Florida's 'tin-can tourists' get $1 million offer

updated 12:58 p.m. ET Jan. 4, 2007

BRINY BREEZES, Fla. - The owners of nearly 500 mobile homes in one of the last waterfront trailer-park towns in South Florida stand to become instant millionaires if they agree to sell to a developer. But some are holding out, saying there are things more important than money.

“You just can’t buy a way of life,” said Tom Byrne, a 68-year-old retired sales executive from New York who doesn’t want to sell even though he would make a little over $1 million on the trailer and site he bought two years ago for $150,000. “This is my home.”

Briny Breezes is a down-market relic of old Florida, surrounded by glamorous multimillion-dollar homes and splashy high-rise condos.

The Briny Breezes brochure calls it a “self-governed mobile home community of kindred souls.” Residents of the Palm Beach County town cruise the narrow streets on golf carts, passing palm trees and tiny, neatly manicured yards. They wave to each other and chat about the next neighborhood outing — water aerobics at the community pool, shuffleboard near the clubhouse, bowling night.

With 600 feet of oceanfront property and an additional 1,100 feet along the Intracoastal Waterway, real estate like this in southeastern Florida is pure gold.

Boca Raton-based Ocean Land Investments has big plans for the property if the deal goes through, as many residents are certain will happen. The company envisions about 900 low-rise multimillion-dollar condo units, a high-end marina and a 300-room luxury hotel.

“There really is no other piece of property like this in Florida,” said Logan Pierson, the company’s vice president of acquisitions.

The 43-acre town sprouted from a strawberry farm in the 1920s, back when Florida’s charm was its subtropical weather and quiet, coastal bliss — long before the days of Art Deco, “Miami Vice” and Walt Disney World.

So-called “tin-can tourists” came down yearly with their trailers to escape the Northern cold. A group of regular visitors bought the property in 1958, and it became a town in 1963. It is run as a corporation by a board of directors, and residents own shares based on the size and location of their lots.

“This is pretty much it for an affordable community along the coast,” said Debbi Murray of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County. “It’s just another piece of Floridiana that is going to disappear.”

Briny Breezes’ board recently approved the sale for $510 million. The owners of the 488 trailers have until Jan. 10 to ratify or reject the deal. A two-thirds majority is needed to sell. The amount each person would get depends on how many shares the resident owns. Each share is worth roughly $32,000 under the developer’s offer. Owners would not get any money — and wouldn’t have to move out — until 2009.

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