The trailer park vs the millionaire: Why Mar-A-Lago’s neighbours are refusing to sell for $500m

‘We’re the last vestige of Old World Florida. We’re a kitschy place. I’d love to stay here forever,’ one Briny Breezes resident says. Graig Graziosi reports on the holdouts

(Google)

A group of Florida residents living in sea-side mobile homes are refusing to sell their little slice of Margaritaville to wealthy real estate developers, even turning down a more than $500m offer to give up the prime real estate.

Residents of Briny Breezes, which is located almost dead centre between Boca Raton and West Palm Beach, just off the A1A, met recently to discuss the offer.

The unnamed buyer made an offer of $502,496,000, but warned residents that there was “no clear idea of what the buyer proses for redevelopment,” according to the Sun Sentinel.

Many residents were clear at the meeting about what they thought of the offer.

“Not on my slice of paradise,” Chuck Swift, a resident since 2016, said.

Despite all the jokes about absurd “Florida Man” headlines, the slew of dangerous creatures that call the state home, the oppressive humidity, and the yearly threat of annihilation by hurricane, Florida has endured as an attainable paradise, an aesthetic immortalised by Jimmy Buffett music and shows like Miami Vice.

For some of the residents of Briny Breezes, even half-a-billion dollars isn’t enough to convince them to give up their dream of sand, sun and surf.

But it’s not just the proximity to the ocean that makes Briny Breezes residents reticent to sell; to them, they don’t just live in Florida, they live in one of the few remaining slices of an old-school, beach-bum Sunshine State that hasn’t been turned into luxury apartments by wealthy developers.

“It’s Old Florida. It got stuck in the ‘70s. You can take your golf cart and drive right to the beach and put your feet in the sand. Anyone interested would have to come in north of $1 billion. We’re down the street from Trump, all the neighbors are millionaires,” Mr Swift said, noting that Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is just up the highway from the seaside town.

A sunny day in Briny Breezes, Florida (Google)

Lynne Weiner, who has lived in the town since the 1950s, shared similar sentiments to the Sun Sentinel; Briny Breezes has fought off being subsumed by corporate investors, and she does not want to see that changed.

“We’re the last vestige of Old World Florida. We’re a kitschy place. I’d love to stay here forever,” she said. “This used to be a really, really nice neighborhood. Now, it’s just a really nice location.”

It’s not the first time residents have had to mull selling; in 2019, resident James Arena was convinced that the 43-acre town could be sold to Mr Trump and converted into the site of his presidential library.

The avid Trump supporter argued that he could convince the former president to buy the property by laundering the idea through his friend and famed 90s rapper Vanilla Ice.

“Vanilla Ice ran it by Donald Jr,” Mr Arena said at the time, according to the Palm Beach Post. “He called me back and said, ‘Man, I think they’re really into it.’”

Some residents were hesitant but open to the idea, even if they didn’t like Mr Trump.

“Trump is not my favourite and I would hate to see Briny disappear, but I’m a realist,” Dana Littlefield, who has lived in the town since 1955, said at the time. “I’ve got 10 grandchildren and we’re talking 10 college educations. If Briny can be sold for a billion dollars, it’s like a no-brainer. That’s a lot of money.”

That seems to be the number to beat – $1bn.

But that wasn’t always the case; the town almost sold when an even higher offer was made to them a little less than 20 years ago. In 2007, a developer in Boca Raton offered $510m to buy the town. That was nearly two decades ago, and would have made almost all of the residents virtual millionaires overnight. They agreed to the sale, but the buyer eventually backed out of the deal, according to NPR.

The struggle for Briny Breezes residents is the dilemma of knowing what they’ve got, and knowing that they may not have it forever.

Briny Breezes, Florida in 1963, the year the town was incorporated (Florida Department of Commerce)

Briny Breezes was birthed from a strawberry farm in the 1920s. The town was formally incorporated in 1963 after visitors began visiting in the 1950s. Since then, people have moved to the tiny community to bask in the warm coastal climate and enjoy the slow-paced, small-town culture nurtured there. Residents cruise the narrow streets in golf carts and pop down to the beach on a whim.

But they know they are an enclave, and that wealthy developers are eager to take over for the right price. As Mr Swift noted, they are surrounded by billionaires.

While they’ve been content mending blown out flip-flops and imbibing frozen concoctions on steamy afternoons, the rest of the state has embraced glitz and glam. The infamously expensive Disney World dominates the centre of the state, and luxury developers have carved out their own dominions for billionaires up and down the coast.

The holdouts in Briny Breezes want their paradise, but they also want what they believe is a fair slice of all that money that’s cropped up around them. They believe what they’ve got is worth a billion dollars, and they seem set to stick it out until someone coughs up the cash.

There is a possible ticking clock, however.

As sea levels rise and hurricanes become more ferocious due to the climate crisis, the fate — and perceived value — of the coastal town could drop. According to Climate Central’s Surging Seas Risk Finder, which aims to provide residents in at-risk areas with threat assessments of climate-related events for their regions, Briny Breezes has a 73 per cent chance of experiencing 3ft of flooding between now and 2050.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association warns that even a few inches of flooding can cause severe damage to a home; three feet or more can cause major structural damage. A two-foot flood in Fort Lauderdale earlier this month shut down the city’s airport, left cars stranded, and was called a “one-in-1,000 year storm” by the National Weather Service.

Briny Breezes sits on the unprotected costal edge of Florida in a hurricane evacuation zone; while it has weathered past storms and lived to tell the tale, if hurricanes continue to ramp up in severity, it may be only a matter of time before the town is caught up in a truly destructive storm.

Kevin Dwyer sits in his golf cart at the Briny Breezes trailer park in Briny Breezes, Fla., Monday, Dec. 18, 2006. If residents approved the sale of the community to a developer for more than a half billion dollars, nearly each trailer owner would have become an instant millionaire. "I've nickeled and dimed my whole life. I hit the lottery." Dwyer, who paid just $37,500 for his trailer nine years ago, would make about $800,000. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz) (AP)

Despite the risks, residents are aware that their property values have skyrocketed in recent years, keeping pace with the growing demand for housing in the US. Some residents bought their homes for as little as $37,000 as recently as 1997.

Michael Gallacher, the general manager of Briny Breezes, said the most recent offer was “underwhelming” after considering the tax consequences of the sale.

“The offer recently received was unsolicited and extremely underwhelming in price, tax consequences and development terms. The board presented this to the shareholders to be fully transparent,” he told the Sun Sentinel. “The board voted to do nothing further with the offer, rejecting it with no counteroffer.”

It seems, at least for now, the residents of Briny Breezes will keep waiting for a payday worth giving up their piece of paradise.