The Old Fort Myers Cyclery Building on Cleveland Avenue Is Becoming a Farmers Market, Not a Drive-Thru

The bike shop at 3630 Cleveland Avenue sold a Schwinn to your kid's first ride, maybe fixed a flat for you on a Saturday morning, and then, in 2023, packed up and moved to Gateway. The building it left behind sat on U.S. 41 for three years looking like exactly what it was: a closed storefront waiting for someone to decide what midtown Cleveland Avenue is supposed to be next. That decision landed on August 31, 2026, and it is not the decision most people driving past would have guessed.

The building is becoming Motley Market, a farmers market and neighborhood general store, and the person who bought it chose not to do the thing that almost every commercial real estate seller in his position does with a big payday.

Who Bought It, and With What

The buyer is Dan O'Berski, a managing partner at Trinity Commercial Group who has spent years brokering deals across Southwest Florida. He closed on the 4,200-square-foot building for $1 million under an entity called Cleveland Hill LLC. The money came from his ownership stake in the summer sale of The Pointe at Founder's Square in North Naples, a deal that closed for $65 million. That kind of gain usually gets rolled into a 1031 exchange, the standard move that lets a seller defer taxes by parking the proceeds in another investment property, often somewhere else entirely. O'Berski was working against a tight window to pull that off and instead put the capital directly into this corner of Cleveland Avenue.

That choice is the part worth sitting with. A sale that size could have funded a property in Naples, Tampa, or anywhere else a broker with O'Berski's reach does business. It didn't leave the neighborhood.

What's Actually Moving Into the Building

Motley Market will run under a nonprofit O'Berski founded called For Prophet, which will manage day-to-day operations, vendor relationships, and outreach once the doors open. The concept mixes a farmers market with a general store, built around a farm-to-table supply line: O'Berski has a 10-acre agricultural farm under contract, with the purchase expected to close this fall, to help stock the shelves.

The redevelopment isn't happening all at once. Here's the sequence as it stands right now:

• Late 2026: interior buildout and layout work on the existing building
• Fall 2026: the 10-acre supporting farm purchase is expected to close
• Early 2027: exterior work begins, including facade improvements along U.S. 41
• March 1, 2027: targeted grand opening for Motley Market

O'Berski is also preparing a grant application through the Fort Myers Community Redevelopment Agency to help fund the streetscape and facade work, which ties this project into the CRA's broader push to reinvest along commercial corridors inside city limits.

The Site Choice Was Deliberate

The building sits at the northwest corner of Cleveland Avenue and Hill Avenue, directly across from an adult entertainment venue. O'Berski is a longtime Jefferson Park resident who leads a small in-home faith group called L1A, short for Love One Another, and by his own account the location wasn't a compromise he settled for. It was the point. The name Motley is a deliberate nod to its own definition, incongruously varied, meant to describe a gathering space built for a mixed, unpolished stretch of the corridor rather than a manicured retail pad.

That framing matters if you've driven this stretch of U.S. 41 and wondered why nobody had touched it. Midtown Cleveland Avenue isn't Gateway or the River District. It's older commercial real estate, some of it thriving, some of it vacant, sitting between the parts of Fort Myers that get the marketing budget. A project that chooses this specific corner, on purpose, is a different kind of bet than a national chain deciding where the traffic counts justify a lease.

No, the Bike Shop Didn't Close

If your first thought driving past the boarded windows was that Fort Myers Cyclery went out of business, it didn't. The shop, previously run for 28 years by Michael and Diane Holm before an earlier ownership change in 2023, is open and operating today at Centreplace at Esplanade in Gateway, at 11850 Cheeca Ct. The building on Cleveland Avenue and the business that occupied it for decades are two separate stories now. One relocated a few miles east. The other is getting a second life as something else entirely.

That distinction is worth making because it changes what this news actually is. This isn't a story about a local institution disappearing. It's a story about what happens to a legacy commercial building once the tenant that defined it for thirty years moves on, and about a broker deciding the answer wasn't a fast-food drive-through or another strip retail pad, the two most common outcomes for a corner lot like this one.

Two Farmers Markets, Three Miles Apart

Motley Market isn't Fort Myers' only recent move toward local food access, and the two projects aren't the same thing wearing different names. The city launched its own Saturday farmers market on January 17, 2026, run by Local Roots LLC in the downtown Culinary District, stretching along First Street to Broadway and up to Main Street. It runs seasonally, Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., with a vendor mix required to be at least 40 percent food or agricultural product.

Motley Market is a different animal. It's a permanent, brick-and-mortar building rather than a street closure, and it's aiming to operate year-round rather than seasonally, with its own dedicated farm supply rather than a rotating vendor roster. If you live closer to Cleveland Avenue than downtown, this is the one that's actually walkable to you. If you've been going downtown on Saturday mornings for produce, this gives you a second, closer option once it opens.

What This Means If You Live Nearby

None of the milestones ahead are urgent this month. The farm purchase closes this fall. The facade work starts early next year. The doors open, if the timeline holds, on March 1, 2027. But this is exactly the kind of project where watching the small updates matters more than waiting for a ribbon cutting. The CRA grant application is worth tracking if you care about what happens to the rest of that stretch of U.S. 41, since facade dollars tend to attract more of the same. And if you've been wondering whether that corner is finally getting fixed up or just sitting there, you now have an answer, a timeline, and a name to watch for.

Cleveland Avenue doesn't get the same attention as the newer corridors going up around Fort Myers, but the money moving through it this year says something about where people who know this market are willing to bet. A broker with a $65 million exit chose a 4,200-square-foot building on U.S. 41 over almost anywhere else he could have put that capital. That's not a small signal for a stretch of road a lot of people drive without a second look.

If you're watching what's changing in your own corner of Fort Myers and want a neighbor who actually tracks this stuff, not just the listings, Alicia Lee is always happy to talk through what's happening in your part of town. Let's Connect.