DIY library movement comes to southwest Florida, with help from CHNEP

Newly-installed libraries at Four Mile Cove Ecological Preserve and Sirenia Vista Park were paid for by a grant from the Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program

Heidi Moore-Hart said she and her husband, Chris Hart, were driving one day in a neighborhood that borders the river in Cape Coral when something that looked like a cross between a bathroom medicine cabinet and a dollhouse, mounted outside on posts, caught their attention.

“We saw two people standing in front of this structure, and we were fascinated,” she said. “We turned around to go look, and it was a Little Free Library (LFL). We thought, ‘How cool is that?’”

The couple, who are 2/3 of the ownership team of Cape Coral Brewing Company, looked up the nonprofit Wisconsin organization that promotes literacy through these neighborhood book exchanges and noted the idea as something they wanted to add to their brewery once they opened for business.