Where is Big John?
People ask Elmer Tabor and Clint Strand that question every week.
And Tabor and Strand get it. People love the big, brawny statue that stood guard for decades over Cape Coral’s South Cape Towne Center — better known as Big John’s Plaza.
The popular landmark — badly damaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022 — has been gone for 19 months as it undergoes extensive, complicated repairs. And people miss the smiling fiberglass giant and his arms full of grocery bags.
That includes Tabor, himself.
“I was 18 when Big John hit town,” says Tabor, 74, who owns the statue and the shopping center. “So to a certain extent, I grew up with Big John. He’s been an icon in the area.
“And I will tell you that there was hardly a day to go by that you didn’t didn’t see a family out there getting their pictures taken with him.”
Big John: A Cape Coral landmark since 1969
Big John has been a Cape Coral landmark for more than five decades. He first came to Cape Coral in 1969 and took up residence outside the grocery store Big John’s Foodway.
He’s one of 13 original statues made for the Illinois-based Big John’s grocery-store chain in the ’60s, and he’s one of just four left in existence, Tabor says.
Roadside America — a website that tracks kitschy tourist sites in the United States — lists Big John as one of its many “quirky attractions in Florida.”
Technically, Big John’s home is called South Cape Towne Center, Tabor says. It doesn’t matter, though: Most people still call it Big John’s Plaza.
But the shopping center’s unofficial namesake has been missing since November 2024, when a 37-foot crane lifted the 28-foot-tall, 6,000-pound giant from his concrete pedestal and onto a flatbed truck.
Then the statue was transported to his new, temporary home outside Strand’s business, Cape Coral screen-printing and sign company Brand 1 Ink.
Since then, Big John’s disassembled, fiberglass torso and legs have stood behind a fence in Brand 1 Ink’s side yard — hard to miss by passers-by on nearby Southwest 10th Street in the Cape Coral Industrial Park.
And those passers-by aren’t shy about showing their love, either, says new Brand 1 Ink employee Stephen James, a fiberglass worker who’s worked on major movie sets and was hired six months ago to work on Big John full time.
“They stop every day,” James says. “(They say) ‘Go Big John!’ They give me the high five. They pump their fist in the air. A lot of people stop.”
Those frequent visits can sidetrack his progress on Big John, he admits (and Strand discourages people from visiting for that reason). “It slows you down,” James says, “but you don’t mind it.”
And if people stay too long, James can just switch on his loud grinder, he says and laughs.
They get the hint.
When will Big John return to downtown Cape Coral? ‘Sometime this year’
Originally, Strand thought he and his crew could finish repairing the statue in a mere six to eight weeks. Then they removed some of his fiberglass shell and saw the rusted mess underneath.
And the more they uncovered, the worse it looked.
Since then, Strand has learned not to give people a firm estimate on when Big John will return to downtown Cape Coral/South Cape. The last time The News-Press asked him, he said Big John might be home by Christmas 2025.
Now, six months later, he’s still not sure when the statue will return. He’s only saying “sometime this year.”
But he hopes that means sooner rather than later.
“I learned a little while back not to give a promise date,” Strand says. “Because every time I do, I miss the dates. And it’s just not fair to the community to raise expectations and then fail.”
Big John fan Tracy Turner looks forward to the statue’s eventual return, whenever that is. She’s lived in Cape Coral, on and off, for about 10 years. And she says the statue is a landmark — even if she knows him by another name.
“I call him Downtown John,” Turner says. “I always have. I’ve never known him as Big John.”
A part of Cape Coral’s history
The Cape Coral resident has seen similar statues elsewhere in the United States. Big John and other fiberglass statues remind her of when she was a kid traveling the famous highway Route 66 and seeing giant dinosaurs and other kitschy roadside tourist attractions.
So for her, Big John is more than just a Cape Coral icon and landmark. He represents her childhood and a nostalgia for the past — both her own and Cape Coral’s.
That’s why it was such a gut-punch when Hurricane Ian ravaged Big John in 2022.
“I felt like he got in a car accident,” Turner says. “That’s how I felt. … I felt empty when it happened.
“And it’s so weird, but it was like: There goes the last of my memories of what Cape Coral is (and a connection to the city’s history). He’s kind of a part of the dream that Cape Coral was. … Bigger than life, paradise.”
That’s why Tabor wants to preserve Big John, too. It’s a part of Cape Coral’s history — a history he says city leaders don’t seem interested in preserving as they tear down historic buildings to make way for new developments.
So he wants to do his part to preserve at least this one thing.
“When I’m gone, I’m gonna leave a little bank account for him,” Tabor says about Big John. “So he’s going to be properly maintained and taken care of, wherever he’s left standing.”
Rust everywhere, cracked fiberglass and even a highway accident
But first, Strand and James have to finish repairing the damaged Big John at Brand 1 Ink. It’s taking much longer than Strand expected, but he says it’s coming along more and more every day.
There was a ton of work to do on Big John after Hurricane Ian came through Cape Coral. Those category 4 winds twisted his body, cracked his fiberglass shell and caused his U.S. flag-covered torso to break and slip down over his blue-jeaned legs. A steel support pole broke through the top of Big John’s head.
Then Big John was damaged even more when hurricanes Helene and Milton came along. That included minor cracks in his fiberglass chest.
Strand volunteered to repair the statue for his friend, Tabor, but it turned out to be a bigger task than he’d anticipated.
Strand thought he’d just be repairing the fiberglass outer shell and adding fresh coat of paint. But underneath that fiberglass, he found rust everywhere. And they eventually uncovered even more damage, including an apparent traffic accident that chopped off the top of Big John’s head more than five decades ago.
“His head got knocked off coming down from wherever he was built,” Strand said in 2025. “And in Atlanta, I guess, or somewhere in Georgia, (he) hit a bridge. … I had no idea. And we found a bunch of fiberglass filler on top of paint, which is basically a no-no.”
All that rust and damage meant replacing most of the steel skeleton underneath the fiberglass and hiring another company to cut new 1-inch-thick steel support plates and a welder to work on the 3-inch steel tubes that required special “saddle cuts” — something Strand had never heard of before. Strand has expertise in fiberglass work and previous experience doing collision repairs on vehicles, he says, but not much experience in metal work.
Now they’re expanding that original repair job, he says, and reengineering Big John’s metal skeleton to make him “bigger and stronger.” That will help him better withstand the twisting and turning caused by hurricane-force winds.
“That was a huge factor in why he broke in the first place,” Strand says. “So that’s being fabricated right now. … It’s a huge, monumental undertaking, so to speak.
“And as we’re going, we’re re-engineering and redesigning. And coming up with stronger components to make it so when we put Big John up, he’s good to go. The goal is to make him last another 60 years. That’s a huge task.”
New employee James has been working on Big John for 40 hours every week. He previously worked on movie sets in Hollywood and elsewhere, building props for “The Expendables” and other movies, as well as TV and Broadway shows.
It hasn’t been easy, James says. Especially with such a big, heavy statue.
“Every time you’ve got to move him,” he says, “you’ve got to get a forklift.”
Big John’s home, South Cape Towne Center, on market for $12.4 million
Complicating things: The plaza nicknamed for Big John is now up for sale. Owner Tabor has retired to the Florida Keys, but he hopes whoever buys the place keeps Big John.
“I hope it’s going to be somebody that … carries on the legacy the center has and supporting the Holiday Festival of Lights and the (Cape Coral) Art Festival and the community as a whole,” Tabor says. “If we could find somebody to carry that legacy forward, it would be fantastic.”
The shopping center went on the market about two months ago. He’s asking for $12.4 million, he says, and he’s already been contacted by four or five interested parties.
Tabor admits it won’t be easy saying goodbye to South Cape Towne Center/Big John’s Plaza. He’s had some of his tenants for decades.
“It’s gonna be tough to finally sign the deal to close on it,” Tabor says. “Because it has been part of the family, and the tenants are all part of my family. We’ve got a great relationship.”
But don’t worry, Big John fans: The big guy will survive, no matter what, he says.
“He’s not part of the sale,” he says. “Big John is mine. That’s like selling my wife or my daughter. …
“He’s not part of the shopping center. And so he’s gonna stay there. And if the city ever finds a developer to bulldoze that area like they did with The Cove, I’m sure Big John’s going to have to be moved.”
That’s OK, though, Tabor says. He’s already made arrangements to give Big John a new home, if necessary.
“If he has to be moved, I’ve got a place for him,” Tabor says. “He’s gonna stay around Cape Coral. And the city council is never going to be able to bulldoze him like they did everything else.”
Read more about Big John on the Roadside America website: roadsideamerica.com/story/11725.
Charles Runnells covers arts and entertainment for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. To reach him, call 239-335-0368 or email crunnells@usatodayco.com. Follow or message him on Facebook(@charles.runnells.7), Instagram (@crunnells1) and X (@CharlesRunnells).
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This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Will Big John return? Latest on Cape Coral statue, why taking so long
Reporting by Charles Runnells, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Fort Myers News-Press
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