The first phase of Georgetown was a row of brick town houses with colonial touches. It was a hit from the start, attracting young families and empty nesters, government workers and grocery clerks.
"They had a waiting list a mile long, and a screening process," recalled Diana Watson, 71, who moved to Georgetown in 1974. "The apartments were beautiful, big and nice. . . . We loved it there."
Kaul married Virginia in 1976, two years after the death of his first wife, and moved to Florida full time. He was a wealthy man; they could have lived anywhere. But he preferred to live among his tenants in a Georgetown apartment. He built hundreds more units, and filled in enough of the bay to effectively triple his acreage.
Kaul died at Georgetown in 2002. And Virginia watched as Tampa's real estate soared. Middle-class homeowners were doubling their money on housing, then buying more property in hopes of doubling it again.
Developers turned their attention to southwest Tampa, one of the last stretches of waterfront that had not yet been upscaled and super-sized. Georgetown became the subject of a fierce bidding war. Bill Eshenbaugh, a real estate agent who calls himself "The Dirt Dog," got cocky when a client offered $100 million.
"I thought someone would send a limo to take me to lunch for that offer," he recalled. "All I got was a phone call from the broker, who said, 'You're not even close.' "
The winning bid of $125 million was submitted in April 2005 by a group of Delaware-based limited partnerships. Their public face was the Motta Group, a Fort Lauderdale developer with experience building luxury resorts.
Their plan was to tear down Georgetown and replace it with a "true waterfront retreat" called the Westshore Beach Club, with more than 1,200 condos and town homes. Its high-end buildings would be built in a neo-traditional Southern cottage style.
Meanwhile, the market was getting shaky. Eshenbaugh said speculators across Tampa had begun canceling contracts for unbuilt condos months earlier; by 2007, he said, "it was full-blown panic on the residential side."
In September 2008 -- 11 months after the new owners emptied Georgetown of its tenants -- their lenders, a consortium of four banks including LaSalle Bank NA (now owned by Bank of America) began foreclosure proceedings, later accusing the owners of failing to make payments on their $89-million loan. The banks bought back the property in December, paying little more than $2 million at a bankruptcy auction.
