Naples' upscale Pelican Bay community gets private COVID-19 vaccine clinic

Residents of Naples' upscale Pelican Bay community who are 65 or older will receive COVID-19 vaccines in a private event Friday held by the North Collier Fire Control & Rescue District.

Pelican Bay is the largest private residential community in Collier County with 14,000 residents and 87 homeowners associations, according to the president of the governing organization.

It is also the fire district's largest source of property tax revenue, said Jim Burke, a longtime Pelican Bay resident who serves as an elected fire commissioner for North Collier.

The five elected North Collier fire commissioners were not involved in the decision to vaccinate at Pelican Bay, according to fire district spokeswoman Lori Freiburg.

Three other gated communities recently have asked for a similar arrangement for their 65 and older residents, she said. They are Wilderness Country Club, Pelican Marsh and Mediterra. Freiburg said no decisions have been made on those requests, and it will depend on how many vaccines the fire district receives from the county health department. 

Pelican Bay is a mix of gated and non-gated residential communities of 6,500 single-family estates, luxury condominiums and high rises. Its website describes it as one of the area's largest exclusive enclaves within three square miles near the gulf with private beaches and world-class amenities.

Jim Hoppensteadt, president and chief operating officer of the Pelican Bay Foundation, the governing arm of the community, acknowledges the vaccination program with the fire district raises questions of favoritism in light of recent events in Florida.

Gov. Ron DeSantis is under fire for a pop-up vaccination clinic last week at exclusive Lakewood Ranch in Manatee County that is home to two of the county's wealthiest ZIP codes and developed by one of the governor’s campaign contributors, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Another pop-up clinic in Charlotte County held by a developer and DeSantis donor offered the vaccine to homeowners in a gated country club community, their family members and members of the community’s semi-private club, the news site reported.

“I understand the perception,” Hoppensteadt said. “I don’t know a way to draw a fine distinction between them and us. We didn’t go out and solicit North Collier Fire for this."

The fire district is sending 10 paramedics to give shots to 400 residents who have been randomly selected from an online registration system set up by the community's public relations company.

More than 1,500 people have registered so far online at Pelican Bay's website, which requires residents' membership number. Pelican Bay is handling registration and verifying eligibility. Vaccination will be ongoing in Pelican Bay, according to Freiburg.

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The fire district approached Pelican Bay earlier this month offering the vaccine clinic, North Collier Deputy Chief Jorge Aguilera said. The community was chosen because of its population of people 65 and older and because it can handle registration of its residents, he said. Roughly 70% of residents at Pelican Bay are 65 and older.

“We can’t be involved in the registration process, we don’t have the ability to do that,” Aguilera said.

The 400 doses are being provided to the fire district by the state Health Department in Collier, Aguilera said. The shots will be given at Pelican Bay's clubhouse.

The fire district has held two other private vaccination events, where it provided 170 shots for age 65-and-up employees of the orthopedic medical device company Arthrex and Avow hospice. Some of the Avow employees vaccinated are front-line medical workers.

The Collier health department decides with each organization how many doses it will receive, spokeswoman Kristine Hollingsworth said. That will include Pelican Bay’s ongoing vaccination of its residents, she said.

Hollingsworth said the health department actively looks for organizations that serve minority groups for fair distribution of the vaccine, yet it is not tracking how many doses are being provided to minorities.

“We work with our community partners to decide the number of doses to be provided,” she said, such as the independent fire districts and EMS to distribute vaccines and identify areas where those 65 and older may reside.

That includes the Healthcare Network, a nonprofit healthcare organization serving underserved residents, and faith-based organizations who serve minority communities to ensure equitable distribution of the vaccine, she said.

"This outreach is countywide," Hollingsworth said.

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The organizations, like North Collier fire, that will be conducting the vaccinations receive guidance from the health department, she said.

Through Feb. 22, 72,699 people have been vaccinated in Collier County, according to the Florida Department of Health. About 59% are white, 0.08% are Black, 9.4% are classified as other races and about 31% are unknown. White people make up about 89% of Collier’s population, while Black people comprise 7.3%.

In Lee County, 105,333 people have been vaccinated through Feb. 22. About 65% are white, 1.7% are Black, 7.8% are listed as other races and about 25% are unknown. White people make up 87% of Lee’s population while Black people comprise 9.1%.

Burke, the Pelican Bay resident and elected fire commissioner since 2008 to the North Collier fire district, said he was not lobbied by Pelican Bay leaders to get the ball rolling.

Pelican Bay contributes the largest share, about 20%, of the $34 million in property tax revenue that the North Collier fire district receives from its North Naples region only, he said. 

"So it is an important segment," he said. "It is substantial."

Before 2014 when North Collier fire district merged with Big Corkscrew Island Fire, a count in 2013 showed 234 homeowner associations and 452 condominium associations in the North Collier district, according to Freiburg, the fire district spokeswoman.

Burke said he had no idea how the arrangement with the fire district happened.

“The first I heard about Pelican Bay and North Collier was the notice I received from Pelican Bay, so I learned about it the same time as everyone else in Pelican Bay,” Burke said. 

Burke, who is 83, said he immediately signed up and said he is not among the 400 slated to get the vaccine Friday through the random selection process. He recognizes how people outside of Pelican Bay could see favoritism at play.

“I can understand that,” he said. “I would probably feel the same way if some other community got it first. Had I been picked in the lottery, I don’t know how I would have handled it.”

Dave Trecker, 85, who lives in Pelican Bay and is active in civic events, said he doesn’t know details about how the vaccination clinic with the fire district came about.

He believes the health department in Collier wanted to pick a neighborhood with a lot of elderly people to see if vaccinations could get done quicker, Trecker said. He and his wife got vaccinated in Miami.

“I personally don’t see this as anything terribly nefarious,” he said. “I understand the perception. I have seen no evidence of favoritism. I think affluence here is less important than a high percentage of 65 and older.” 

There are no ties between the fire district or the other elected fire commissioners at North Collier to the three gated communities that recently asked for similar vaccine arrangements, Freiburg said.

“Of the other four commissioners, none live in any of the other communities expressing an interest to the district in hosting their own vaccination clinics,” she said in an email.

The elected fire commissioners are policy makers and had no role in the vaccine clinic, she said.

“The day-to-day operational functions of the district are handled solely by non-elected staff members,” she said.

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How it started

The North Collier fire district decided last summer to get involved in handling vaccinations, which state law allows, said Aguilera, the deputy chief. It meant developing an agreement between the health department and the fire district’s medical director.

“Back in June we began the process,” Aguilera said. “It took months.”

The document was signed in January, and the fire district and its paramedics who would be giving the vaccine needed to go through training. 

Fire district paramedics have been at the health department’s vaccine site at North Collier Regional Park, along with other agencies, since the second week of January to help, Aguilera said.

“The fire chief's (Eloy Ricardo) mission, other than running 911 calls, is vaccinating our community now,” Aguilera said.

Earlier this month, North Collier paramedics vaccinated employees 65 and older with Arthrex, the orthopedic medical device company headquartered in North Naples, and did the same for Avow hospice employees 65 and older who had not already been vaccinated, he said.

Employees with the two companies were vaccinated on two separate days, all at Avow’s campus, he said. All told, 170 doses of Moderna vaccine provided by the health department were used during the two days.

“Those were the first to test our ability to do this,” he said.

The plan was to do the vaccines a week ago at Pelican Bay before bad weather halted vaccine delivery to Florida, so Friday is the plan with 10 paramedics go to the community center at Pelican Bay

“We are trying to be part of the process of solving the pandemic in our community, but we realize our limitations,” Aguilera said. “We have to watch ourselves to make sure we don’t get overcommitted.”’

In all cases of future community-based vaccine clinics, the fire district cannot be involved in registering and scheduling the vaccine, he said. 

The Pelican Bay clinic

About 300 or more residents at Glenview and Marbella, two senior living communities in Pelican Bay with congregate living centers, already have been vaccinated, said Hoppensteadt, president of the foundation.

That leaves 11,000 residents — about 70% of them are 65 and older — but what’s unknown is how many have already gotten vaccinated elsewhere, he said.

“There’s no other private community that has the size and scale of Pelican Bay,” Hoppensteadt said. “We are pretty unique.”

It is possible Pelican Bay will host vaccination clinics for other organizations once it is finished with its own residents. 

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Hoppensteadt said. “I can’t commit to that until I know how well this is going to work. I’m in a ‘first thing first mode’ right now. I need to get through a vaccine cycle.”

The registration process for the vaccine is “a daunting task and requires resources” and that’s why an outside public relations company that works with Pelican Bay on its community elections was used to create a vaccine registration form, he said.

Once residents register for the vaccine, a number is assigned to them and their number goes into a pool and a random generation system is used to pull numbers, he said. From there, Pelican Bay calls residents who have been selected.

Hoppensteadt said the vaccine distribution is limited to Pelican Bay residents because vaccinating is a new effort and residents pay for the foundation.

That means Ross Edlund, who lives in the same ZIP code as Pelican Bay but across the street in the Pine Ridge neighborhood, could not get vaccinated through Pelican Bay.

“It just smacks of favoritism,” said Edlund, 69. “I just drove to Miami two days ago with my wife to Hard Rock Stadium where we got the vaccine.”

Hoppensteadt said the decision to offer the vaccine did not require a vote of the seven-member foundation board, although he presented it as an initiative.

He said employees who are 65 and older are eligible and the registration site remains open.

Reporter Dan DeLuca contributed to this report. 

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