YOU GOTTA BELIEVE!
June 13th, 2006
“You Gotta Believe”
For us New Yorkers, this was the battle cry made famous by New York Met pitcher Tug McGraw (also the father of country singer Tim McGraw) during the “Amazing Mets” 1973 pennant drive. The Mets who, despite their 1969 World Series victory, were perennial “cellar dwellers” year after year and were finally putting together another winning season. “You Gotta Believe” became the chant of many New Yorkers (even a few of us Yankee fans) who had a hard time believing they could do anything more than live in the shadows of their cross town rivals. So, what does this have to do with our area you may ask?
If you were to poll anyone outside our county to name the cities on Florida’s west coast, Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte would have rarely been on anyone’s list; at least until Hurricane Charley put us in the national spotlight. Depending on their source of information, we are either viewed as the “best kept secret ready to be discovered,” or “still in a state of disrepair”, as depicted recently on one of the national evening news programs that found a building needing to be torn down and used it as their backdrop.
With all the negative press about another “active hurricane season”, increasing interest and insurance rates, the slow down in the real estate market and the issuance of building permits, it’s a wonder that anyone would want to live here. What most people don’t consider is that many of the “concerns” making front page news, particularly the real estate slow down, are not exclusive to our area; they are occurring on a national level.
In a newspaper article I recently read, Charlotte County is being referred to by some developers as the “hole in the doughnut, surrounded by well-developed communities and remaining a fairly blank-and affordable-canvas waiting to be painted.” What most of us don’t consider are the millions of dollars that have been spent on demographic studies by national major “box stores” and developers/builders such as WCI, Stock, Kitson, Pulte, D.R. Horton, Lennar/US Homes, Centex, KB Homes, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Loews and many others, long before they decided to make their presence here.
Much needed medical offices and warehouse space are being developed and one quick drive to our airport is sure to surprise you when you see the massive undertaking of very forward thinking commercial space already underway. With future planned developments up and down Burnt Store Road and the recent news regarding “The Loop,” which is a collection of specialty store outlets and anchor stores such as Best Buy, aimed at creating a unique shopping and meeting experience, the face of our community is going to change dramatically.
Just imagine what the new waterfront area in Punta Gorda is going to look like with the possibility of quaint shops and small restaurants in a marina setting; and let’s not forget what interest the new Events Center is going to bring back to our area. These are just some of the many diversified projects planned for our community.
With each building that has been removed, new ones are being designed with great attention to architectural detail; this is the new face of our community however, to be viewed as more than just a retirement or vacation destination, we need to attract the corporate business and develop cultural interests as well if we are going to be perceived as having value when compared to our neighbors to the north and south of us.
Recently, Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co’s veteran analyst Michael Youngblood, in a Business Week article, not only dispelled rumors of a “housing bubble” but went on to specifically predict Punta Gorda as the market that will have the fourth highest price gains (35%) in the nation. Although, he may be going out on a limb in my estimation, what I found interesting is that he bases his positive outlook for us on “job growth and growth in personal income.”
If all these people are seeing the potential of what we can become, I guess Tug said it best, “You Gotta Believe!”
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