Ghost developments abound
Back in 1953, when I was 10 years old, my family lived for a short time in Daytona Beach – out on what local folks called “The Peninsula.” We had a tiny post-war ranch house just a block from “The World’s Most Famous Beach.” It was so long ago NASCAR was new and cars raced on the broad flat sands south of town – with race times driven by the tides.
Starting in our back yard and stretching north past the city limits into Ormond Beach was a great overgrown, jungle-like tract known as the Whitehair Property. Hundreds of acres that were seemingly undisturbed, until you spotted pairs of crumbling stucco columns regularly spaced along US Route A1A. Aligned behind these columns were gap-toothed rows of tall imported palms that marked streets hidden by vegetation, pavement crumbling and disappearing into the sandy soil. It was the last remnant of an abandoned development that dated back to the land boom of the 1920s.
Although fascinated by this evidence of what looked to me like a lost civilization, I hardly discerned what I just finished describing. But Mr. Deeves, our really old cross-the-street neighbor – maybe as old as I am today – detected my interest and explained what it was and related the story of what had happened to cause abandonment of the project almost three decades earlier.
And now, some 55 years later, you well might ask why I’m subjecting you to this apparently random trip down Memory Lane. Ask or not, I’ll tell you.
These recollections came to me over the last week or so as I drove around the Eastern Shore, passing development after development, each in a state of suspended animation. Grand entrances with nothing but weed-choked lots fronting on littered streets with incongruous names like “Majestic Beauty Avenue,” all silent and redolent of decline. In some, landscaping had been installed before work stopped, but after months of neglect the trees and shrubs no longer suggested vitality and freshness, but simply provided punctuation in this message of desolation.
I had been present at the births of many of these developments – when they were approved by planning commissions and city councils. I listened to the excitement of their creators as they described how beautiful these additions to our community will be when they mature. I watched with anticipation as acres were cleared, roads and utilities installed and gateways and signs built to beckon buyers to visit and chose. And now as I look at so many of these “Fields of Dreams,” I recall that long- abandoned dream of some developer back during the original Florida land boom.
Look around for yourselves. While close-in developments are not exactly booming these days, at least most of them have some houses and are still visibly viable. But as you go further afield, you come upon developments that were advertised as the next big thing and now, except for the abandoned streets, are indiscernible from the sweet potato field next door.
Still unsure of the nature of what’s gone wrong in the development business? Go out S.R. 104 to the Fish River. On the west bank once stood the entrance to “The Falls of Fairhope” Or maybe it was “Fairhope Falls” – years have passed since a sign was last present. But no matter, it has changed hands at least once, a new entrance built on Langford Road, been renamed (I think) and now the whole project is up for sale.
Across Langford is the remnant of a 400 home subdivision – approved years ago, land was cleared and then progress halted. Now repackaged and offered in various configurations resulting in some 90 lots being placed on the market – not an altogether bad outcome, but hardly a good omen for the real estate market.
Up in Daphne along C.R. 13, French Settlement sits fallow – streets and utilities in, landscaping and massive entrance pillars (purportedly for housing pigeons), with one lonely unsold house up front. Depressing for all involved, especially the neighbors to the west who suffered flooding from the development’s drainage system and now have to suffer its impact on their property values.
Even south of Fairhope in the normally hot, high-end Point Clear area, there sits a now-nameless, derelict subdivision (sign and developer’s trailer disappeared a year or so ago). A matrix of streets – once with street signs, but they too have disappeared – with nothing but weeds having sprung up on the building lots.
The bloom is off the boom and I’d like to think landowners, developers and their financial backers recognize this. Maybe they will take my introductory reminiscences as a cautionary tale and hold up further conversion of virgin land (or at least semi-virgin – assuming that’s possible) into new developments. Not every attempt to convert an old field into an “Old Field” (If you’ve not kept up: It’s growing – albeit slowly – development on 181) is successful.
So I leave you folks in the land development business with an appeal to take a breather. The demand just isn’t there right now and our community as a whole would be better served by your being a little late in responding to a turnaround than to bet on the come by adding even more lots to what sure looks like a saturated market. To believe that you will be an exception to today’s market forces may be a triumph of hope over experience.
And a final warning: I checked on that overgrown development in Daytona. It got built out in the 1960s – almost 40 years after some long-dead developer decided to make money on the seemingly endless demand for housing in a hot market.
Contact Pete Gleszer at jubilee@lagniappemobile.com.
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