Downturn puts brakes on rapid change in Florida Keys
Luxury developers with grand plans swarmed the Florida Keys during the real-estate boom, paying big bucks to gobble up campgrounds, trailer...
By Cammy Clark
Miami Herald
MIAMI — Luxury developers with grand plans swarmed the Florida Keys during the real-estate boom, paying big bucks to gobble up campgrounds, trailer parks, marinas, mom-and-pop motels — even renowned Holiday Isle and its World Famous Tiki Bar.
Many Keys' residents became alarmed that their "Mayberry-by-the-Sea" was heading toward extinction.
Then came the real-estate and credit crash. From Key Largo to Key West, at least 18 pricey projects screeched to a halt in 2007 and 2008. They included The Shore in Islamorada — site of Home & Garden Television's 2008 Dream Home — and Harbor Place, now a city block of dust in Key West's Historic Seaport District.
"It doesn't feel like the rich people are taking over anymore," said Shawn Wilson, a Realtor at Prudential Keyside Properties. "Everybody's broke."
The economic downturn has become a reprieve — perhaps temporary — for the small amount of inexpensive lodging that remains in the Keys. And it halted other developers' potential purchases of trailer parks and budget motels.
But it left scars, too. Properties that housed residents and tourists are now bulldozed and empty, marked by chain-link fences and "keep out" signs.
Today, the legacy of the Keys' land rush is a list of foreclosures, bankruptcies and litigation, some of it so complicated that developments have been left in indefinite limbo.
One of the biggest: the $220 million Marlin Bay Yacht Club in the Middle Keys.
"The developers went under. It went to the bank. That bank went under, and it has gone to another bank — I lose track," said Marathon planning director George Garrett.
Other properties have made their way through the legal process and are back on the market at 2003 and 2004 prices — preboom property values, but still relatively high compared with other parts of Florida.
In Islamorada, for instance, the 25-unit, condo-hotel named Indigo Bay was about 95 percent completed when the money ran out for the now-bankrupt developer DB Key Largo. After two unsuccessful auctions, it remains empty — and for sale. Asking price: $6 million, reduced from more than $8 million and millions less than the developer expected to make if the units had been sold individually.
Most of the other upscale projects never began construction.
read more..........
seattletimes.nwsource.com |
