Be a Booster for Beautiful Longboat

This week's Observer listed a 2009 - 2010 September home sales decline of around 45% for condominiums and 65% for houses.

Perhaps a little less gloom and doom by commissioners Brenner and Brown might be advisable given the negative September sales trends on the island.

I do not see that negative public assessments of our island will contribute to real estate sales. 

In a previous blog, and article in the LBK News, I argued that our community needs immediate help in the area of real estate sales, as opposed to the cure being proposed by Messrs Brenner and Brown, who advocate a long-range build-up of tourist lodging to the point where  retail stores will flourish. Who knows how long that will take given our economy.
http://lbk-folk.blogspot.com/2010/09/longboat-needs-great-marketing-campaign.html

I have been on this island since 1979 either as a visitor or resident. I never saw retail flourish. Demographics have changed over the years and the business environment has morphed into one that fills the current demand for goods and services.

It is all well and good to discuss long-range development on Longboat. However, given the current and projected economic conditions, along with the demise of the baby-boomer 401Ks, it may be more effective to look at more immediate ways to attract home buyers to Longboat.

I suspect most residents are not concerned with the distant in the future profits that will be made by developers if they are allowed to build hi-rise hotels on the north end of Longboat.

Residents need help today not a decade from now.

Every time a read another article about Messrs. Brenner and Brown, telling us we are a decrepit aging declining community, I feel sad that the very people who should be our most outspoken promoters appear to be our most prominent detractors.

These two gentlemen may be the best planners to ever grace our community, but I believe they may not fully comprehend what it is about Longboat that makes us one of the premier residential and retirement communities in America. Perhaps it is their urban background that contributes to their future vision of Longboat as a built-up tourist based economy.

I believe we attract discriminating residents because we are not a tourist based community.

I grew up in Larchmont New York. Elisabeth and I visited friends there in August. As far as I can tell very little has changed in the past sixty years. All the homes are at least eighty to ninety years old. The commercial area is small, ragtag and typically suburban New York. Retail have not expanded appreciably over many decades yet Larchmont homes are outragously expensive for what they are.

Larchmont appears to be prospering and filled with the young families that Brenner and Brown think we should be attracting. Believe me when I tell you there is a lot of money in Larchmont.

There are few tourist establishment in the Larchmont, yet the community prospers.


Having worked with New York State schools for a decade, I can attest that Larchmont has some of the top ranked schools in America. Why would an educated professional family move their children to Longboat Key, when our local schools rank poorly? Improve our local schools and I believe the affluent families will come.

Elisabeth and I recently entertained friends from Evanston, Ill. Their visceral and enthusiastic response to Longboat and the village was one of awe and great pleasure, realizing they had arrived in paradise. We walked to the Mar Vista and dined under the Buttonwood trees beside the water. Paradise!

Our guests spent three days with us. As I listened to the many accolades they bestowed on our community, I had a difficult time reconciling their perceptions of Longboat with the dure and alarming assessments coming frequently from our two planner commissioners.

I have never met anyone who did not love our aesthetically beautiful serene island ambiance. From spending time with many of these people, I have come to understand that there are "different strokes for different folks" and that people who fall in love with Longboat do not want to be in the hi-rise world of Boca Raton.

I encourage our planner commissioners to become Longboat Key boosters instead of detractors.

We need a great marketing campaign now if we are going to enable residents to sell their homes rather than their heirs.