This year Florida Gulf Coast University is celebrating its 25th anniversary, culminating Aug. 25, 2022 25 years since FGCU offered its first classes. However, the effort to open this institution started many years earlier. Between 1991 and 1992, one of the most critical decisions was where to build Floridas 10th state-controlled university.

Many locations were presented as options to the state. By mid-February 1992, the Board of Regents selected on an offer by Alico, Inc., an agribusiness company led by Ben Hill Griffin III, to build the school on roughly 760 acres in southern Lee County. But the choice of the site didnt come without its battles. In 1991, the Board of Regents listened to 20-some different landholders make their pitch in hopes of being chosen as the universitys new home. The list was eventually whittled down to a few options from which the Alico, Inc. site between Alico Road and Corkscrew Road was chosen.

It was friendly, Bernie Lester said about the meetings to select a site for FGCU. At the time, he was executive vice president of Alico, Inc. and remembers the process well.