introduce her?
Speaker 2:Yes, we are here today with Trish Leonard. She's from the downtown Alliance committee. We are excited to have you Trish, how are you?
Speaker 4:Oh, great, good morning. It's a happy, happy Monday to everyone out there. Happy Monday, Monday. Um, so I'm Trish Leonard. I, um, a little bit about me. I'm my, uh, I own a company in Bonita Springs. Um, but I'm actually a volunteer president of the Bonita Springs downtown Alliance and it's, um, I've been a member or like, excuse me, I've been a president for the past three years. It just Revo me in, I guess I'm doing a great job as a volunteer. Great. Or either that or nobody else wants to do it.
Speaker 3:No, you're doing a great job.
Speaker 4:Thank you. We, um, we it's made up of a group of all the downtown businesses and, um, we're really excited. We have about, uh, 60 members. Um, and when I took over as president, we had about 22 and our goal is to increase the membership to help the downtown corridor, which is, um, being built like crazy right now. And, um, really, um, jazz it up. Um, you know, years ago, people used to make fun of the downtown Bonita Springs area or did not want to come down to our area. Um, I happened to live downtown and, uh, so our goal, um, and vision for our board of directors is to really, um, to work closely with the city of Bonita Springs and to clean up the downtown area, to beautify it and to encourage more business owners to come to the downtown Alliance meetings and be part of that.
Speaker 3:Yes. And I've been part of that for about six months now. Super impressed. Will you, uh, tell our listeners where downtown Bonita specifically is for those who may not know? Sure.
Speaker 4:<laugh> yeah, there there's four corridors down there and once you, you head south on oh, 41, let's say coming from Bonita beach road, mm-hmm<affirmative>, um, there's these arches that we're going to have painted, and it will say welcome to downtown Bonita Springs, but the, the downtown area starts there and it ends right near Rosemary park. And when it, when that's the whole corridor after that is another central area is a second corridor, but we're, uh, our group of volunteers by the way, are or paid members, which is very inexpensive to join$50 a year, um, are concerned about when, when you first, the first impression when you come in off of, oh, you know, onto oh 41. And, uh, so our, our goal is to make that a beautification area and we're getting there. We have new, a new brewery that just opened up. We have the Bahamian, we have the whole corner right there. And then as you go up, we have new apartments. We have the Shangrila, which just opened up all their, their rooms. Uh, I know 10 rooms at the Shangla with a beautiful spa. So you know, that and, and, and a restaurant harvest and wisdom. And then if you go on down further, you'll have a, um, the, the flower shop, which now has a boutique to it. So you can actually go in there, not just buy flowers, but she has one section, um, uh, heaven, set flowers and boutique where you could buy boutique items. Oh. So, and as you go through that, we just broke ground on our truck, our food truck park. I saw that, and that's gonna be called rooftop at Riverside.
Speaker 3:I wanna stop on that. Cause that is cool. It's like nothing I've ever heard of before. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about that?
Speaker 4:Sure. It's gonna be eight pads. Um, the, from what I understand the, um, owners of that park have to stay stationary, so it's not like you could pick up and leave and go somewhere. They may rotate re rotate out quarterly. But with that, they're also building a two story bar. Um, and so they'll be able to, it's gonna look like the old Florida look. Um, so between the eight pads of different everyone, there will be no competition. So there'll be one, maybe Mexican restaurant. One, one might be a, you know, hot dog stand or whatever. Um, and they're also gonna put a children's playground in there. Nice. And it's really gonna a children's playground with some water in it. It's gonna be a, a, a fair child, friendly place. Love it. Um, and that's very exciting and that's broke ground already. So we hope to have that open by the end of this year. That's not exciting the first quarter of next year. Yeah. That's gonna be excited. Then we have, of course, the Imperial crossings, which is going, uh, barren Collier has, um, bought the two sides of the Imperial river and they'll be shops. And, um, there's going to be retail and some apartments over it. And it's kind of, um, modern, but with a mix of old town. Nice. And, uh, there'll be, um, you know, you said the restaurants on the river, walkways, the public can use there's public access. So you can still go up the river with your kayaks and canoes, but folks that live there, there's a pool. There's some amenities that, you know, you would get at an apartment complex as well, but then we'll be small retail shops. They're not going to be shops that you would go down to maybe Naples and, you know, shop the bigger stores. We're really trying to keep them very local in that area. Tiki. So that's that, that should be maybe in a couple years for that. And then across, across the street, as the wonder gardens, and we have a new executive director, but if you were the gardens years and years ago, nobody even wanted to go to the gardens cuz it was just old and decreed, but now it is so beautiful behind the gate.
Speaker 3:That's so pretty.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And they just finished painting, repainting the big billboards. So they're nice and shiny and clean. Uh, and then you walk into the wonder shop and then out into the garden. So that's with a tea house and a butterfly garden and they're putting in an Otter, um, an Otter exhibit. So there's a lot going on there as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's been fun to watch.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Oh, I guess all of it's fun to watch. Um, we have the kayak place, that's there on the river seat kayak as well. Mm-hmm<affirmative> artist cottages, which nobody knows they're there, but on the Lyles hotel side are the artist cottages behind there. And there's some really nice artists there that have some,
Speaker 3:They really are. It's really cool. And it's fun to get to know. We haven't been there.
Speaker 2:I, I have, I they've been down there, but I did. Those cottages are never open when I go down there.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So we're working with them on that. Um, this, they have a, it's a city owned property, but um, we've asked them to stay open, like during events and on Saturdays and things like that. I know we're working on a holiday, Christmas international at the
Speaker 2:Market. Yeah. That'd be fun Christmas
Speaker 4:Market in there. So that'd be fun. But you know, you just, there's just a lot of little places off of oh, 41 and um, char TRUS I'd be the miss or not to say Charros is there.
Speaker 3:TRUS is fabulous and I don't drink, but I've met people there and they do fabulous mocktails.
Speaker 4:Yes they
Speaker 3:Do. Oh, yummy.
Speaker 4:If you could have'em without alcohol<laugh> yeah. But it's a speakeasy, uh, place. It's beautiful. Yeah. And then we have the survey cafe right behind it, which used to be the, uh, mayor's grandmother's house. Wow. And so a French person owns, uh, Sophie owns that and she's done a wonderful job at Cervi cafe. So, you know, you find these little fines and it's just so unique. I mean, we are a unique area. So I think what we're trying to do is keep it unique, but still have to modernize it somehow. Right.
Speaker 3:Right. Well, and I've been in Bonita for four years now and I, this is a Testament to you and what you've accomplished because I have watched, we live not very far from it and I've watched it transform it's. Yeah. It's amazing.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Thank
Speaker 3:You. The difference between then and now, like it's a totally different place.
Speaker 4:Well, I, I think the business owners have now taken ownership of it before. They probably felt like there wasn't a lot of people that really cared. Right. You know, and I think the city has opened up and started waking up and saying, Hey, we, we have 110,000 visitors to the wonder gardens each year. They have to go somewhere after they visit was ice cream or lunch or gas or visit the park or whatever. So I do have give them a lot of credit for, you know, listening to what the, the, um, business owners want. And they, you know, we meet monthly, um, the fourth, Tuesday of every month at the Shangrila five 31st social hour, six o'clock we always have a program and it could be somebody from the city, somebody from the county, it could be somebody learning about something in the environment or what's going on downtown would bring in a lot of the builders, that'll show us their product so that everyone understands what's going on. And I think that that's the most important thing is just really educating the, um, the business owners of, of what's happening.
Speaker 2:That's nice. So anybody can join those meetings right. Without having to,
Speaker 4:Yeah. Technically we we'd like to have the downtown Alliance, business owners and residents. Okay. Or if they have interest in the downtown area, it is, we have a website it's, uh, Bonita Springs, downtown alliance.com. And um, so you can go, you know, check out the Alliance, uh, website, um, and, and then just, you know, it's a work in progress. I mean, in two years, we've accomplished a whole lot. So, you know, and it's a minimal, like I said, a minimal fee to join, but it, it covers a little bit of some things that we need. We definitely do need marketing. The good thing. I'm a marketing direct, you know,
Speaker 3:<laugh> that comes in handy.
Speaker 4:I'm big in the branding. So we've finally got a pull up banner in their name tags. That's a start.
Speaker 2:They can go. That's awesome though, because I live not very far from there as well. So I've seen a lot of the change and you know, a lot of the events that happen at the park now, you know, more people are coming out there. So it's picking up a lot,
Speaker 3:Even every Sunday, the church, the church service that there is well attended. And
Speaker 4:The concert band Beita Springs concert band brings about 2000 people at the fireworks. We had 8,000 people on the park for the fireworks. It was amazing. That's amazing. Beautiful. Yeah, it really was. So we're getting there. We wanna be known as a place to, you know, come to visit, be, make it a destination downtown. You know, we, one of the other things we're working on the city is having a welcome center with the Lyles. Hotelers, we're hoping that we we'll we'll have a place because there is no welcome center anymore in Bonita. And then the other thing we're working on is, um, a walkable downtown. So the big trucks that go through there, just because they can cut off at oh 41, the big dump trucks and the big truck have no reason to be on that road. Um, we're working with them to, to have it more of a walkable downtown, and those big trucks can use 41 Imperial Parkway, you know, all those other big inter places and not come through our downtown. Right. Because like, if you ever went to downtown whining coffee, we love it. But when you sit there and the trucks go over, it's like so loud
Speaker 3:You to wait.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. So we're working with the city on that as well. And there'll be new, new city leadership this year. So we have to educate them about the Alliance, whoever takes on the, the, uh, three new positions that are gonna be open in November. So that will be interesting.
Speaker 3:It is such a huge asset. And even I, I would encourage everyone now to, you know, we would meet up with colleagues. It's a great area to consider, um, the coffee shop there. Mm-hmm<affirmative> um, well even the Everglades, cuz you go and meet people, your clients at the Everglades. Yeah. I have a, a, a season pass.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 3:Yep. So I'll I, and I can get a guest in, so I, I meet people there and sit in the gardens. Yeah. So that's a, yeah,
Speaker 4:There's a lot gonna go on downtown there. I mean, we're not finished yet. We're just getting started.
Speaker 3:I love that. I love,
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much for coming on Trish. It's.
Speaker 4:You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me on this morning. Yeah. I love early morning meetings. Right.
Speaker 3:<laugh> and, and thank you for all your hard work. Yes. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It's so nice to have somebody that is really taking control of that and it
Speaker 4:Is a volunteer position. So, you know, um, that's a lot volunteers work just as hard as the people are getting paid.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Passion project. I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I love Bonita Springs and that's why I'm doing, it's my passion. I love it. I live here. I work here and you know, it, it takes people to help make it, to make it better.
Speaker 3:And um, where can people get a hold of you or somebody, if they want more information about downtown Bonita, where's the best?
Speaker 4:So our website is, um, Bonita Springs, downtown alliance.com. And then it reached me on my cell phone,(239) 398-9999. Um, and then we have a Facebook page, downtown Alliance, Bonita downtown Alliance, its thinking of that. So we have a few things going on there, but the websites where you could register and become a member. Awesome.
Speaker 3:And I highly recommend the Facebook page book page. It's I love going on there and seeing all the things that are going on downtown
Speaker 4:It's thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It's just keeping up with it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.<laugh>
Speaker 4:<laugh>
Speaker 3:And uh, Trish, you do have a fabulous business. So if anybody needs any marketing, um, help, sure. Reach out to Trish at that same number and she is wonderful.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I'll be
Speaker 3:Happy to help you. Yeah.
Speaker 4:With branding, marketing PR, um, we're, they're there for a little bit of everything. So I'd love to have you I'm in, Mary's complex
Speaker 3:Over Sunday for neighbors.
Speaker 4:<laugh> yeah. We're neighbors and um, but I've been in business. It'll be 13 years. January. Yeah. So I'd love to have everybody on and I appreciate you inviting me to come on today for the Alliance.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thanks. Thanks Trish. And you're welcome. We wanna remind all of you guys out there to remember to live your best life barefoot.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the live, your best life barefoot podcast. Sponsored buy barefoot bungalow Realty to learn more about barefoot bungalow Realty, go to www.barefootbungalowrealty.com or call 2 3 9 3 5 0 5 5 3 5.