69° SUNNY, -
Wednesday, January 07, 2009, 4:08 pm
Prominent Chicago auctioneer apparently commits suicide; auctioned here in 2005
It was a shock for me to read today of the death of Chicago real estate executive Steven Good.
Good, 52, was chairman and CEO of a prominent real estate auction company, Sheldon Good & Co. Apparently, he took his own life by gunshot. His body was found Monday near Chicago.
Steven Good came to Sarasota in February 2005 to promote the auction of the Umbrella House, the Paul Rudolph-designed modernist icon in Lido Shores. Gary and Carol Stover were his clients.
In 2008, Sheldon Good & Co. signed a deal with Prudential Palms Realty and Rooks Morris Real Estate to auction property in Sarasota. But no auctions have been held yet.
Good is remembered by his colleagues in Chicago as an energetic, positive person. I interviewed him at length in advance of the Umbrella House auction, and then after the house failed to sell, and that seems like an accurate description.
Authorities say there is no indication that his death was related to the collapse of the property market. But with several business executives committing suicide in Europe recently, it makes one wonder, and shudder. -
Wednesday, January 07, 2009, 10:04 am
"Moderate rebound" seen for Sarasota market
Economist Hank Fishkind says the Sarasota real estate market has bottomed out and will rebound somewhat in 2009.
But his outlook is not so good for the Manatee market, where recovery is not expected until 2011, Fishkind said in the 2009 Fund Real Estate Forecast released by Attorneys’ Title Insurance Fund, Inc. (The Fund).
The report states:
-- "Both Sarasota and Manatee counties were victims of speculative investing that resulted in an excessive amount of homes on the market. However, Sarasota County is expected to have a small recovery in the existing homes market in 2010, while the existing homes market in Manatee County is expected to continue to drop through the next couple of years."
-- "In Sarasota County, the new single-family home market bottomed out in 2008. The average price of a new single-family home will see an upward trend toward 2012, with average prices reaching $262,000 that year."
-- "In Manatee County, closings of existing single-family units in 2006 were 50 percent off their 2005 peak of 8,000. This gap is expected to widen as the market is projected to drop for a few more years with average prices remaining flat through 2011."
-- "Closings for new condos are predicted to continue to decrease through 2012 in Manatee County, with only 164 closings predicted for 2012 compared to 284 in 2008. Average pricing is expected to bottom out in 2009 at $302,339 and to see a moderate increase through the remainder of the forecast."
For more on this story, see Michael Braga's report in Thursday's Herald-Tribune. -
Tuesday, December 09, 2008, 4:32 pm
Suds in the fountain, parrots in the trees
Sarasota native Susan Gollnick shares these delightful memories of growing up in Sarasota in the 1950s and '60s:
"Mr. Bubil: I thoroughly enjoyed your article in Saturday's paper about Sarasota.
"I grew up on Bay Shore Road near the Ringling Museum. My friend, Dede Buck, and I used to ride our bikes to the museum on Sunday afternoons when they offered free concerts in the courtyard. I spent a lot of time at the Circus Hall of Fame, too, since another friend's father was on the board and we could get in free whenever we wanted. We took the tour so often that we could have filled in anything that the tour guide missed!
"I remember Zinn's Restaurant very well, also, and was lucky to have Debbie Zinn as a friend in grammar school. This meant stopping in the kitchen and getting ourselves some ice cream or making a float. The Waterfall Room was really beautiful, and I believe the waterfall on the outside of the restaurant was the target many times for boys during Halloween when they put dish soap in it and the suds would flow out onto 41.
"My house was on the corner of Bay Shore and Corwood, which, back then for a short time, was a dirt road. Jungle Gardens was a favorite place to visit, and more than once some escapee (like a peacock or a parrot) would end up walking down the street or perch in one of our trees in the yard.
"I was part of the Sarasota High Marching Sailor Band, and I remember so well that on the day of the Memorial Day parade, as we ended up outside City Hall, the trumpeter would go inside the arch and play taps, and it would echo loud enough for everyone to hear.
"I remember the Florida Theater and the Ritz Theater downtown, also, and standing in line at the Ritz to get tickets to see "Cleopatra" with Elizabeth Taylor. In those days you could smoke in the theater, and it's amazing that somehow we all survived!
"All in all, it was a wonderul town to grow up in. And very safe. We could get on our bikes on Saturday morning and not come home until dinner. My mother knew all our friends' mothers because they'd served together on the PTA or she had met them going door to door collecting for the March of Dimes. We knew our boundaries in the neighborhood, and because we knew so many of our neighbors, the babysitting business was pretty good in my teens." -
Tuesday, December 09, 2008, 1:57 pm
"Boondoggle Boulevard" and an SHS-RHS orange fight
The memory banks are open! More reader feedback on Sarasota in the 1950s:
"It was fun reading your blog. Of course, it brought back lots of memories of growing up here. I was about six years ahead of you in age and years (we came in 1953), but had much the same experience. Jeff Lahurd was in my class at SHS.
"One thing I do regret about today's Sarasota (and probably the world) is the loss of 'neighborhood.' Growing up on Tulip Drive, we knew all of our neighbors. In today's world, we all seem so busy that we don't have time to interact with our own neighbors.
"Be glad you missed 'Boondoggle Boulevard' when they four laned U.S. 41. The dust filled our house it seemed like for years. The waste and graft from the project was legend.
"I remember the 'orange fight" in 1956 between SHS and RHS students when they tore up the orange grove to build what became South Gate."
-- Jim Tollerton -
Monday, December 08, 2008, 4:20 pm
Sarasota way back when: Mickey Mantle signed his autograph
Mike Hartenstine's prized autograph by New York Yankees baseball legend Mickey Mantle. (Courtesy of Mike Hartenstine)In my Dec. 6 column on the Sarasota of my youth (1958: Was Sarasota better, or just different?"), I mentioned a visit by the New York Yankees to Payne Park in the spring of 1962 to play the Chicago White Sox in a spring training baseball game. I related that my mother was upset before the game that Yankees star Mickey Mantle had shoved a boy who sought his autograph.
Mike Hartenstine, now a Sarasota real estate attorney but then a classmate of mine at Southside School, has a different account of that day. In defense of Mantle's reputation, I offer it here:
"Dear Harold: I enjoyed reading your column this morning, as well as last week’s column, on Sarasota in the 1950s and ’60s. Naturally, my memories of this place coincide closely with yours.
"My mother also took me to the Yankees game at Payne Park you wrote about (perhaps all the boys at Southside went). I took with me a collection of black-and-white photographs of all the Yankee players. My goal was to get Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle to autograph their photos. Contrary to your mother’s recollection, my experience was that Mantle was quite indulgent of his young fans. I distinctly remember standing in a circle of kids around Mantle, as he stood just beyond the bleachers outside the first-base dugout, as he autographed paper after paper. I got my chance to stick his photograph in front of him, and he signed it in blue ink -- not a scribble, but a very distinct “Mickey Mantle.” Perhaps Mantle finally had enough after I left with my autograph and did the shoving your mother remembers.
"My recollection of Maris squares exactly with your mother’s. The Yankee bus was pulled up right next to where Mantle was standing, and Maris went straight to the bus, ignoring all pleas for autographs. Whitey Ford and Joe Pepitone were nice enough, however, to reach through the bus window to autograph my photos of them.
"So I left with three autographed photos. I still have them. In fact, your column inspired me to pull them out and look at them again this morning. I have shown them to my 20-year-old son and admonished him to always keep these -- someday they will be worth something.
"Sarasota was such a smaller and safer community back then. My mother even let me ride my bike across the Trail on afternoons after school to play ball with friends on a vacant lot near Frank Rivers’ home on Clematis. That actually was not a dangerous thing to do in 1962, but, of course, no responsible parent today would dream of letting a young child venture alone across the Trail.
"Thanks for stirring so many memories in your columns. I am one of your consistent readers. Although my business is real estate law (and, therefore, your columns are always topical for me), I always enjoy best your reminiscences of our early days."
-- Mike Hartenstine -
Monday, December 08, 2008, 4:06 pm
A great small town, despite segregation
Harold,
"Thanks for the great article in the Dec. 6 Herald-Tribune. I've been living in Sarasota since 1960, and you brought back several great memories, and some painful ones. I was raised in Lakeland, so Sarasota’s segregation was no surprise. People sometimes forget that Florida was part of the Deep South.
"Segregation always bothered me. I was very proud of fostering -- as the only lawyer on the board of directors -- the desegregation of the Ringling Redskins in 1965, four years before the University of Florida football team signed its first two African-American players. One of them was Willie Jackson from here in Sarasota.
"The Lakeland High football team used to spend a week on Bradenton Beach each summer, and I remember eating at Smack's Drive-in and swimming at Lido Casino. Even in the early ’60s, you could fire a cannon down Main Street on Saturday without fear of hitting anyone. Downtown offices were closed on Saturday and Sunday, and barbers went fishing on Wednesday afternoons.
"A couple of years ago, a retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice I met at a gathering told me he was moving to Sarasota because we had professional theaters, opera, ballet and good restaurants. I told him we had that 250,000 people ago.
"Sarasota is a great small city, but it was also a wonderful town."
-- Art Ginsburg -
Monday, December 08, 2008, 1:18 pm
"Where would one find a better place to live?"
Dear Harold,
What a marvelous article you wrote about Sarasota 50 years ago. Since I have been here for only four years, I cannot compare the old days with the new, but within this short frame of time, I have loved Sarasota from the moment I moved here and feel fortunate having discovered it as a place to settle for the rest of my life.
I have often heard moans from old-timers, and, sure, it would be nice to go back to some of the best stuff of those olden days, whether in New Jersey, Ohio or here. But this community has become, even from 2004 to 2008, a sophisticated, complex and interesting town. Sadly, the economy has managed to mess us up, and many wonderful businesses are going away, but the "spirit of Sarasota" is bound to rebound. And, yes, for overall living, where would one find a better place to live?
-- Carolyn Meeker -
Monday, December 08, 2008, 1:17 pm
From Bradenton, "fond memories of a small, friendly community"
Harold,
Congratulations on a well-written retrospective in your two-part series on Sarasota. While I can't contribute anything to your excellent narrative, we came to Bradenton from Pennsylvania in the late ’40s, so have many fond memories of a small, friendly community which has, like Sarasota, seen explosive growth and changes over the decades.
-- Tony Ratner -
Monday, December 08, 2008, 1:13 pm
Giving the Smack its due
I mentioned in Part II of the column ("1958: Is Sarasota better, or just different?") that I had never eaten at the Smack restaurant at the corner of Osprey and Main, and barely remembered it. I also referred to it as a burger joint. That brought this response:
"Harold, Loved your memories ... and the pictures. However, you must never-ever-never-ever refer to Smack's as a “burger joint.” There were white-painted wooden benches and tables at the front of the property; and that huge, shell-covered pine tree-shaded parking area, where we sat with our dates in our cars and were served by crisply clad and efficient waitresses delicious food freshly prepared in the kitchen.
"Sure, a Smack hamburger was our favorite (not a burger), and believe me, you’ve never tasted a hamburger like Smack’s. Smack also featured other “entrees” ... and salads ... and hot fudge sundaes and pies. And no one ever stood in line. This was not a “burger joint”! This was our teen social scene in the ’40's. Riverview was not in our picture at all (did not exist) -- Sarasota High was it.
"As a former cheerleader (for four years!), I knew the schedule, which included some bus trips to other towns: Palmetto, Bradenton, Fort Myers, Punta Gorda, Arcadia. Friday night was football night, followed by the dance in the gym, and winding up at Smack, of course.
"Sarasota was a great place for teens. I’m sorry that our kids can’t have that kind of experience. But, it’s still a great place to live and I’m still glad I returned to my hometown."
-- Sue Blue -
Monday, December 08, 2008, 1:02 pm
"The Game of Sarasota"
Very interesting column. A few weeks ago, I purchased, at a flea market at the Sarasota auditorium downtown, a board game called "POWER PLAY" (in mint condition-never used) that was made in 1986. “The Game of Sarasota" was sold/distributed by The Sarasota Jaycees – it even lists all their officers and directors on the face of the game board. Its format is like Monopoly, with many properties shown with various dollar values. Business names like Bill Watson Hardware, Anchor Office Supplies, Harbor Lights Oyster Bar, Stockyard, Cascade Inc. Realtors etc, etc -- I couldn't find any in the current phone book.
It was the creative idea of an architect in Englewood. He says he did quite a few around the U.S. Your column today illustrated the changes since 1958. I was amazed at the changes since 1986! Just thought I'd add this little addendum to your look back.
-- Dick O'Dowd -
Monday, December 08, 2008, 12:51 pm
E-mails pour in regarding Sarasota of 50 years ago
Judging from my in-box, my two-part Letter From Home series on Sarasota in 1958, when my family moved here, connected with readers, whether they have lived here for 50 years or just moved here recently. I will post some of those e-mails to my blog today.
-
Saturday, December 06, 2008, 4:56 pm
Hundreds attend Paul Rudolph panel discussion at Yale
The Paul Rudolph panel at Yale: architects Lord Norman Foster, Carl Abbott and Lord Richard Rogers, and moderator Paul Goldberger, from left. (Courtesy Photo)More than 600 people attended the Paul Rudolph Celebration at Yale University last month, including Sarasota architect Carl Abbott FAIA, who was invited to participate in a panel discussion of Rudolph’s work.
Joining Abbott on the panel, titled “The Rudolph Years: Yale and the World,” were two of his classmates at Yale in 1962, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. Both are now world-famous architects, Pritzker Prize winners and British lords.
All three were taught in master’s classes by Rudolph when the “Sarasota school of architecture” stalwart was chairman of the Yale architecture school.
The recent celebration focused on the restoration and rededication of one of Yale’s most important modern structures – the Art and Architecture Building, designed by Rudolph in the early 1960s. The building was renamed Paul Rudolph Hall.
The Abbott-Foster-Rogers panel, moderated by Paul Goldberger, architecture editor of The New York Times, reviewed aspects of Yale education under Rudolph. They also discussed their numerous road trips together visiting important Architecture across America.
Goldberger commented that one of Rudolph’s main points was to have each student study many options and then follow his own path. For Rogers and Foster, this has meant large-scale public projects of world significance. For Abbott, it has meant small-scale projects inspired and informed by nature and the land.
Many of those in attendance ere important international architects and architectural critics, said Abbott. -
Saturday, December 06, 2008, 6:00 pm
More 50-year-old memories of Sarasota
My Letter From Home columns on Sarasota in 1958 have brought a lot of comment from readers, especially those who have lived here for a long time. My memories bring back their own memories of a special place.
Newcomers, on the other hand, have said that they wish they could have seen Sarasota back then.
The memories that my sister, Joyce Seger, and I related in the columns are just part of the story. We have a lot more where those came from. Among them:
-- The Penny’s store on Main Street. My mother worked there for a time. One day, she brought home a two-piece outfit that Joyce wore to the Circus Hall of Fame when we went there with our cousins, Sharon and Rick Bubil, and their parents, Dick and Ivy. The Circus Hall of Fame is closed now, but it was on the North Trail right across from the airport.
-- I don’t remember Penny’s, but I do recall that my mother worked at the salt-water taffy store where Five Points Park is now, near the White Tower restaurant, the one with the big rocking chair on the roof. A fringe benefit of her employment was that she brought home samples, which we eagerly devoured.
-- Sarasota was changing before our eyes. Everyone was amazed at Victor Lundy’s wood-and-glass design of the Galloway’s furniture store next to Sarasota High School (it has been shockingly remodeled into a Visionworks store). Around the corner, Paul Rudolph’s addition to Sarasota High was about to be built. One day, we drove past it with my uncle and father in the front seat. My dad asked his brother, “What’s that?” “Oh,” my uncle harrumphed, “that’s that MODERN architecture.” We went to Alta Vista Elementary for a few weeks, where my class was in the brand-new Lundy building with the wing-like roof that is still there, before moving and going to Southside School.
-- “The architecture was so different from up North,” my sister recalls, referring to both the modern buildings and the Spanish-style structures from the 1920s. “Everything up North was Colonial. This was square. We didn’t understand the Spanish-style houses. (Our grandmother) said, ‘Oh, they’re damp.’ She would know, because she lived upstairs at Prospect Street and Orange Avenue in a Spanish-style apartment.” It’s still there, on the northeast corner.
-- Five Points was the center of our universe. In the 1920s, a watering trough was removed from the middle of the intersection. In the 1950s, a war memorial and flagpole was removed. Perhaps it was a traffic hazard, even though signs at the bottom of the memorial warned drivers to KEEP TO RIGHT. Maybe this explains the lingering dislike of roundabouts in Sarasota.
-- Those who didn’t drive walked (I distinctly remember my mother walking us to the Florida Theater on Main Street one Christmas break to see “Babes in Toyland.”) Or they took the bus. The bus station was at Five Points.
-- Shopping-centers hadn’t caught on yet. You walked from store to store to make your purchases. Fortunately, the Sears store was on lower Main Street before the big new Sears opened next to the Food Fair at Bahia Vista and U.S. 41 around 1960. That was a big event.
-- Five years earlier, the Lindsays built a new headquarters for the Herald-Tribune a few blocks north of Bahia Vista, at Wood Street. The story goes that when Mr. Lindsay showed the site to his business friends, they asked, “Why would you want to build this far out?”
-- We were allowed to roam all over our west-side neighborhood as long as we didn’t cross the Trail. But when I was just 6 years old, I sneaked away from home and started biking up Orange Avenue looking for my dad when he was late coming home from work. He spotted me, around 6 p.m., near the Hudson Bayou bridge. He was not happy as he tossed my bike into the back of his truck and told me to climb in the cab.
-- My mother drove a 1947 Plymouth with three-speed transmission (stick shift on the steering column), a choke and a push-button starter. (Explain that to your grandchildren who are just now learning to drive.) The heater hung beneath the dashboard on the passenger’s side, and the upholstery was a scratchy, woolen material. Auto travel in this vehicle was not a pleasure, although we took that car all over this part of the state to go fishing and sightseeing. Around 1962, we upgraded to a 1958 Dodge that had an automatic transmission controlled by push buttons to the left of the steering wheel. This car was much more comfortable because the windows were bigger, making it more functional at the Trail Drive-In Theater (again, explain to grandchildren).
-- There were several features of Florida life back then that one does not forget. Among them are electric fans, screen doors and cockroaches. In the days before air-conditioning, we were cooled by electric fans during the long, oh-so-hot summers. We had a white one that was meant to be installed into a window. But we just carried it from room to room, and that thing ran and ran.
-- Screen doors were important because they kept out the mosquitoes but let in the breezes. These wooden doors were kept shut by long springs. Of course, we would run through them to get outside and let them slam behind us. Not a pleasant sound, but one that stays with you a while. Like 50 years.
-- Our house on Floyd Street had a cafeteria door. Nearby was a pantry. My sister recalls that we closed ourselves into pantry and lit candles, with the paper towels all around. To further cement this event into family history, we ripped the labels off the canned foods and marked them “Brand X.” Mom was so pleased. (That house had a ringer washer on the back porch, and a clothesline; again, grandparents explain.)
-- This was shortly before the gas stove blew up in Mom’s face. She wasn’t badly burned, but did have to wear bandages for a while. “Dad had to sign our report cards,” Joyce recalls. “Mom couldn’t write. ‘Wow, my dad signed my report card.’ Dad stepped right up. That was really something for him to get involved like that."
-- Our house on Arlington had an apartment in the back with a man who lived by himself. One day, my sister and I knocked on his door and borrowed a nickel for a Coke at the Sundries store in Hillview Village. “Mom was mortified,” Joyce said. But he must not have seemed to creepy to us.
-- We were awoken each morning by the squeaky brakes of the milkman’s delivery truck. But we did not have a milkman. My mother would just send us to Marable’s for a quart of milk, 27 cents. Across the street was Southside Drugs, where I learned that Bill Mazeroski had ended the seventh game of the 1960 World Series with a home run to beat the Yankees. How did I learn it? In the newspaper. It may even have been a special edition that was printed for breaking news, called an Extra.
-- That store had a soda counter where we could get Cokes with a squirt of chocolate. Too good. Nearby was A&J Sporting Goods, where I lusted after a baseball glove that was form-fitted for your hand. At $5, it was cost-prohibitive. Most of us boys were obsessed with baseball and knew little about pro or college football (1958 was the year Florida and Florida State began their rivalry, although it was considered a minor game at the time for the Gators).
-- Billy Goodman, a star major-league ballplayer, lived next door to my friend on Waldemere. No gated community for him.
-- Dad and Mom didn’t like the heat. Mom had always lived in Newport, and Dad was from Pennsylvania. “We actually decided to move back, and sold our matching bikes from Sears, and then decided not to move back,” Joyce said. “But it was hot … and the mosquitoes. Mom and Dad were young, and the idea of moving seemed like a solution. But we persevered.”
-- Housing affordability was an issue. “But we were so happy that I think we could have been happy anywhere. We were one of the few to have a happy childhood,” Joyce said.
-- The Cold War was on, and Russia had the bomb. But the frightening thing on a personal level was polio. We had our polio shots back in Newport, but took the oral vaccine at Southside School a few years later. We drank it out of a pleated paper cup. The times seemed so modern.
-- This could go on and on, but let me mention beaded Florida souvenir Indian belts at Cypress Gardens; trips over the original single span of the Sunshine Skyway, with the steel grate at top that made your tires buzz; my mother driving blind in a white-out thunderstorm over narrow Siesta Bridge with the bait stand; swimming lessons from the Red Cross at Lido Beach, in the Gulf; visiting grandparents who would get off the train at the Atlantic Coast Line Station, at the east end of Main Street, toting a container of live Maine lobster on dry ice; our gracious neighbors on Arlington, the Staleys -- he had been a chef for the Ringlings.
Sarasota in 1958: A much, much different place, but a place whose charm lives on in the Sarasota of today. -
Tuesday, December 02, 2008, 5:21 pm
Readers react to column about Sarasota in 1958
The Seaboard Air Line train at the Lemon Avenue station in the early 1960s. (The Ford Falcon car first appeared in 1960.) (Photo Courtesy of Jeff LaHurd)Some reader responses to my Letter From Home column on my family's move to Sarasota 50 years ago:
Hi Harold,
"What wonderful memories you brought to me on Saturday. My family came on VJ Day 1945, just a few years before yours. We bought a home on Irving Street, west of the Trail, and my younger sister and I walked to Southside School and eventually to SHS. Life was wonderful and safe; we were what I think of as 'beach kids.' Most activities took place at Lido as a family and as teenagers.
"We rode bikes and buses everywhere, walked to First Methodist downtown, and, in fact, walked most everywhere -- my mother did not drive and my dad worked out on Central Avenue (hence my spearheading on the city commission the redevelopment of the Rosemary District many years later).
"My folks came from West Virginia because my grandparents vacationed and fished in Sarasota in the '30s. The influx of residents began after the war, when so many men who had been stationed in this area decided to return and live. The development of air-conditioning and mosquito control (I still shudder at the idea we ran behind the mosquito spray truck as it spewed DDT as we laughed in the fog) changed the life of many who came to Florida. We had neither as a child, so we played out side in shady areas and just didn't know any better about heat. Of course, the beach provided blessed relief! The always-counted-upon everyday afternoon rains provided cooler evenings, making sleep possible without heat.
You mentioned Food Fair at Midtown. Years ago, Marables and Southside Drugs were our local stores, and we patronized Southside Drugs and the post office for many years, again with great memories. Remembering now our Margaret Ann, Thornton's, and other local markets, and of course our teen age lives revolved around Smack's at corner of Osprey and Main.
"It was a great place to grow up, and even now, with all the growth and development, it still is a great place to live. Thank you for the memories."
-- Mollie Cardamone
"Mr. Bubil: I really enjoyed your column. It brought back memories of visiting my grandparents who were your neighbors on Arlington Street. My brother and I would visit the 5 and dime, which, I think, is where Sam Snead's is now, to buy baseball cards or anything else we could get for the occasional dime my mother would spare us. I remember the trips to Lido Beach over the wooden 'little old humpback bridge.'
"When I got tired of the cold and snow up north, it was an easy decision to choose the familiar Sarasota. Thanks for the memories!"
-- Dan Kriwitsky
Dear Harold: "You are describing Sarasota activity that I missed entirely. I am very well acquainted with the 1930s and '40s, but left to seek my adventure 'up north' in the '50s, and when I returned, things had really changed! I still miss the Lido Casino, the Hover Arcade, the Seaboard Airline Railway, Lord's Arcade, the memorial monument in the center of Five Points, Smacks's ... etc, etc. It's still a great place to be though; I'm glad I'm here. Thanks for your recalling."
-- Sue Blue -
Thursday, November 20, 2008, 11:59 am
Sarasota still has her charms
Sarasota's bayfront, ever more crowded with boats, remains its crown jewel. (Staff photos / Harold Bubil)Michael Pollick, in his excellent article on Costa Rican real estate in the Sunday Herald-Tribune, convinced me. Yes, fewer people are coming to Florida, and more Floridians are leaving for more affordable places, such as Tennessee, or, as he said, Costa Rica.
Is that a bad thing? Florida can certainly fit more people, but if the same percentage of baby boomers retired here as did their parents and grandparents, we would become too-crowded California, although without the mountains and the earthquakes and the wildfires.
Looking at Pollick's photographs, I can see that Costa Rica is pretty. But Florida didn't get ugly just because it got more expensive. Look at my pictures, taken yesterday from the top of the Marina Tower condo in downtown Sarasota.
Things aren't so bad here.
Yes, it is hot in the summer. But not Arizona hot. And yes, we can have cool weeks like this one, but not Tennessee or Ohio or Idaho cool. As I get older, I don't like colder, so the weather here is not so bad, either.
Florida faces challenges, especially regarding property insurance. But it is still a very appealing place. It just is not the same as it once was, which can be good or bad, depending on your perspective.
Harold Bubil
