TAMPA, FLA. — The Georgetown apartment complex was one of this city's most coveted properties back in 2005. Now Greg Chelius and Alex Size were touring it as if examining an exotic ruin.
They walked past the unmanned guardhouse and its broken windows. Size snapped photos with a digital camera. Chelius lifted the green fabric on a fence tacked with No Trespassing signs.
Building after building loomed in the near distance, all of them quiet and vacant. From Chelius' vantage, it was difficult to judge their condition.
"We heard they were in such bad shape they'd have to be taken down," he said.
"It depends on the drywall," Size replied. "And the rot. And the mold."
They walked the eastern edge of the property, stopping at a place where they could glimpse -- through a thicket of weeds and Brazilian pepper trees -- the blue water of Old Tampa Bay, lapping at the property's edge.
As if on cue, a circling pelican dive-bombed for a fish.
"It's just outstanding," Chelius said.
These two men have big plans for the Georgetown property, 160 acres on the southwest side of the Tampa peninsula. But they are not planning to build.
Chelius is state director for the Trust for Public Land. Size is from the nonprofit's St. Petersburg office. Because of the steep decline in property values here, they believe they have a chance to help local government purchase and preserve this stretch of waterfront. A few months ago, it was slated to be covered with luxury condominiums, "mansion" town houses and single-family homes.
Instead, Chelius and Size spoke about the native plants that could be restored -- the sabal palmetto palm, the seagrape trees, the three native species of mangrove. With the vegetation would come more native animals, more birds.
"We're sort of like the un-developers right now," Chelius said, smiling.
Florida and California are what Gary R. Mormino, a historian at the University of South Florida in Tampa, calls the two great American "dream states," where surf and sunshine have lured generations with the promise of a better life.
Where Americans dare to dream, they have also dared to gamble on real estate, and the history of both states has been shaped by cycles of boom and bust.
Florida's dream-state status has led to intense fluctuations in the value of its land, and the fortunes of those who would gamble on it: One historian of the 1920s housing bubble there called it the "greatest speculative frenzy in history." More recently, an analyst at Goldman Sachs called Florida the "epicenter" of the nation's current housing bust.
