Article Courtesy of Sun Sentinel

By Maria Herrera

Published May 15, 2007

More than 18 months after Hurricane Wilma destroyed their condos, some residents in Kings Point, a 55-and-over community west of Delray Beach, are finally getting their homes back.

Negotiating with insurance companies and finding the right contractor caused delays in several of the condominium associations inside Kings Point. But in Saxony, a 624-unit section of the community, they didn't wait for insurance money to start. They took out a loan, hired a contractor and got started. The hardest part for them was getting permits and figuring out how to bring the 30-year-old units up to code.

Saxony is the first Kings Point condo association to turn several units back over to their owners. The remaining 40 units will be completed by June, property manager Dick Garlen said.

Getting the units back doesn't mean the owners can move in yet. Each owner now has to install kitchen cabinets, bathrooms and fixtures. But that didn't dampen Mitzi Cheitlin's spirits.

"I couldn't even imagine there would be so many holdups," said Cheitlin, one of six unit owners at Saxony who recently got their apartments back. "But this has definitely changed my mood now."

Cheitlin is one of more than 550 apartment owners who have been displaced since Wilma tore through the 7,200-unit community in October 2005.

Palm Beach County officials deemed 46 Saxony units uninhabitable, Garlen said. There are 375 other units that remain empty in the Tuscany, Brittany and Monaco sections of Kings Point.

Garlen said he hopes the grueling process they followed to repair the units at Saxony serves as a guide for other associations in Kings Point.

In the months following the storm, condo associations in Kings Point went about the repair process differently, causing additional delays for some. The Kings Point Community Association Inc., which includes the Tuscany, Brittany, Flanders and Monaco sections, only last month hired a new general contractor to begin repairs. They expect the work to take between 6 and 18 months.

In January the association had no contractor -- after terminating a contract with the company it initially hired to do the work -- or roofs on many of the uninhabitable apartments and were still negotiating an insurance payout.

"It's looking much brighter," KPCA attorney Peter Sachs said. "The main difference now is that everybody is working together."

Saxony has so far received almost half of the insurance money. But after the storm hit, the association borrowed money and used money in reserves to hire a contractor, instead of waiting for an insurance check. The biggest challenge was getting permits from the county for the $5.2 million job, Garlen said. It took nearly eight months and more than 600 hours at the building department to figure out how to make the old units comply with current building code.

"The county wanted to make sure reconstruction and code upgrades were properly addressed," he said.

Kings Point was built in the 1970s. The modular units that make up the buildings were prefabricated and assembled on site, said county Building Director Rebecca Caldwell.

"Our main criteria was that they met the Florida building code for existing buildings," Caldwell said. "An engineer had to be hired just to determine to what extent each unit had to be repaired."

Garlen said it took many tries before they got it right.

"We were having one unit inspected and approved, and at the same time we were moving forward repairing the other apartments," Garlen said. "The association was responsible for giving the owners an up-to-code shell."

With hurricane season around the corner and a preseason storm already having churned in the Atlantic, residents are worried that more damage could occur before repairs even start.

"Of course we're concerned. It looks like we have a rough season ahead of us," Sachs said. "But we have a contractor on board that will take preventive steps in case a storm does come."

For Saxony residents, the glee of handing units back to their owners takes precedence over hurricane worries. The community hopes to have a barbecue celebration on Oct. 24, Wilma's two-year anniversary.

"We're calling it a rebirth of Saxony," said Elinor Lichten, Saxony association president. "We were committed to rebuilding this place and we did it."