Bonita Springs has about 1.5 million square feet of vacant commercial space and the city could do more to encourage business development, the Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce told City Council on Wednesday.

Andrew DeSalvo, chairman of the chamber’s economic development committee, said a business community survey has identified a few steps the city could take to improve the business climate.

With these, he said, the city is positioned to be on the top of the region’s economic development.

“We can compete and beat anybody, Lee County, Collier County, if that’s what we decide we want to do,” DeSalvo said.

With 100 responses to the chamber’s business climate survey, nearly half were more optimistic about their businesses in the coming year compared with the past year and a third said they expected to hire more employees in the next 12 months.

More than half didn’t know what the city and county did to support economic development, the report showed.

The top three priorities businesses identified for the city or county were: eliminating impact fees, streamlining processes and establishing incentives for job creation.

DeSalvo asked City Council to consider four actions.

First, the city could adopt the Lee County Horizon Council list of targeted industries, which includes aviation, clean technologies, corporate headquarters and life sciences.

The city could also explore a program similar to Collier County that waived impact fees when a business changes the use for which a space was originally permitted, DeSalvo said.

Other recommendations he had for the council were to expedite the permit review process and create an economic development office in the city that collaborates with the chamber.

Councilman John Spear said much of the talk on economic development thus far has been broad, and these specific suggestions needed to be discussed and debated more thoroughly.

“I would like to see us sit down at a joint workshop with this committee and spend a couple of hours and really explore some of this stuff,” Spear said.

A workshop date was not immediately set.

In other news, City Council agreed that city staff could utilize court ordered juvenile community service labor for such work as graffiti cleanup and trail and ditch clearing.

The city will draft a letter to Tallahassee urging law makers not to dip into the State Transportation Trust Fund to divert $426 million to other state issues.

Connect with Tara E. McLaughlin at www.naplesnews.com/staff/tara-mclaughlin/