Lake Worth and Stuart   May 2-3

These have been days of gawking, although that really started in Cutler Ridge south of Miami and has continued up the coast. The size of the houses I’ve gone past has stunned me, at least the ones I can see. The only evidence of some of them is the main gate and the service entrance.  And more continue to be built. There is no construction lull among South Florida’s very wealthy.

Unable to control myself any longer, I stopped at an ocean-front construction site in Taquesta.  The lady in the on-site construction office said, No, the three buildings were not hotels but homes under construction for two men from “the Northeast.” One is a banker, the other a hedge fund manager. The banker is building the two largest and has not decided in which one he’ll live—the 12,000 square-foot one or the one next door with two swimming pools, one for winter, the other for summer, and two tennis courts.

About a mile up the road I stopped to talk to a fellow bike tourist. Ed Whelan was out testing his new equipment in preparation for a summer ride from Canada’s British Columbia to Key West. He laughed when I mentioned the huge houses I had just seen. “Oh, those are being built by my friend Jerry. He just finished one for Jamie Dimon (chairman, president and CEO of JP Morgan) that cost $29 million.”

I churned on and suddenly a trailer park appeared on both sides of the road—ocean and inlet sides. A trailer park in the midst of six- and seven-figure houses?!  The ebullient Cindy Lou Corum, the town of Briny Breezes’ only employee, filled me in:

With a population of 411, most of them snowbirds, Briny Breezes is the only mobile home park in Florida with beach front property. It’s an incorporated town covering 43 acres.

Its wealthy neighbors have long considered the tiny tin town an eyesore.

In October 2005, a developer offered to buy the entire town for $500 million. Each lot owner would have received slightly more than $1 million for a lot for which the majority paid between $30,000 to $40,000. The lot owners approved the sale and hired a lawyer to pursue it. The developer raised his offer to $510 million.

All this hubbub got the attention of the wealthy neighbors who were aghast with the developer’s intention of erecting two 20-story condominiums. They formed committees to oppose the sale. However, on July 30, 2007, when the earnest money  was due to the town, the deal was cancelled by the developer over a dispute with the town board of directors over how long a period was to be allowed for due diligence.

So what the neighbors once considered a mole on the face of their beautiful Florida ocean front has now become a beauty mark.