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."
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