DEERFIELD BEACH = THE RIVIERA?
While in a furniture store -- flipping through a magazine for design ideas for my new home -- I came across an ad for a “soon to be constructed” condo called “Ocean Plaza.”
As the building was completed quite a while ago, I realized the magazine was more than a few years old.
While the furniture in the store left me uninspired, that ad in the magazine left an impression on me. If for nothing else but its brashness.
Ocean Plaza is located in the Northern Broward County, Town of Deerfield Beach. The ad shows an older well dressed man embracing a well coiffed woman. The happy lady -- sporting a pearl bracelet -- is in an almost orgasmic glee.
Why is this couple so happy? The ad tell us, “We considered the Riviera, but we choose Deerfield Beach.”
I’m not sure what the marketers meant by “the Riviera,” but I suppose it referenced some fashionable port city in France, Italy, or tiny Monaco.
Whatever they meant by “Riviera,” Deerfield Beach certainly ain’t it!
Yesterday, I drove East on Hillsboro Avenue to get to a friend’s Boca condo. Crossing the intracoastal, I immediately came upon Deerfield Beach’s economic and entertainment hub. The first building you hit is the lovely Comfort Inn, which is the proud home to fine dining establishments such as “Subway.” Nearby is the community’s upscale grocer -- a 7 Eleven.
There is also live entertainment at Howard Johnson’s, which is arguably the toniest hotel in town.
Say what you want about the French, but that country’s food never disappoints. And while Subway might offer five different types of yummy bread, I’d rather have a loaf of real French bread any day.
And while 7 Eleven might have a refrigerated display case filled with a unhealthy variety of canned and bottled beers, West Central Italy alone has hundreds of wineries. (And, try getting into a restaurant in Monte Carlo without a jacket and a tie!)
Deerfield Beach, is a conflicted town that, on one hand, welcomes new upscale condos, while at the same time embraces its working-class roots.
Not an easy straddle.
The crowds are mainly young, unpretentious, and a little rowdy. The town is so democratic that instead of building a huge condo near the beach – like every other town or city in South Florida – a parking garage was erected on prime real estate. Along that garage’s street level are commercial storefronts comprised mostly of no frills bars.
Maybe that's why Ocean Plaza, and similar new Deerfield Beach condos, aren’t selling. For prices that go as high as $1.3 million, a prospective buyer can attain the privilege to see and hear kids getting loud, drunk, and sick.
So, it’s no wonder few are willing to buy. (Besides, the condo is not directly on the sand, but rather behind public parking.)
While Deerfield Beach is not “the Riviera,” even the true Riviera -- at least the French one -- has its problems. I was in Nice shortly after the most recent French-Muslim riots and saw many torched Peugeots. Outside the Negresco Hotel congregated unseemly characters and unattractive prostitutes (with whom the weak US dollar will not get you very far).
Overall, crime is up around Cannes-Nice, "hate acts" are up (especially against Jews), and, there are frequent union-organized pickets in several locations.
While in Nice, I thought I’d take a U.S. beach, any day. Even Deerfield Beach.
Who knows? Maybe, some day, Deerfield Beach will become the "hot spot" developers envisioned, and Southern France will slip into further decline. Then, we might see desperate French marketers hawking local real estate with such tag lines as, “Sure, we considered Deerfield Beach, but we chose St. Tropez!”
