Florida Builder Invests
In the Environment

NAPLES -- Flocks of roseate spoonbills and egrets feed in the shallows and dolphins frolic in the serene mangrove-lined inlets of Rookery Bay estuary.

Will such scenes set the mood for closing million-dollar home sales? Developer Aubrey Ferrao is banking on it. This week Mr. Ferrao's Gulf Bay Group of Cos. began offering boat tours of the bucolic Rookery Bay and the adjacent Ten Thousand Islands preserve for prospective buyers at his 3,700-acre Fiddler's Creek housing development, about 10 miles southwest of Naples.

"It's a very peaceful feeling; it calms the soul -- and that was very important to us from a marketing standpoint," says Mr. Ferrao, president and chief executive of Naples-based Gulf Bay.

The environmental pitch is quite a turn of events for the land where Fiddler's Creek is being built. Twenty-five years ago, Deltona Corp., one of the state's largest developers at the time, planned a massive development on the order of Miami Beach here, until lawsuits from environmentalists, the state and federal governments killed most of the project and crippled the company. The fight prompted a new era of environmental standards restricting how developers can build near wetlands throughout Florida.

These days the nature sanctuary established where Deltona planned to tread is the star attraction. Mr. Ferrao placed his sales office on a site overlooking a marsh, rather than the golf-course setting preferred by many area developers. Homes come with an optional $17,500 canoe dock (canoes extra). And the boat tours -- complete with hors d'oeuvres and spring water -- drive home the point that Fiddler's Creek is less than five miles from the vast wilderness of the southwestern tip of Florida.

But the most remarkable difference is the relative absence of fighting between the developer and environmentalists. Mr. Ferrao has disarmed much of the opposition by working with one of Deltona's harshest critics: the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. At the state's and the group's urging, he has promised to restore the property's water flow that feeds into state-owned conservation land next door, use native plant species to landscape and sharply curtail the number of homes, thereby providing space for bird habitats.

While Mr. Ferrao says the changes appeal to his own conservationist beliefs, he also acknowledges they help him sell pricier homes. For example, a creek system he is developing to restore water flow will create another 5.5 miles of waterfront property.

To be sure, not all environmental groups are fans of Fiddler's Creek. Some argue Mr. Ferrao's marketing pitch is hypocritical because his development still contributes to water pollution with home sites and golf courses -- Fiddler's Creek will have five -- that cause runoff into pristine estuaries. "It does prove our point that nature sells," says Nancy Payton, Southwest Florida field representative for the Florida Wildlife Federation. "The point is how much do you degrade it and manipulate it to sell it."

Mr. Ferrao isn't alone in using nature-conscious development as a sales strategy, both to stand out from the competition and to overcome concerns about destruction of wildlife habitat. On Kiawah Island, S.C., for example, other developers are winning at least begrudging support from onetime environmentalist foes.

"I hated to see Kiawah developed, but I am grateful that they have been some somewhat conscious" of the environment, says Ann Shahid, education director at the Francis Beidler Forest near Charleston, who was among local activists that fought the development in the 1980s.

The relative calm surrounding development of Fiddler's Creek is a striking contrast to the protracted fight triggered by Miami-based Deltona's plan to build 35,000 homes on new dredged-out canals on Marco Island. Environmental groups assailed the plan, warning it would cause irreparable harm to mangroves and wildlife habitats of the Ten Thousand Islands.

In 1976 the Army Corps of Engineers denied the company crucial dredge-and-fill permits, marking the first time the Corps had denied development on wetlands on environmental grounds in Florida. That led to stricter development standards statewide, such as requiring developers to restore or replace wetlands disturbed by development. In 1982 Deltona agreed to a settlement that allowed the company to proceed with a scaled-back plan to build condominiums on less environmentally sensitive property. But it was also required to hand over 15,000 acres to be included in the Rookery Bay sanctuary and refund millions of dollars in deposits from would-be buyers. It never fully recovered from the financial blow. It came close to bankruptcy in the early 1990s, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and was finally absorbed by foreign investors in 1993.

Adversity to Advantage

At about the same time as Deltona's demise, Mr. Ferrao, a 46-year-old native of Goa, India, was learning that proximity to nature preserves could be turned to his advantage. His first project -- a series of condominium towers in the Pelican Bay area near Naples -- was built not directly on the beach, but behind a buffer of mangroves that was required as part of another developer's earlier fight with environmentalists.

After his condos sold well, Mr. Ferrao wanted to try the nature-marketing concept on a 1,350-acre tract he bought for $4.6 million in 1993 from several New York banks, part of the original Deltona holdings. He added to the property in 1995 by purchasing an adjacent 2,700 acres of farmland and other smaller holdings nearby, for $12 million.

The purchase immediately raised concerns among environmentalists because it signaled a major development spilling over the so-called urban service boundary of Naples, a line established as part of the state's Growth Management Act that restricts development to prevent urban sprawl.

Still hoping to develop his entire property, including land zoned as farmland, Mr. Ferrao met with environmentalists and agreed to reduce the density of the project. Instead of 9,000 homes allowed on the original property, he reduced it to 6,000 on the combined acreage.

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida wanted further concessions. Among them: The group asked Mr. Ferrao to not develop one corner of the property so wildlife could move freely from the preserve within his property into the adjacent Rookery Bay sanctuary. He agreed.

He also agreed to restore natural vegetation and allow water to flow across the Fiddler's Creek property and nurture the mangroves in the sanctuary to the south -- water flow that had been blocked when the land was used for farming. That has turned out to be as much an opportunity as a concession, Mr. Ferrao concedes. To create the water flow, he is building the creek system, creating more waterfront home sites. For each square foot of creek frontage, he can add $3,000 to a home price -- helping to offset the cost of the $15 million creek system.

The Conservancy raised no formal objections when the development won approval from local government bodies in 1997. "It is not our policy to object to everything that comes through," says Michael Simonik, the Conservancy's vice president of environmental policy. "It is our policy to work with developers to offer solutions to some of the concerns we have." Besides, he adds, the group earlier had won restrictions on development on part of the property -- excluding the farmland -- as part of its settlement with Deltona. "We already had had that fight."

But Ms. Payton of the Florida Wildlife Federation says her group stuck by its objections -- unsuccessfully -- before the local planning board and the county commission. She still thinks Fiddler's Creek set a negative precedent that is prompting further eastward movement of development into rural areas of Collier County.

"It vexes me that they're marketing themselves for their environment when they've had significant negative impact on the environment," Ms. Payton says.

She asserts that the Conservancy's tacit support of Fiddler's Creek might be influenced by the developer's annual $1,000 personal gift to the group and an additional $1,000 donation in his company's name. "We're a deeper shade of green than they are," she says.

Keeping Distance

Mr. Simonik says that corporate sponsorship has played no role in the Conservancy's dealings with Gulf Bay Cos. He also notes that the Conservancy turned down the developer's offer to build a nature center at Fiddler's Creek -- to be operated by the environmental group -- because it feared being seen as too close to the developer. "Some may call us sell-outs or whatever," he says, "but we try to work with the developer to minimize the impacts."

Now the Conservancy hopes its work with Mr. Ferrao will produce a new band of environmental crusaders to help preserve other area wetlands. "I would hope that Fiddler's Creek would become an advocate of the Rookery Bay estuary and the Ten Thousand Islands," Mr. Simonik says. There is precedent for that in the Naples area: When the mangroves next to Pelican Bay began dying a few years ago because of road-building projects, condo residents led efforts to try to do something about it.

One new recruit may be Cynthia Valeri. She never thought of herself as a "nature person," she says, before she and her husband bought a vacation home in Fiddler's Creek two years ago. During twice-monthly visits from their home in Marblehead, Mass., she started each morning by walking to a nearby gazebo "to sit and watch the birds." Now they're selling their first home there -- on a golf course -- in favor of one facing the marshes and outfitted with a canoe dock.

Says Ms. Valeri, "I even bought a couple of books that I can use to identify the birds."

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