Georgetown was the kind of dream that defined much of Florida's post-World War II growth -- a workingman's idyll, paradise on the cheap.
Built in the early 1960s by a child of the Great Depression named Ralph Kaul, it offered a clean, if unassuming, place to live and modest rents. There was a swimming pool, a clubhouse and a plain-Jane marina -- and of course that postcard-perfect view of the bay.
By 2005, however, a more glamorous Florida dream fueled by borrowed money and unbridled optimism was set to overtake Georgetown.
Few imagined that the new dream would dissolve so spectacularly. By 2007, the state led the nation in foreclosures and unsold inventory, and neighborhoods like southwest Tampa were left with half-realized and abandoned projects.
A development planned for a few blocks away, called New Port, still has a website that promises "restaurants and cafes, residential balconies, boutiques, offices, verdant parklands, gardens, trails. . . ." Today it is in foreclosure; the land is an empty lot. Nearby, work on the gated Westshore Yacht Club has been indefinitely suspended. The developer is in bankruptcy.
And then there is Georgetown, which could now revert -- at least in part -- to the untended field of mangroves that it was when Ralph Kaul first laid eyes on it.
--
Kaul's widow sold the Georgetown apartments at the market's dizzying peak. The place isn't her problem anymore. Yet Virginia Kaul bristles with frustration when she drives by.
"I have to keep telling myself, 'We don't own it anymore,' " she said. "But I wish they had torn it down. It's just sad."
Ralph Kaul, an experienced developer from the Washington, D.C., suburbs, began looking for places to build in Florida after losing a 1960 race for an Arlington, Va., congressional seat.
He arrived in Tampa at a time when the city was struggling to grow into a major metropolis. The region's signature cigar industry had been on the wane for decades, and civic leaders were campaigning for new kinds of business.
They didn't have trouble luring people. During World War II, soldiers stationed at MacDill Airfield, at the tip of the Tampa peninsula, got a taste of the sun and the sand. After the war, many returned, and other Americans followed.
Tampa didn't have many large apartment complexes, so Kaul decided to build one. He spent $1 million on an empty tract on the western side of the Tampa peninsula, next to a trailer park.
