Fish Story Aquarium and Rescue, Naples, FL; two 4500 gal 13'x13'x4.5'

[thebiggerthebetter]

Wow , thats pretty crazy. Who thought following your dreams would be so hard and expensive.
The mans always trying to keep a brother down

Fish Story is open by appointment and a donation

Some ask if we are open for business.

We have been open by appointment and a donation for a while now, 7 days a week, not as we’d like with business hours and admission fee, the latter is indeterminate because the circumstances / government pretty much suffocated our efforts to open as a commercial entity (way too expensive permits, like the latest two are $200K), so we are forced to change approach and try to become a bona fide farm and then bring visitors in under agritourism.

I've no beef with the government. I must believe the laws are the same for everyone country, state, and county wise. Our Collier County is known to be on the tight, cautious, and conservative end, with the focus on preserving what the County has and a reserved, resisted development, they seem to oppose development in general and the largest portion of the County is occupied by Nature Preserves.

This is also a rich County, where the mean citizen is far richer than those of surrounding Counties and among the top in the whole of USA - #2 in Florida and #14 in all the USA: https://www.gulfshorebusiness.com/florida-counties-ranking-on-a-nationwide-wealth-index/

As any governmental, bureaucratic machine, it is inflexible, cumbersome, indifferent and usually fails to be selective, that is, to make the process easier for beneficial, interesting and unusual ventures that would benefit the County, the town, the locals. Or maybe they tried to make it easier for us and we just didn't realize and are ungrateful. IDK, who knows what occurs behind the scenes...

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Our situation is unique - we built the business right where we live. Our 10-acre lot is zoned Agricultural Single Family Residential, and we obtained a Conditional Commercial Land Use permit from the County in 2012 (cost us 1.5 years and $30K), that is 10 years ago now, for a Commercial Educational Aquarium, only for 7000 sq ft (we set the square footage intentionally low to increase the chances of success in getting the permit). The County workers rarely know how to deal with our unusual situation, so the understandable lack of confidence and competency on their part doesn't help, but our hired private engineering firm tells us that if we were zoned Commercial it'd be FAR more expensive, because then all the requirements are known and clear and the book would be thrown at us. So those $200K Site Improvement Plan and Change of Use permits could have turned into half a million if we didn't live here and were zoned Commercial.

One example of two dozen: a sidewalk is required by the County for businesses. We are in the dead end of a private, single-lane 0.4-mile road with 12 households on the road before us. We all own the road. There is no sidewalk, there are ditches and woods on both sides of the road. But the County says we must have a sidewalk running the length of our property. So, the two end of the proposed 600-ft long sidewalk we must construct would begin and end nowhere, in the neighbor's woods Okay, the County says, if this doesn't make sense, you must pay the County $35K mitigation fee, so we reserve this money to build a sidewalk somewhere else in town, where we deem needed. This seems a disguised racketeering

Another example: the County is concerned about potential danger our lakes and ponds and storm water ditches may present to our visitors, even though the visitors would have no legal excess to any of the water bodies (7000 sq ft, remember?) like falling in the water injury, alligators, etc., so they think we should fence the lakes! What!? We live here! How would you like to fence three lakes, two ponds, and two ditches on your beautiful, lusciously landscaped, nature-preserve style 10 acre property to enjoy the fence views everywhere, not to mention the $100K this would cost? We told them "Maybe let us fence the parking area then?" - the second ugliest and utterly inconvenient choice for us. They said "Maybe, we don't know yet, we need to dig deeper to see if this could be allowed". And our parking lot is beautiful and artistically, uniquely laid out for our and people's enjoyment!

In any case, the flip side of winging a DIY business on a shoestring by an amateur and non-businessman without much needed details in the Business Plan is that you risk never opening for business the way you want and for the past 12 years this has been proving true for us.

Nevertheless, glory to God for all things!

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

 

[Ogertron3000]

Our situation is unique - we built the business right where we live. Our 10-acre lot is zoned Agricultural Single Family Residential, and we obtained a Conditional Commercial Land Use permit from the County in 2012 (cost us 1.5 years and $30K), that is 10 years ago now, for a Commercial Educational Aquarium, only for 7000 sq ft (we set the square footage intentionally low to increase the chances of success in getting the permit). The County workers rarely know how to deal with our unusual situation, so the understandable lack of confidence and competency on their part doesn't help, but our hired private engineering firm tells us that if we were zoned Commercial it'd be FAR more expensive, because then all the requirements are known and clear and the book would be thrown at us. So those $200K Site Improvement Plan and Change of Use permits could have turned into half a million if we didn't live here and were zoned Commercial.

One example of two dozen: a sidewalk is required by the County for businesses. We are in the dead end of a private, single-lane 0.4-mile road with 12 households on the road before us. We all own the road. There is no sidewalk, there are ditches and woods on both sides of the road. But the County says we must have a sidewalk running the length of our property. So, the two end of the proposed 600-ft long sidewalk we must construct would begin and end nowhere, in the neighbor's woods Okay, the County says, if this doesn't make sense, you must pay the County $35K mitigation fee, so we reserve this money to build a sidewalk somewhere else in town, where we deem needed. This seems a disguised racketeering

Another example: the County is concerned about potential danger our lakes and ponds and storm water ditches may present to our visitors, even though the visitors would have no legal excess to any of the water bodies (7000 sq ft, remember?) like falling in the water injury, alligators, etc., so they think we should fence the lakes! What!? We live here! How would you like to fence three lakes, two ponds, and two ditches on your beautiful, lusciously landscaped, nature-preserve style 10 acre property to enjoy the fence views everywhere, not to mention the $100K this would cost? We told them "Maybe let us fence the parking area then?" - the second ugliest and utterly inconvenient choice for us. They said "Maybe, we don't know yet, we need to dig deeper to see if this could be allowed". And our parking lot is beautiful and artistically, uniquely laid out for our and people's enjoyment!

In any case, the flip side of winging a DIY business on a shoestring by an amateur and non-businessman without much needed details in the Business Plan is that you risk never opening for business the way you want and for the past 12 years this has been proving true for us.

Nevertheless, glory to God for all things!

Well I live a long way from you but if I ever find myself in your neighbourhood I will be more than happy to make an appointment, give a donation and check it all out.
If I’m not being too nosey, do you get many visitors? It’s probably a whole lot more regulations and hassle for you to deal with but I imagine school kids would love to go for an excursion there and any local hobbyists would be intruiged by the place.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Ogertron3000 Thank you. I'd not say we get many visitors, it's been a trickle, primarily because we are afraid to advertise much and get in trouble. We need to be in full legal standing to advertise as much as we'd like / as possible. Yes, the School Board representative visited us, on our request back in 2019 when we thought we were about to open. Needless to say, until we are fully and unconditionally open, they will not bring kids to us. Moreover, if they were to come and before they considered coming, they'd ask us to create a curriculum / learning program for kids of all grades and ages and evaluate it and have it pass their requirements for such programs. I don't know if this is a fair request but it seems wrong to place it all on us. Well, maybe it is an easy thing to do but I've never looked into it because, alas, we are not fully open.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

 

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[thebiggerthebetter]