Once only a minor part of Florida’s booming housing market, highrise condos are now making a mark up and down that state’s long coastline.
In affluent Miami and Naples markets, highrise condos priced at $1 million and up became commonplace during the 1990s. But now highrise condos with more modest price tags are also springing up along the Atlantic coast as far north as Daytona Beach, and on the west coast in Sarasota and St. Petersburg as well as Naples.
Blame it on rising land prices for coastal sites. Land costs are now so high that they dictate densities only highrises can reach while keeping the product even reasonably affordable. Florida’s demanding environmental controls and long entitlements processes also push developers toward high-density highrise housing forms.
An example of what’s happening today is the developments underway in Volusia County, near Daytona Beach. The Di-Mucci Cos., lead by Tony DiMucci, have just one of 49 units - a 3-bedroom, 3-bath condo - left to be sold in the company’s Ponce Inlet development, which totals 493 units averaging $275,000 in price. At the 21-story oceanfront Towers Ten in Daytona Beach Shores, where construction is now underway, DiMucci has sold 104 of 114 residences, at prices averag-ing $255,000, and the building isn’t scheduled to open until summer of 2001.
At Bouchelle Island in New Smyrna Beach, where DiMucci plans to build 14 condo buildings, the story is much the same. Eight of the 15 condos in the first building are sold at prices averaging $170,000, along with four of 12 townhouses averaging $199,000. And con-struction has not yet begun.
DiMucci is already taking reservations for a condo building overlooking Callilisa Creek, even though final design of the building has just been approved.
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