Paragon Properties Chairman Bill Gale – Informs our VIP Members in the Discussion Forum that he is “very proud to have been involved with…” a project featured in a report ‘Planning in the Wake of the Florida Land Scams’.

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You will see the development Bill Gale was involved with for 17 years listed under the chapter heading of ‘When Land Scams Become Boom Towns – The Case of Lehigh Acres, Florida.

On the Paragon website it says that:

“For 17 years, Mr. Gale managed all sales operations for Lehigh Acres Development, Inc., a NASDAQ-traded company. The company was responsible for acquiring 64,000 acres of land (a tract of almost 12 square miles), and the planning, implementation of infrastructure, construction and sale of a giant residential community known as Lehigh Acres. The development, which lies just east of Ft. Myers, Florida, is now home to more than 45,000 people.”

Please note that according to his own website confirms he “managed all sales operations,” it does not say that Gale was a developer. So let us take a cold hard look at the community he was involved with for 17 years.

Lehigh Acres Development – The Real Real Estate Experience of Bill Gale.

Hubert B. Stroud, Professor of Geography, Arkansas State University. P.O. Box 2410, State University, AR 72467 and William M. Spikowski, Spikowski Planning Associates. 1617 Hendry Street, Suite 416, Fort Myers, FL 33901 have done it for us and written a report called ‘Planning in the Wake of the Florida Land Scams‘ where you will see the development Bill Gale was involved with for 17 years listed under the heading of ‘When Land Scams Become Boom Towns – The Case of Lehigh Acres, Florida.’

VIP Members can also download that report here.

Doesn’t sound too positive does it? But read the full article and make an educated decision for yourself, I have selected some of my favorite quotes for you below.

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  1. The original developer, the Lehigh Acres Development Corporation, was skilled at marketing but had never before developed land (Faulkner 1994). They emphasized the volume sales of unimproved homesites to out-of-town buyers, virtually ignoring community planning and even the basics of drainage. The demand for installment purchases of the early Lehigh Acres lots was phenomenal. Even though typically 40% of the purchasers defaulted on their payments, the lots were simply sold again, since no complicated foreclosure proceedings were required (Gould 1995).
  2. This development approach created numerous problems including a rigid pattern of nearly identical lots and streets superimposed over the entire site (see configuration in Figure 6); a failure to provide even the most basic services such as water and sewer to most lots; an inadequately designed road network with few continuous arterial streets (despite the apparent grid).
  3. .. since sales techniques emphasized retirement living; little vacant commercial land remaining to serve future residents; and the destruction of most of the original wetlands.
  4. The original developer of Lehigh Acres ran a modern-day “company town” and kept very close control over most facets of daily life, from the home-building corporation to the bowling alley to the local newspaper. An adversarial relationship developed between it and Lee County.

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  5. Lehigh Acres was added to the Community Redevelopment Agency because “Blight is defined broadly in the act, and a formal blight study had no trouble identifying a predominance of defective and inadequate street layout and design, faulty lot layout, and unsanitary or unsafe conditions including such things as poor street lighting, dangerous road design, and lack of pedestrian crosswalks and road shoulders (Simpher 1994).”
  6. The resulting imbalance of land uses was caused by the inexperience and the short-term profit motives of the original developers…
  7. Many problems associated with Lehigh Acres remain unaddressed.
  8. In conclusion “The case study of Lehigh Acres has shown how difficult it is to deal with land developments that were allowed to proceed with little or no planning and with few regulatory controls.”
  9. Ill-conceived land developments have created very troublesome land use problems.
  10. Unfortunately the problems rarely go away and often become progressively worse.

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According to the 24th August 2003 edition of The Fort Myers New Press, “For nearly 20 years, we’ve been debating what to do about the lousy way the 60,000 acre Lehigh Acres development was laid out back in the 1950s.”

From the 21st August 2003 edition of The Fort Myers New Press talks about “More than 16,000 single lots abandoned because of unpaid taxes throughout Lee County could become tomorrow’s parks, schools or preservation areas…”

“County officials and private developers, together, have been busy evaluating how replating can benefit both sides – particularly in Lehigh Acres where 93 percent of the delinquent properties are located.”

From the 26th July 2004 edition of The Fort Myers New Press says that “About 7,000 properties throughout the county have accumulated about $2 million in cumulative back taxes. A majority of these vacant properties are in Lehigh Acres…”

I read that Bill Gale says they have built a total of only four homes in Costa Rica for their customers in the last few years and that is on 13 large different projects…

Doesn’t it sound like Bill Gale is doing the exact same thing in Costa Rica that he did with Lehigh Acres in Florida for 17 years?

24th August 2003 edition of The Fort Myers New Press: “Legacy of greed. The people who started Lehigh Acres weren’t land planners or developers, they were marketers. Their only purpose was to make money by selling lots – a retirement spot in the sun – to anyone with a few dollars down and few dollars a month.”

“The characteristics of these communities in Florida are pretty similar:

  • No water.
  • No sewer.
  • No drainage.
  • No open space.
  • Little or no land set aside for schools, parks, libraries, fire houses or commercial development.
  • An insufficient road system laid out on a grid, creating thousands of uniform lots.
  • Severe environmental damage.”

From “The original developer, the Lehigh Acres Development Corporation, was skilled at marketing but had never before developed land (Faulkner 1994). They emphasized the volume sales of unimproved homesites to out-of-town buyers, virtually ignoring community planning and even the basics of drainage. The demand for installment purchases of the early Lehigh Acres lots was phenomenal. Even though typically 40% of the purchasers defaulted on their payments, the lots were simply sold again, since no complicated foreclosure proceedings were required (Gould 1995).”

Is this what Bill Gale’s customers have to look forward to in Costa Rica?

Bill Gale is now the Chairman of Paragon Properties and has posted a number of items in our Discussion Forum, you can see his reply about this report here in our Discussion Forum as well as interesting feedback from other VIP Members.

If you have experience with Paragon Properties, please do help our VIP Members by giving us your feedback.

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