Editor’s note: The story was updated to add new information
Almost a year and a half after closing its doors for good, the Shell Factory in North Fort Myers has been sold.
The sale of the 86-year-old tourist attraction closed on Jan. 15. An Old Florida-style attraction – the Shell Factory was home to a restaurant, a zip line, a 4.5-acre nature park with some 350 exotic animals, and a sprawling, more than 50,000-square-foot gift shop – closed Sept. 29, 2024, and was put up for sale.
Since then, the animals have been moved and some of its most iconic attractions have been sold or donated. Some items, including the iconic carousel don’t have homes yet and so their stories are to be continued.
Many say the closure forever changes the landscape of North Fort Myers.
“There are some places that become so woven into the fabric of a community that we forget they aren’t permanent,” said Paige Rausch, lifelong Lee County resident and Aslan Realty real estate consultant. “For nearly 90 years, the Shell Factory & Nature Park has been our North Star—a kitschy, wonderful, beloved piece of ‘Old Florida’ that belonged to every family who ever walked through its arches.”
What we know about the sale
Owner Pamela Cronin, who bought the property with her husband in 1997, closed on the sale Jan. 15, according to Lee County property records. She sold the 18-acre commercial land to Shell NFM LLC for $3.925 million. According to the property website, the market value is $4.62 million.
Shell NFM was established Dec. 22, 2025, according to SunBiz. Based in Boca Raton, Florida, the company is managed by Alexander Gulick and Vincent Godin. Gulick is chief financial officer at Procacci, a real estate development company. Godin is director of finance and acquisitions at Procacci. A call to the company’s main line operator Friday afternoon wasn’t answered.
“The buyer plans to pursue redevelopment of the site, with multiple future-use options underconsideration,” according to a press release from Cushman & Wakefield Commercial Property Southwest Florida, LLC, which brokered the deal for Cronin. Final development plans have not yet been announced.
In a video sent to The News-Press, CEO and principal broker Gary Tasman said it will be developed into light industrial mixed use.
Projects highlighted on Procacci’s website include Fort Myers Homeland Security built in 2012, along with retail and office space in Doral, Orlando and Tampa.
“It’s bittersweet to see this chapter come to a close, but we are incredibly grateful for the decades of support from our community that helped make this property what it was,” Cronin told The News-Press in an emailed statement. “While we cannot speculate on the property’s future use, we will always be thankful for the many beautiful memories, relationships and impact created here over the years.”
The transaction closed in less than four months from initial listing to closing, “despite having previously been listed with another brokerage for around a year,” according to a press release from Cushman & Wakefield. Tasman, Lane Boy, executive director, and Shawn Stoneburner, senior director, facilitated the sale.
Cronin and her late-husband Tom Cronin paid $1.6 million for the property. They invested millions of dollars into the place, “giving it new life with a dazzlement of restaurants, rides, shops, arcades and exotic animals. The strategy paid off, with more than 500,000 visitors annually and a streak of double-digit growth years,” according to a February 2018 News-Press story about Tom Cronin’s passing.
“”It’s been 27 years. It is absolutely the most difficult decision I’ve ever made in my life” Pam Cronin told News-Press reporter Charles Runnels in September 2024 about the closing.
So much more than shells
In addition to shells and shell sculptures, the Shell Factory offered plenty of fun including bumper and paddle boats, a restaurant, miniature golf, a petting farm, a videogame arcade and a lot more.
The Shell Factory Nature Park, 16554 N. Cleveland Ave., featured everything from iguanas, porcupines and peacocks to alligators, lemurs, alpacas and goats.
“The Shell Factory wasn’t just about the shells or the statues; it was about the way it made us feel,” said Rausch, who said she and the Cronins were “lifelong friends.”
“I’ll never forget visiting the Nature Park with my dear friend’s son, Jared,” Rausch wrote in an email. “As he walked past the cages, his face lit up with the purest conviction that the birds were talking specifically to him. When they chirped ‘hello,’ Jared would stop in his tracks and reply, fully expecting a long, deep conversation with his feathered friends. That little man’s face in that moment — the sheer wonder of it — is one of the most treasured memories of my life. That was the gift the Cronins gave us: a place where magic was real for a little while.”
Finding homes for some of the sentimental treasures is a job left unfinished, Rausch said.
“Pam and I recently spoke about the future of the park’s most sentimental treasures, specifically where the iconic carousel should go.,” she said. “We haven’t found the answer yet, and the uncertainty hurts. It is difficult to imagine the landscape of North Fort Myers without these familiar sights, and for many of us, this goodbye feels personal.”
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Shell Factory sells. Find out who bought it and for how much
Reporting by J. Kyle Foster, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Naples Daily News
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